Sure, today. But what happens when Sonos decides they "don't want to support your Play:1"? Maybe because it's a "security issue" and they place your Play:1 in "recycle" mode for you and give you so many months to replace it? Think about this from a longer term point of view - this is just an A/B test by Sonos. They can brick your device from remote, so there's no guarantee that at some point they won't.

yah, i had to stop updating the sonos app on my phone so i wouldn't be forced to create a sonos account to use my play:1. i mistakenly updated the app on my ipad, so my ipad can no longer control the play:1.

i won't ever buy another sonos device (even the ikea speakers, which i like otherwise) because of that.

Sonos has never EOL'ed or feature handicapped a speaker yet. It doesn't seem like something they're keen to do.

While your argument may be technically true with regard to speakers Sonos has EoL'd product [0]. It's only a matter of time. The problem with SaaS reliant hardware is very few vendors make the effort to support products long term (>7 years).

[0] https://www.techradar.com/news/sonos-finally-kills-off-cr100...

I wholy agree that it is a concern, especially from smaller/unprofitable companies/google (sonos thankfully is none of those). Just look at the Revolv hub and it's nest aquisition.

Based on the language used online from sonos, this whole recycle mode seems to be to pay users to give up old hardware so they can EOL'd it without leaving users with useless hardware.

If a company wants to EOL hardware, paying users to give it up seems to be an ethical way to do it (from a consumer perspective, if not a environmental one)

Worse. If Sonos can do it, eventually so can a hacker. Nothing is unhackable. Sooner or later a consumer(s) or Sonos will be taken hostage.

Did you read the twitter thread? Recycle mode bricks the device without communicating clearly to customer it's a kill switch for perfectly functioning hardware.