Bose SoundTouch smart speakers

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Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 58 comments. Each links to the original.

1. over engineered with heavy magnets, decent power supplies, and good enclosures but let down by a sluggish app and flaky mDNS implementation

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

2. They received the backlash, they responded to it by properly addressing the criticism and doing the right thing. It should be praised.

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

3. kudos to Bose for their relatively graceful hardware depreciation approach and releasing their API documentation

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

4. They responded to it by properly addressing the criticism and doing the right thing. It should be praised.

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

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

   Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

6. they responded to it by properly addressing the criticism and doing the right thing

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

7. it's nice to see that Bose decided to take a much better approach to end-of-life

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

8. I do applaud Bose for providing a graceful EoL to their product and consumers.

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

9. suddenly Bose is on the list of consumer products I will consider for my home

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

10. They really did the minimum, as in, anything less should have been illegal.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

11. While laudable, the release of the documentation is completely useless.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

12. props to Bose for actively helping to keep their old devices usable

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

13. cost effective, great sounding, customisable, retro styled speaker

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

14. it's a pretty big win versus the normal end-of-life support story

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

15. the SoundTouch app was always kind of odd and hard to manage

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

16. Bose listened to feedback, and responded in a positive way.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

17. Makes me more likely to consider buying a Bose in future

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

18. This makes me more likely to buy Bose.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

19. I am more likely to purchase Bose now.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

20. Annoying design choice by Bose, that the speaker even needs a server for the presets.

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Bose SoundTouch Cloud Replacement”

21. any new speaker you can buy from them will still be dependent of some cloud service

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

22. they could have offered local control from launch and not had this issue

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

23. They did not publish enough API docs to write an alternative backend.

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

24. There is nothing noble about this, it is almost least they could do.

    Criticizes · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

25. This is impressive, especially because in my mind Bose doesn't have the image of the corporation that cares at all about its perception

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose open-sources its SoundTouch smart speakers ahead of end-of-life”

26. Removal of reliance on cloud alone is a massive feature that gets me interested in buying one of these

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

27. I am no fan of Bose for a lot of reasons, but this is seriously standup behavior for sure.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

28. I'm glad that Bose heard them and is allowing SoundTouch app development to continue!

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

29. This is an amazing idea - whoever came up with it, should get a promotion.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

30. Thanks Bose for opencycling Bose hardware into OSS audio ecosystems

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

31. Respect to Bose for taking a better stance on this.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

32. Bose only took this action after community backlash

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

33. PDF with structs cut in half on page breaks lol

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

34. makes me want to buy this discontinued model

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

35. why was the API not open in the first place.

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

36. Kudos to Bose for setting a good example.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

37. So yes, Bose absolutely deserves praise.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

38. they get my respect for this action

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

39. Well they still did it, thus praise

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”

40. All very laudable things IMHO

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Bose is open-sourcing its old smart speakers instead of bricking them”