Bose has released API docs and opened the API for its EoL SoundTouch speakers
arstechnica.com2475 points by rayrey a day ago
2475 points by rayrey a day ago
Direct link to the announcement (from the article):
https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life
SoundTouch API Documentation (pdf) linked from the announcement:
https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/...
This is how "end of support" should be handled. Instead of turning devices into e-waste, open-source them and let the community extend their life. Kudos to Bose for setting a good example.
More companies should follow this approach - especially as right-to-repair becomes a bigger issue.
Bose should not receive praise for this move. Bose only took this action after community backlash. In an older version of their end-of-life announcement, most functionality of the speaker systems would have removed and transformed the devices into dumb-speakers/amps.
Good that they changed their statement and took the right action. Even better for the community for stepping up and 'forcing' Bose to do so.
Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20251201051242/https://www.bose.... https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/10/bose-soundtouch-home...
> Bose should not receive praise for this move. Bose only took this action after community backlash.
They received the backlash, they responded to it by properly addressing the criticism and doing the right thing. It should be praised. Especially since it wasn't some PR-centric damage control, but an actual direct address of the specific points their original approach was criticized for.
Compare Bose's response to that of Sonos (another large techy audio brand). Sonos had an absolutely massive backlash recently (within the past few years iirc) in regards to deprecating software support for their older speakers that I'd read about everywhere (including HN) for months and months.
Afaik, it didn't lead to Sonos doing the right thing in the end (unlike the scenario at hand here), despite the online outrage being way more widespread than in the Bose's case.
Agreed. When someone does something, hears the complaints, and changes, it's charitable to bin them as someone who made a mistake and wants to improve.
Not every company deserves this charity, but the social media default nowadays is to deny that charity to everyone, and to go scorched-earth.
Even if they don't want to improve, and just do it reluctantly, it's best to reward them for doing something good, because otherwise they'll have no incentive to do something good in the future.
And therein lies the fault, they only do "good" because they were made to do it. Rewarding them for "reluctantly" improving won't change their bad behavior. They should improve because it's the decent thing to do. By doing the decent thing, the praise would have been tenfold, which is the best incentive. (I do appreciate your comment because most companies do live in a moral vacuum.)
>They should improve because it's the decent thing to do. By doing the decent thing, the praise would have been tenfold, which is the best incentive.
Those 2 sentences don't really align well. Should they be motivated by the tenfold praise? Or should they be motivated by doing the decent thing? If they should be motivated by doing the decent thing, why mention tenfold praise?
>Rewarding them for "reluctantly" improving won't change their bad behavior.
I don't see why not. They see that good behavior gives a better outcome. They'll do good behavior in the future.
Encouragement of good decisions over bad decisions is how people tend towards making more good decisions. "You didn't inherently make the right choice, so even the right choice you made is actually bad" is just... really, really childish.
There's the whole citizens united ruling stating companies are people, but they're not toddlers. They (the grown adults working there) should not need positive reinforcement to figure out that consumer hostile actions sour said consumers on their product in future purchase decisions. If they want an incentive to be better, start there.
The massive amount of bad publicity on the initial bad decision is a disincentive to not make bad decisions in the future.
The medium amount of good publicity on the course correction good decision is an incentive to make good decisions in the future, both initial good decisions and course correction good decisions.
Sonos gets backlash every few years and they don’t change. It’s almost as if consumers are shit at boycotting companies.
Which does make Boses move even more impressive when you think about how it wouldn’t have affected their business to do nothing.
A few years back Sonos was going to EoL and brick a huge humber of their "legacy" devices and that those devices would prevent new ones from getting updated. After backlash they reversed their decision and all devices remained functional: https://www.businessinsider.com/sonos-device-support-ceo-apo...
However, I wouldn't expect anything from Sonos at this point in time.
And before that it was the “recycle mode” that actually bricked the hardware thus contributing to e-waste: https://www.whathifi.com/news/sonos-explains-why-recycle-mod...
Sonos did revert that decision after mounting public pressure too. However they keep pull these kinds of stunts and then later apologising for it.
My point is: are you actually changing if you keep making the same mistakes and then only saying “sorry” after you get caught?
If Bose shows the same pattern of behaviour the I’d lump them into the same category as Sonos. But thus far they do seem slightly more ethical.
Personally though, I think the whole “smart speaker” industry is crooked. But some are definitely more crooked than others.
I don’t understand what you mean when you say the whole smart speaker industry is crooked.
Every company that makes smart speakers is crooked? Or, the making and selling of smart speakers is inherently unethical?
A little of both.
speakers used to be something that would last a lifetime. I still have the same active monitors that I bought quarter of a century ago when I was producing techno. And I still used those speakers daily for listening to the radio. I used them for a NYE house party. They’re used often and still perform as well today as they do when they were new.
smart speakers is just a way of introducing forced obsolescence into the market.
So these EOL guarantees are nice, but EOL for speaker used to mean 50+ years later or when someone idiot inflicted physical damage onto the hardware. And even then, it was often still repairable.
Not the OP, but IMO as soon as a company becomes successful, the leadership becomes focused on making money and not making a good product.
Sometimes making a decent product is part of making money, but that's never a motivation in itself. We have enough examples showing that if it makes more money to enshittify (and usually it does), then they will gladly enshittify.
I wouldn't say it's just the smart speaker industry.
And some people have been advocating for Apple to do something similar with old iPhones and tablets for a decade, and there’s no sign. Their privilege but not great for the world.
Would you elaborate? Because my understanding is that Apple has offered outstanding support for older devices in terms of iOS support for quite old devices.
Apple don't give people the tools/keys/etc to load new OS (etc) onto a device once it's no longer supported.
So, at best the device can just be used with the latest version of the software Apple allows until it's a security nightmare and better off no longer used.
Instead, if Apple gave people the ability to load something (prob a Linux) onto those old devices, then those old devices could be used usefully for quite a few more years.
> Apple has offered outstanding support for older devices in terms of iOS support for quite old devices
Did they gave instructions on how to unblock bootloaders. released the source code and drivers under an open source license?
Whilst the support might be "outstanding" - the discussion is what happens once devices are no longer supported.
You can't release all the documentation just because the entire phone isn't supported. Many of the components come from other suppliers and aren't obsolete, and you can't just reveal all your suppliers' IP.
You could if you had a tiny bit of respect for your customers and obtained the necessary licenses to do so.
I don't think anyone has ever accused, say, Qualcomm of having respect for their customers. Much less someone else's customers.
They don't have to - just give an option to unlock the device when it's EOL.
It's not a security problem, since they don't support it anylonger anyways!
They could even make it so, that iOS itself refuses to boot if the device is unlocked. That way you can't accidentally have an iOS running that's compromised in some way.
But you can still boot Linux or Android or whatever you want to do to it.
No functrionality is lost when a phone no longer receives iOS updates. All of the existing functionality continues.
Access to new features is not available, and app developers may no longer support updates to their applications.
But AFAIK, Apple apps (maps, music, phone, iMessage etc) on iPhones no longer receiving iOS updates continue to work.
Apps that connect to a service over the Internet (maps, music iMessage) could stop working if Apple changes the APIs that those apps use. This is even more likely to happen to third party apps.
You won't get updates to the trusted root CAs, which means you won't be able to visit sites with certificates signed by CAs created or renewed after support is dropped. And your browser will continue trusting CAs that have had their trust revoked.
And as web standards evolve there will be websites that use features and APIs that your browser doesn't support and may break in subtle, or not so subtle ways. And there is no way for you to install a more up to date browser.
And then of course, you won't fixes for any new security vulnerabilities that are found.
So yeah, it's not as bad as getting bricked, but it as also worse than continuing to work as it always has, but with no new features.
The original post was about Apple not giving proper support to after-EOL phones.
Saying "could stop working" and "won't get updates to the trusted root CAs" is all future issues.
How long should Apple be required to provide updates, both security/vulnerability and future API support?
Currently, iPhone 6S, released in 2014, can run iOS 15, which received its latest update in 2025. The iOS 15 apps work with Apple's services, some with reduced functionality because it was never in iOS 15.
So that's a 10 year old phone.