> 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.

Yeah, it’s good to see a sensible response to community pressure here. While I take the point that they only conceded after pressure, at least they did concede. I’ve upgraded their brand in my mind from “planned obsolescence e-waste villain” to “cares about PR and will do the right thing while being watched”. I think the only truly trustworthy companies regarding end of support handling in consumer tech are those whose brand is explicitly tied to openness / repairablity ala home assistant, framework laptops, etc…

Sadly those tend to be niche companies already focused on power users, but any other firms should be considered guilty until proven innocent of enshittification (forced bricking, closed source, subscription creep, privacy violations and data brokering).

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.

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.

> How long should Apple be required to provide updates, both security/vulnerability and future API support?

If they want to drop support for still functional hardware, they should make it possible to install your own software on it.

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?

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?

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.

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.

This conversation reminds me of how predatory _all_ of the big players ToS were when I was shopping for a large (think for outdoor use) BT speaker. Every single one of the mainstream speakers had terrible data collection allowed by their "privacy" policy. I ended up ordering one from Monoprice that did not even have a ToS.

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.

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.

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.

<If they should be motivated by doing the decent thing, why mention tenfold praise?>

Not that most corporations care, being trashed for decisions that hurt their consumers is run of the mill these days. Companies that get praise from their customers tend to stay in business and sell lots of product.

<I don't see why not. They see that good behavior gives a better outcome. They'll do good behavior in the future.>

Reluctantly improving means they were either going to or already screwed their customers. Companies that admit mistakes are praised. To think that a company who is called out will in the future continue to do good for consumer decisions is a little naive.

> I don't see why not. They see that good behavior gives a better outcome. They'll do good behavior in the future.

Suppose Anon says, "I'm going to rob a bank next Monday."

Police respond, "We will be ready there next Monday, and you will be arrested."

Anon replies, "Ah, I see! Never mind, then."

We can certainly say it's good that Anon changed their mind after being met with promises of consequences. But, in my opinion, saying something like "Anon is a fine, upstanding citizen, worthy of praise, unlike those other criminals that actually went through with it! Now that Anon understands it's bad, they'll surely never think to plan something so dastardly in the future!" is leaving reality behind. Anon has done the bare minimum, and likewise deserves the bare minimum of praise. In terms of incentive, I think such a response would only teach Anon to be sneakier, now that they've earned some trust.

I'm not saying we should say the company is overall good. Just that the decision to backtrack was good.

Similarly, we wouldn't say that Anon is overall upstanding, just that the decision to not rob that bank was good.

My point is that we should treat the company better if it backtracks. And similarly we should treat Anon better if he doesn't rob the bank. It doesn't make sense to give Anon the exact same punishment whether he robs the bank or not. If we do that, he has no incentive not to rob the bank. "If I'm going to jail either way, I might as well actually rob the bank."

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.

<"You didn't inherently make the right choice, so even the right choice you made is actually bad" is just... really, really childish.>

Please explain.

no, they were not made to do it. they listened to feedback and did the work. this is better than we get in 99% of cases. try to be nicer and meet them half way instead of living in your ideal world.

In my ideal world, corporate responsibility is a must. Making junk products or killing product updates because they can't sell you the updated version is irresponsible. They listened to feedback because they know their products are overpriced for the market, so they decided to do the right thing, but only after they were called out. That's backwards. Corporations don't know the meaning of nice, only money.

> Bose should not receive praise for this move.

Remind me of any other vendor in recent history that end of lifed a hardware product and then open sourced it whether they got backlash or not. Because I can’t think of a single one.

So yes, Bose absolutely deserves praise.

Arguably HP open-sourced webOS, but they did also got backlash because they killed that entire product line without warning.

They killed the product line almost immediately after release. And they fired basically everyone they acquired from palm.

It was a real shitty move.

It is a pretty sad story, and one that has been rather well told:

https://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3062611/palm-webos-hp-insi...

https://www.philmckinney.com/i-convinced-hps-board-to-buy-pa...

I worked at HP as an intern during the saga. I even got to attend a training by the Palm team... Which wasn't great.

My impression just from that training is that WebOs was extremely mismanaged. The training was billed as a "how to write apps for WebOs" and it instead was an hour long meander by the Palm employee about how different the company culture is and how hard it became to do anything.

I had the distinct impression they didn't even know that the training was supposed to be before being assigned to do it.

I think that's indicative of everything. HP had this product that they were trying to shoehorn into the most bizarre places. At it's core it was a mobile Linux os which used html/css/JavaScript as the main user experience engine. And HP was trying to put that on printers and rack mount displays. The one place they didn't seem to care putting it was the mobile devices it was designed to target. They simply half assed the launch of a product.

Google refunded all Stadia purchases, both hardware and software, after they discontinued the platform/product. Then they added functionality (the ability to operate the controller as a generic Bluetooth controller) afterward to keep the hardware from becoming e-waste.

Cheaper than the class action which would've followed given Stadia's relatively short life.

Short by anything but Google standards :P

Except the title is wrong; Bose didn't open source anything.

Pebble?

Logitech are my go-to example of a company that does the right thing and deserves recognition for it. They kept their squeezebox.com servers going for a decade after they discontinued their Squeezebox hardware audio players. At the same time, they funded a maintainer to keep improving the open source server software that users can self-host on multiple platforms (Linux, Windows, macOS, Raspberry Pi). Two years ago, they finally shut down the squeezebox.com servers that they were running but the server software is still being actively maintained: https://lyrion.org/

I recall there is also an open source and hardware speaker but not 100% sure it's from Logitech.

Teufel Mynd is the open source speaker https://blog.teufelaudio.com/visionary-mynds-insights-on-teu...

That's nice of them! Too bad they don't offer repair for other speaker systems that are out of warranty, nor do they sell components for other repair shops to fix speakers that are out of warranty.

Don't punish the behavior you want to see. Would we rather they defaulted there? Sure. But it's arguably an even better signal to see that they're willing to listen to their customers even when there is no direct financial incentive for them.

Their financial incentive is negative. They were hoping to force everyone to buy new speakers, driving sales. But if the community is able to get open source firmware to run spotifyd on them, there is a non-zero (not everyone, but it's non-zero) amount of people that will just not buy new speakers from them.

> Their financial incentive is negative. They were hoping to force...

Maybe?

People stuck with Bose bricks might show a preference for non-Bose replacements.

People who thought Bose speakers would stay useful longer might prefer Bose, or be willing to pay for a more expensive Bose speaker model.

(Yes, I agree that some PHB's at Bose were almost certainly imagining that their customers would be forced to re-purchase Bose speakers. I'm questioning the validity of their initial assumptions.)

From talking to friends and family, so n=10-ish, non-computer people have not realized that sticking computers in things means they die on computer lifetimes, not appliance lifetimes. No more switches that last for the life of the house; no more speakers that your kids can do modest maintenance to and keep using.

And, if I, a non-Bose customer, hear that Bose open sourced a previous version of their speaker, which gives me some confidence that a present purchase might be somewhat future-proofed, then I am more likely to buy a new Bose product vs a competitor who does not provide sources.

If they can make this OS story go viral, then they stand to have a lot of customers defect from their competitors even people who would never really care about open source.

Could easily be net positive.

It's not negative, though, or at least they don't think so. The fact that they are doing this OSS release means that they believe any loss of new sales would be dwarfed by a loss of goodwill if they'd bricked the old devices.

Certainly goodwill is harder to quantify.

This is why I said "direct". This is an indirect financial incentive, and there are other indirect financial incentives at play here (as others have noted).

Well they still did it, thus praise (though less effusive than if they had just done it initially).

And?

When presented with information that you're acting in bad faith, if you choose to change: that is praiseworthy.

It's very brave to take that in, and not worry about "brand damage" or "appearing weak". It's brave to even challenge yourself when someone tells you you're wrong. It's entirely admirable.

It's the default human behaviour to double-down.

> transformed the devices into dumb-speakers/amps

Isn't that still gonna happen now?

From [1]:

What will no longer work:

• Presets (preset buttons on the product and in the app)

Of course Bluetooth and AirPlay continues to work, but isn't that what a "dumb speaker" is?

[1] https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life

Bose's original plan was to remove all WiFi-dependent functionality (no AirPlay and no Spotify Connect)-- while they wouldn't quite be "dumb speakers" at that point (since Bluetooth would've still worked), it would've turned them into pretty much just overcomplicated Bluetooth speakers.

> Isn't that still gonna happen now?

No, if you read farther down the announcement, they also say this:

> Open-source options for the community

> We’re making our technical specifications available so that independent developers can create their own SoundTouch-compatible tools and features. The documentation is available here: https://assets.bosecreative.com/m/496577402d128874/original/...

So, they're going to strip the "smart" functionality from the app that Bose provides, but they're letting people continue to use it if they want to.

I've read that document. As I understand, the "smart" capabilities are exactly the presets. Those need their server to function. Do you see anything saying otherwise?

I believe that if someone (or some company) changes their ways we should accept that and not condemn them forever.

Honestly. Bro needs to chill. Big companies don't really do anything unless they recieve backlash. That's just how it works.

Is the world a better place before or after Bose decided to change course?

I've got a simple formula in life for when people do things beneficial to me: I praise them for it and encourage them to keep it going. If someone does things antagonistic to my interests, and then corrects course in reaction to objection, they can be sure they're going to be rewarded. This has worked for me.

If your belief is that some other tactic works, then I can see why you'd do that. For my part, carrot + stick has always worked better than stick + more stick.

It works on dogs, children, and adults, the inability to praise the good because they did something bad prior feels like more of the online black/white moralism that used to characterise Twitter dogpiles.

There is no winning or redemption after getting cancelled it so seems.

Why should Bose not get credit for this? If you are saying that people should treat them the same regardless of whether they listen to their consumers or not, then why would they ever bother listening to the consumers?

Also remember that there is no believer like a convert. A community helping guide a company towards open source culture could make for a very strong ally.

Then again I know nothing about Bose’s open source culture so take it with a grain of salt.

Ugh, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Bose: does something bad. People: complain. Bose: undoes what they did and does something slightly better. You: complain.

I'm not sure I get the logic here.

Slowly but steadily I'm comprehending why companies are getting tired of some people. No matter what companies do, people will always complain. Don't get me wrong, there's always room for more improvement, but a slight complement for their slight improvement won't hurt anyone + a change in tone from complaining to suggesting improvements would be a nice bonus.

Well maybe they should receive praise for changing their mind. I get your point but they could have doubled down.

I don't understand this attitude. Bose listened to feedback, and responded in a positive way.

That's a good outcome for the community, and refusing to "praise" Bose's actions just because they didn't originally do what you wanted is petty and churlish.