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This comment makes me think you didn't read the linked article. No hardware is being made obsolete, or getting sent to the dump.

alasdair_ 7y ago
>No hardware is being made obsolete, or getting sent to the dump. I assume this is in response to Sonos' program where they brick perfectly-usable devices (which then get sent to the dump) to prevent re-use after you take part in a trade-in program. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191231/07584043658/sonos-wasteful-recycle-mode-bricks-perfectly-usable-tech.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191231/07584043658/sonos...
- McTossOut 7y ago
  Oh, good, an outright lie. This is how a $2B company behaves - before they've turned a profit? If anything in the last 6 years, Google/Apple have made significant headway standardizing the 'Cast' workflow. If the hardware could, "receive, forward, and playback" sound from a network 5 years ago, it should be able to do so until the link is obsolete, every AP I've encountered supports all the way back to 802.11a from 15 years ago, and in the worst case you just bridge your APs. Apps are apps, networks are networks, if they're anticipating getting pushed out of this niche by the "ecosystem proprietors", Sonos is stupid and should realize that they just can't do anything about it and focus on their product development, pricing, their horrid marketing / website and not pissing away their multi-million dollar TV ad expenditure over the years on bad press. What happens if consumers turn on the music industry should they start tuning their EQ out of the box for fart noises, screaming, and 20 year old Asian women punching gak? What if it becomes economical to fill your whole house with water, maybe they should develop underwater speakers asap! Clean up your act, Sonos.
Polylactic_acid 7y ago
The link is dead for me but what I assumes it says is that they aren't instantly killing these products but they won't update them which means eventually the API on the other end will change and these devices won't work anymore. Speakers are a product that should in theory last an extremely long time. The surround sound system in my grandmas house is some bose system from at least 25 years ago and it still functions perfectly fine because it relies on no software updates or external APIs. Do you think these sonos speakers will still be fully functional in 20 years?
- Marsymars 7y ago
  > Do you think these sonos speakers will still be fully functional in 20 years? I expect the ones with audio inputs ports will still be usable as speakers in 20 years.
WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
I guess I went too broad with my comment about this blog. They are saying that they will maintain them as much as possible. This means that the updates will eventually end and they will stop working. I have dumb speakers that are 10 years old that work great and will continue to work but Sonos will stop working because of a lack of software but they are still in working order. My point is that we need a way to conserve resources rather than sending them to the trash. It's not just Sonos. Hardware manufacturer's business model is to make their products obsolete so we replace them. And it's only going to get worse with the wave of IoT gadgets that are coming in the future. It can't work forever.

alasdair_ 7y ago

>No hardware is being made obsolete, or getting sent to the dump. I assume this is in response to Sonos' program where they brick perfectly-usable devices (which then get sent to the dump) to prevent re-use after you take part in a trade-in program. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191231/07584043658/sonos-wasteful-recycle-mode-bricks-perfectly-usable-tech.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191231/07584043658/sonos...

McTossOut 7y ago
Oh, good, an outright lie. This is how a $2B company behaves - before they've turned a profit? If anything in the last 6 years, Google/Apple have made significant headway standardizing the 'Cast' workflow. If the hardware could, "receive, forward, and playback" sound from a network 5 years ago, it should be able to do so until the link is obsolete, every AP I've encountered supports all the way back to 802.11a from 15 years ago, and in the worst case you just bridge your APs. Apps are apps, networks are networks, if they're anticipating getting pushed out of this niche by the "ecosystem proprietors", Sonos is stupid and should realize that they just can't do anything about it and focus on their product development, pricing, their horrid marketing / website and not pissing away their multi-million dollar TV ad expenditure over the years on bad press. What happens if consumers turn on the music industry should they start tuning their EQ out of the box for fart noises, screaming, and 20 year old Asian women punching gak? What if it becomes economical to fill your whole house with water, maybe they should develop underwater speakers asap! Clean up your act, Sonos.

Polylactic_acid 7y ago

The link is dead for me but what I assumes it says is that they aren't instantly killing these products but they won't update them which means eventually the API on the other end will change and these devices won't work anymore. Speakers are a product that should in theory last an extremely long time. The surround sound system in my grandmas house is some bose system from at least 25 years ago and it still functions perfectly fine because it relies on no software updates or external APIs. Do you think these sonos speakers will still be fully functional in 20 years?

Marsymars 7y ago
> Do you think these sonos speakers will still be fully functional in 20 years? I expect the ones with audio inputs ports will still be usable as speakers in 20 years.

WheelsAtLarge 7y ago

I guess I went too broad with my comment about this blog. They are saying that they will maintain them as much as possible. This means that the updates will eventually end and they will stop working. I have dumb speakers that are 10 years old that work great and will continue to work but Sonos will stop working because of a lack of software but they are still in working order. My point is that we need a way to conserve resources rather than sending them to the trash. It's not just Sonos. Hardware manufacturer's business model is to make their products obsolete so we replace them. And it's only going to get worse with the wave of IoT gadgets that are coming in the future. It can't work forever.