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> 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 proper
by filoleg 10mo ago
> 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.
- pixelready 10mo agoYeah, 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).
- wwweston 9mo agoAnd 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.
- daseiner1 9mo agoWould you elaborate? Because my understanding is that Apple has offered outstanding support for older devices in terms of iOS support for quite old devices.
- awesome_dude 9mo agoWhilst the support might be "outstanding" - the discussion is what happens once devices are no longer supported.
- astrange 9mo agoYou 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.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- prmoustache 9mo agoYou could if you had a tiny bit of respect for your customers and obtained the necessary licenses to do so.
- astrange 9mo agoI don't think anyone has ever accused, say, Qualcomm of having respect for their customers. Much less someone else's customers.
- actionfromafar 9mo agoThey 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.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- rswail 9mo ago
- hnlmorg 9mo agoSonos 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.
- troupo 9mo agoA 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-apology-legacy-models-updates-controversy-2020-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/sonos-device-support-ceo-apo... However, I wouldn't expect anything from Sonos at this point in time.
- hnlmorg 9mo agoAnd 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-mode-bricks-old-speakers 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.
- dear-leader 9mo agoI 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?
- 9mo ago
- neilv 9mo agoAgreed. 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.
- Thorrez 9mo agoEven 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.
- croon 9mo agoThere'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.
- Thorrez 9mo agoThe 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.
- bloomingeek 9mo agoAnd 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.)