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I recently wanted to buy a Bluetooth speaker for my mom. From experience I was looking for a small Bose speaker. It wasn't available. They recommended a Sonos a

I recently wanted to buy a Bluetooth speaker for my mom. From experience I was looking for a small Bose speaker. It wasn't available. They recommended a Sonos alternative. I looked at the packaging. The price was only slightly below the Bose "equivalent". At home I wanted to quickly connect the speaker to the computer and was dumbstruck with the requirement to connect it to her wireless and install the App to configure it. Also I had to agree to Sonos transmitting every app I used to stream music, every song I heard, inclusive of the account names. This being sold without disclaimer or information that the device is unusable without such a data striptease, app install and wlan was quite irritating. I put the device back into the packaging, brought it back to the store and ordered a Bose for her.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
Bose does something similar for their headphones unfortunately. Only some basic functionality is available without the app.
- vageli 5y ago
  > Only some basic functionality is available without the app. What functionality is lacking without the app?
  - hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
    You can't adjust the noise cancellation.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
    Adjusting the equalizer, fine adjustments to noise cancelling, disconnecting devices that it thinks are playing sound.
    - Handytinge 5y ago
      How would you manage these functions normally without an app? I'd think an equalizers interface is complex enough that most headphones would simply not be able to provide adjustment options.
noja 5y ago
Bose do (did?) the same thing, at least with their headphones. Submits what you play to them by default.
jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
Sorry to bring bad news, but you may be in trouble with Bose as well: https://lwn.net/Articles/775238/ https://lwn.net/Articles/775238/ The talk is about how the Smart Speaker 500 cloud infrastructure works. Every button press gets sent to the cloud over websocket, and the device's state is shadowed in a Cassandra cluster. Even the current volume setting. I just checked the manual and it says you can disable Wifi or Bluetooth, but that if you disable both networks the device goes into standby. Maybe if someone owns one of these they can chime in if there's some way to use the app without it phoning home? Even if there's a workaround for now, the way they're architecting makes clear the direction they're headed.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

Bose does something similar for their headphones unfortunately. Only some basic functionality is available without the app.

vageli 5y ago
> Only some basic functionality is available without the app. What functionality is lacking without the app?
- hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
  You can't adjust the noise cancellation.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  Adjusting the equalizer, fine adjustments to noise cancelling, disconnecting devices that it thinks are playing sound.
  - Handytinge 5y ago
    How would you manage these functions normally without an app? I'd think an equalizers interface is complex enough that most headphones would simply not be able to provide adjustment options.

noja 5y ago

Bose do (did?) the same thing, at least with their headphones. Submits what you play to them by default.

jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago

Sorry to bring bad news, but you may be in trouble with Bose as well: https://lwn.net/Articles/775238/ https://lwn.net/Articles/775238/ The talk is about how the Smart Speaker 500 cloud infrastructure works. Every button press gets sent to the cloud over websocket, and the device's state is shadowed in a Cassandra cluster. Even the current volume setting. I just checked the manual and it says you can disable Wifi or Bluetooth, but that if you disable both networks the device goes into standby. Maybe if someone owns one of these they can chime in if there's some way to use the app without it phoning home? Even if there's a workaround for now, the way they're architecting makes clear the direction they're headed.