No Highs, No Lows or Anything In-between...

[Berwhale]

Bose kills SoundTouch: Smart speakers go dumb in February 2026​

Bose kills SoundTouch: Smart speakers go dumb in Feb

: Cloud support to be ditched on older hardware, customers left with pricey paperweights

www.theregister.com

 

[Soniclife]

Appalling, straight onto the never buy list.

We're no longer able to sustain the development and support of the cloud infrastructure that powers this older generation of products.

I read that as an admission they are truly awful at IT, or they are so close to bankruptcy they need to save all the cash they can. I know they mean they just don't want to, but that's not what they said.

PS when did they stop selling those products. The EU should be having a word.

 

[Berwhale]

PS when did they stop selling those products. The EU should be having a word.

Into the 2020's apparently with support for the 'foreseeable future'...

By 2020, however, Bose was distancing itself from SoundTouch. It informed customers that it was “discontinuing sales of some SoundTouch products” but said it was “committed” to supporting the "SoundTouch app and product software for the foreseeable future.” Apparently, Bose couldn’t see beyond the next five years.

Bose SoundTouch home theater systems regress into dumb speakers Feb. 18

Ending support for SoundTouch may help Bose avoid a Sonos situation.

arstechnica.com

 

[Soniclife]

Into the 2020's apparently with support for the 'foreseeable future'...

That's so recent. There are EU rules for for how long things should be expected to work for, a lot of electronics are 7 years, I think they are on very dodgy legal ground if they were sued, I hope someone does.

 

[AaronJ]

A good friend of mine who worked as a compliance officer at Bose for many years told me some time ago that Bose was increasingly shifting away from home audio and focusing more on expanding their car audio portfolio. This is the primary reason they acquired McIntosh with the intent to allow the company's audio division to conduct home audio business as usual. It's likely their entire product lineup bearing the Bose name outside of car audio will soon be limited to BT speakers, sound bars, and headphones. Nothing that needs any sort of long-term support and they can consistently sh*t out mk2, mk3 products with little to no improvements. It's definitely a company to stay away from for sure.

 

[sergeauckland]

That's so recent. There are EU rules for for how long things should be expected to work for, a lot of electronics are 7 years, I think they are on very dodgy legal ground if they were sued, I hope someone does.

It's doubly bad that Bose had the option of making the software Open Source so others could maintain it, much as Logitek did with LMS. That Bose chose to brick their customers' products rather than release the code to me is shameful and shouldn't be legal.

Whether a product should be supported for 7 years or whatever, is besides the point. Manufacturers should not be allowed deliberately to brick products without a least offering the code to the market. A product should work indefinitely, provided the hardware doesn't break, whether 7 or 77 years old.

S.

 

[Soniclife]

It's doubly bad that Bose had the option of making the software Open Source so others could maintain it, much as Logitek did with LMS. That Bose chose to brick their customers' products rather than release the code to me is shameful and shouldn't be legal.

Totally agree. I think this being made law may well be enough to stop the worst excesses of this behaviour, companies won't want their awful code IP exposed.

 

[Soniclife]

A product should work indefinitely, provided the hardware doesn't break, whether 7 or 77 years old.

I wouldn't go that far, there does need to be some sort of reasonable expectation, we don't need cloud servers provisioned for devices no longer used. A legal long support requirement might make people think before making products that rely on cloud servers in the first place.

 

[kemmler3D]

As much as possible I try to buy gear that can work without Wi-Fi or on local Wi-Fi only, pretty much for this reason. It's becoming all too common for "smart" physical stuff you paid for to stop working, start trying to charge you money, or lose features after a while. This is egregious on bose's part but it should be obvious to everyone that if a company needs to incur an expense for something to keep happening, eventually it's going to stop happening unless you're paying them a subscription fee.

"The cloud" is just someone else's computer, after all...

 

[DVDdoug]

Yeah, I don't fully-trust "the cloud". We are not in control. We don't own it... We are only renting or borrowing it.

I have similar issues with streaming. We can't control what they offer. But it's better than playing the radio!

 

[sergeauckland]

I wouldn't go that far, there does need to be some sort of reasonable expectation, we don't need cloud servers provisioned for devices no longer used. A legal long support requirement might make people think before making products that rely on cloud servers in the first place.

Would that necessarily be a Bad Thing? One of the great benefit of LMS is that it doesn't rely on a cloud server. Mysqueezebox.com was optional, as an alternative to a local LMS, and when eventually Logitek withdrew it, very little was lost, given that LMS could be hosted locally, and was in most cases.

S.

 

[Soniclife]

Would that necessarily be a Bad Thing? One of the great benefit of LMS is that it doesn't rely on a cloud server. Mysqueezebox.com was optional, as an alternative to a local LMS, and when eventually Logitek withdrew it, very little was lost, given that LMS could be hosted locally, and was in most cases.

S.

My point was that no cloud would be a good thing most of the time. A lot of these services seem to have the cloud as an essential component simply to make you register and collect info, rather than to offer useful functionality.

 

[Ropeburn]

Ah. Yet another example of why I'll NEVER buy anything that requires any kind of live or cloud service to use. Gladly I'm not missing anything either. I just wanna listen to music, and for that dumb devices that simply accept USB/Bluetooth or any other long living standard are more than adequate and easily futureproof enough. Especially when it's not in the speakers or amp but in a cheap DAC or streamer that doesn't hurt replacing after 10 or 20 years.

 

[JeffS7444]

I figured this was the eventual fate of all cloudified and app-ified devices regardless of price, but a person could connect a Raspberry Pi to the Aux input and continue streaming from the cloud, albeit a different one, indefinitely. This is a less drastic fate than most Sonos products, as the latter generally don't offer alternative inputs, and even configuring one's system requires use of a MySonos account.

 

[antisuck]

It's doubly bad that Bose had the option of making the software Open Source so others could maintain it, much as Logitek did with LMS. That Bose chose to brick their customers' products rather than release the code to me is shameful and shouldn't be legal.

Whether a product should be supported for 7 years or whatever, is besides the point. Manufacturers should not be allowed deliberately to brick products without a least offering the code to the market. A product should work indefinitely, provided the hardware doesn't break, whether 7 or 77 years old.

S.

I wasn't aware of LMS and hadn't heard this story about how Logitech handled it. Good on them, but it makes it even more puzzling why they are choosing to drop support for their excellent Harmony line of remotes when all that is needed is a way to configure them (add new devices etc.) offline.

 

[somebodyelse]

Better late than never - Bose have confirmed some more of the functionality will continue to work, including AirPlay, Spotify Connect and a somewhat cut back version of the app to avoid using any cloud-based resources. They've also published the API to allow 3rd party app development and integration. Opening the firmware would have been even better, but probably impractical due to closed 3rd party libraries, keys etc.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...uch-home-theater-smart-speakers-ahead-of-eol/

 

[somebodyelse]

It's doubly bad that Bose had the option of making the software Open Source so others could maintain it, much as Logitek did with LMS.

Logitech didn't make LMS open source - that was a decision by Slim Devices, well before they were bought by Logitech. To their credit Logitech kept the mysqueezebox.com side running much longer than I expected, and appear to have facilitated the transfer to community maintenance, so about as good as can be expected and an example for others like Bose.

I'd love to see firmware being opened to community maintenance too, but for various reasons that's unlikely to be possible.

 

[Laika2]

Gotta love the tread title, glad I don't own them, sounds like some got a 3 year product that is now nurtured. Can't say Bose would be on my list ever. Used to do instalation and tuning for people. If it was a bose system, those old cubes and sub, we'll midrange modgel I always said I can't do much of anything with that and my time is not worth your money.... and that money was my charge, 1 case of Mickeys big mouth. Less than $20 at the time.

 

[Berwhale]

Logitech didn't make LMS open source - that was a decision by Slim Devices, well before they were bought by Logitech. To their credit Logitech kept the mysqueezebox.com side running much longer than I expected, and appear to have facilitated the transfer to community maintenance, so about as good as can be expected and an example for others like Bose.

I'd love to see firmware being opened to community maintenance too, but for various reasons that's unlikely to be possible.

Let's hope others don't follow Logitech's lead on security certificate maintenance

Expired certificate completely breaks macOS Logitech apps, user customizations

Even with a fix available, broken apps won't be able to update themselves.

arstechnica.com

 

[somebodyelse]

Let's hope others don't follow Logitech's lead on security certificate maintenance

Expired certificate completely breaks macOS Logitech apps, user customizations

Even with a fix available, broken apps won't be able to update themselves.

arstechnica.com

TBH I'm surprised it's not happened more often. Given the push to make cert lifetime shorter we can probably expect more drivers to stop working sooner after their last release too. Or from another viewpoint, more hardware that only works with free software based operating systems