I built PromptStash because I was tired of retyping the same prompts across different AI tools. It's a simple Chrome extension that lets you save prompts and insert them with one click into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other AI interfaces.
Key features:
- Works on any AI chat interface (not just the big three)
- Organize with folders and tags
- Quick search and insert
- All data stored locally (no account needed)
It's a paid extension ($5 one-time) – I'm trying to build sustainable indie software instead of ad-supported free tools.
Would love feedback on the UX and any features you'd find useful. Thanks!
I built PromptStash because I kept retyping the same prompts across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other AI tools. It started simple, but evolved into something more powerful.
*What it does:*
- Save prompts and insert them with one click (or slash command "/")
- Works on 19+ AI services including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Grok
- Variable templates: `{{language:select:English,Japanese}}` for dropdowns, `{{topic}}` for text input
- Context variables: `{{selectedText}}` auto-captures highlighted text, `{{pageUrl}}` grabs current URL
- Prompt chains: string multiple prompts together for multi-step workflows (e.g., "gather requirements" → "design" → "implement")
*Example use case:*
I have a chain for code review: first prompt asks for potential bugs, second asks for performance improvements, third asks for refactoring suggestions. Click "next" after each AI response.
All data stays local in your browser. No account needed.
$5 one-time (free tier: 3 prompts). I'm trying to build sustainable software without ads or subscriptions.
Feedback welcome – especially on the prompt chain UX. What workflows would you automate?
I built this because X became impossible to use without getting sucked into endless scrolling.
The algorithm is incredibly good at showing engaging content - which is exactly the problem. I wanted to check updates from people I follow, not spend 40 minutes on rage bait and viral threads.
X Detox lets you:
- Hide the "For You" feed and keep only "Following"
- Remove trending topics and "What's happening"
- Hide engagement metrics (likes, retweets, view counts)
- Disable infinite scroll with a customizable post limit
It's not about quitting X entirely - it's about using it intentionally.
I'm a software engineer in Tokyo and this is part of a series of "digital detox" extensions I've been building. Feedback welcome!
The timing (Saturday, no announcement) feels calculated to minimize attention. And the framing as "supply and demand" gives them cover for future increases.
The real concern isn't this specific 15% - it's the precedent. Once you've broken the "prices only go down" expectation, every future increase becomes easier. Enterprise customers with EDP agreements are discovering their "locked in" discounts are calculated against prices AWS can change at will.
For smaller teams, this is another argument for considering alternatives like Lambda Labs or CoreWeave for GPU workloads.
This is excellent investigative journalism. The detail about the Iberia flight declaring a fuel emergency to cross a debris zone is particularly alarming.
The core tension here is real: we want rapid space innovation, but "rockets are hard" isn't an acceptable answer when debris is falling near commercial aircraft. The FAA's dual mandate to promote AND regulate commercial space seems increasingly untenable.
Completing a full rotation in under 2 minutes at 710 meters diameter is insane. The fact that it holds together at that spin rate tells us a lot about its composition - it can't be a rubble pile.
Rubin Observatory is already delivering results in just 7 nights of commissioning data. The full 10-year survey is going to be incredible for solar system science.
This addresses a real problem. I've seen too many impressive AI demos that fell apart when trying to ship to production. The "30-minute mock timeout" is a clever forcing function - it's easy to let mocks linger forever.
The DRS scoring could be useful for teams struggling to answer "is this ready to deploy?" Currently trying this out with my own Claude Code workflow.
The gap between "96% don't fully trust AI output" and "only 48% always verify" is concerning. We're essentially gambling with code quality because verification feels like friction.
I've started treating AI suggestions like code from a very productive but junior developer - it needs review every time, no exceptions. The productivity gains disappear quickly if you're debugging AI-generated bugs weeks later.
Nice niche! The daily puzzle format has proven to work well for specific communities. I imagine this could build a pretty dedicated user base among Bible study groups. Simple concept, clear target audience.
Thank you! I've noticed that a lot of other well-loved "daily" puzzle games are more elegant in terms of game design (Wordle, Bandle, LoLdle are some of my favorites) so I'm a bit worried that the current design is a little flat/boring. I've been trying to brainstorm ways to make it more interesting without making it too challenging or unintuitive.
This is how "end of support" should be handled. Instead of turning devices into e-waste, open-source them and let the community extend their life. Kudos to Bose for setting a good example.
More companies should follow this approach - especially as right-to-repair becomes a bigger issue.
Bose should not receive praise for this move. Bose only took this action after community backlash. In an older version of their end-of-life announcement, most functionality of the speaker systems would have removed and transformed the devices into dumb-speakers/amps.
Good that they changed their statement and took the right action. Even better for the community for stepping up and 'forcing' Bose to do so.
> 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.
Agreed. 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.
Even 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.
And 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.)
>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.
Those 2 sentences don't really align well. Should they be motivated by the tenfold praise? Or should they be motivated by doing the decent thing? If they should be motivated by doing the decent thing, why mention tenfold praise?
>Rewarding them for "reluctantly" improving won't change their bad behavior.
I don't see why not. They see that good behavior gives a better outcome. They'll do good behavior in the future.
> I don't see why not. They see that good behavior gives a better outcome. They'll do good behavior in the future.
Suppose Anon says, "I'm going to rob a bank next Monday."
Police respond, "We will be ready there next Monday, and you will be arrested."
Anon replies, "Ah, I see! Never mind, then."
We can certainly say it's good that Anon changed their mind after being met with promises of consequences. But, in my opinion, saying something like "Anon is a fine, upstanding citizen, worthy of praise, unlike those other criminals that actually went through with it! Now that Anon understands it's bad, they'll surely never think to plan something so dastardly in the future!" is leaving reality behind. Anon has done the bare minimum, and likewise deserves the bare minimum of praise. In terms of incentive, I think such a response would only teach Anon to be sneakier, now that they've earned some trust.
I'm not saying we should say the company is overall good. Just that the decision to backtrack was good.
Similarly, we wouldn't say that Anon is overall upstanding, just that the decision to not rob that bank was good.
My point is that we should treat the company better if it backtracks. And similarly we should treat Anon better if he doesn't rob the bank. It doesn't make sense to give Anon the exact same punishment whether he robs the bank or not. If we do that, he has no incentive not to rob the bank. "If I'm going to jail either way, I might as well actually rob the bank."
<If they should be motivated by doing the decent thing, why mention tenfold praise?>
Not that most corporations care, being trashed for decisions that hurt their consumers is run of the mill these days. Companies that get praise from their customers tend to stay in business and sell lots of product.
<I don't see why not. They see that good behavior gives a better outcome. They'll do good behavior in the future.>
Reluctantly improving means they were either going to or already screwed their customers. Companies that admit mistakes are praised. To think that a company who is called out will in the future continue to do good for consumer decisions is a little naive.
Encouragement of good decisions over bad decisions is how people tend towards making more good decisions. "You didn't inherently make the right choice, so even the right choice you made is actually bad" is just... really, really childish.
no, they were not made to do it. they listened to feedback and did the work. this is better than we get in 99% of cases. try to be nicer and meet them half way instead of living in your ideal world.
In my ideal world, corporate responsibility is a must. Making junk products or killing product updates because they can't sell you the updated version is irresponsible. They listened to feedback because they know their products are overpriced for the market, so they decided to do the right thing, but only after they were called out. That's backwards. Corporations don't know the meaning of nice, only money.
There'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.
The 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.
A 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-apo...
However, I wouldn't expect anything from Sonos at this point in time.
speakers used to be something that would last a lifetime. I still have the same active monitors that I bought quarter of a century ago when I was producing techno. And I still used those speakers daily for listening to the radio. I used them for a NYE house party. They’re used often and still perform as well today as they do when they were new.
smart speakers is just a way of introducing forced obsolescence into the market.
So these EOL guarantees are nice, but EOL for speaker used to mean 50+ years later or when someone idiot inflicted physical damage onto the hardware. And even then, it was often still repairable.
This conversation reminds me of how predatory _all_ of the big players ToS were when I was shopping for a large (think for outdoor use) BT speaker. Every single one of the mainstream speakers had terrible data collection allowed by their "privacy" policy. I ended up ordering one from Monoprice that did not even have a ToS.
Not the OP, but IMO as soon as a company becomes successful, the leadership becomes focused on making money and not making a good product.
Sometimes making a decent product is part of making money, but that's never a motivation in itself. We have enough examples showing that if it makes more money to enshittify (and usually it does), then they will gladly enshittify.
I wouldn't say it's just the smart speaker industry.
And 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.
Would you elaborate? Because my understanding is that Apple has offered outstanding support for older devices in terms of iOS support for quite old devices.
You 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.
They 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.
Apps that connect to a service over the Internet (maps, music iMessage) could stop working if Apple changes the APIs that those apps use. This is even more likely to happen to third party apps.
You won't get updates to the trusted root CAs, which means you won't be able to visit sites with certificates signed by CAs created or renewed after support is dropped. And your browser will continue trusting CAs that have had their trust revoked.
And as web standards evolve there will be websites that use features and APIs that your browser doesn't support and may break in subtle, or not so subtle ways. And there is no way for you to install a more up to date browser.
And then of course, you won't fixes for any new security vulnerabilities that are found.
So yeah, it's not as bad as getting bricked, but it as also worse than continuing to work as it always has, but with no new features.
The original post was about Apple not giving proper support to after-EOL phones.
Saying "could stop working" and "won't get updates to the trusted root CAs" is all future issues.
How long should Apple be required to provide updates, both security/vulnerability and future API support?
Currently, iPhone 6S, released in 2014, can run iOS 15, which received its latest update in 2025. The iOS 15 apps work with Apple's services, some with reduced functionality because it was never in iOS 15.
Apple don't give people the tools/keys/etc to load new OS (etc) onto a device once it's no longer supported.
So, at best the device can just be used with the latest version of the software Apple allows until it's a security nightmare and better off no longer used.
Instead, if Apple gave people the ability to load something (prob a Linux) onto those old devices, then those old devices could be used usefully for quite a few more years.
Yeah, 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).
Remind me of any other vendor in recent history that end of lifed a hardware product and then open sourced it whether they got backlash or not. Because I can’t think of a single one.
Google refunded all Stadia purchases, both hardware and software, after they discontinued the platform/product. Then they added functionality (the ability to operate the controller as a generic Bluetooth controller) afterward to keep the hardware from becoming e-waste.
Logitech are my go-to example of a company that does the right thing and deserves recognition for it. They kept their squeezebox.com servers going for a decade after they discontinued their Squeezebox hardware audio players. At the same time, they funded a maintainer to keep improving the open source server software that users can self-host on multiple platforms (Linux, Windows, macOS, Raspberry Pi). Two years ago, they finally shut down the squeezebox.com servers that they were running but the server software is still being actively maintained: https://lyrion.org/
That's nice of them! Too bad they don't offer repair for other speaker systems that are out of warranty, nor do they sell components for other repair shops to fix speakers that are out of warranty.
I worked at HP as an intern during the saga. I even got to attend a training by the Palm team... Which wasn't great.
My impression just from that training is that WebOs was extremely mismanaged. The training was billed as a "how to write apps for WebOs" and it instead was an hour long meander by the Palm employee about how different the company culture is and how hard it became to do anything.
I had the distinct impression they didn't even know that the training was supposed to be before being assigned to do it.
I think that's indicative of everything. HP had this product that they were trying to shoehorn into the most bizarre places. At it's core it was a mobile Linux os which used html/css/JavaScript as the main user experience engine. And HP was trying to put that on printers and rack mount displays. The one place they didn't seem to care putting it was the mobile devices it was designed to target. They simply half assed the launch of a product.
Don't punish the behavior you want to see. Would we rather they defaulted there? Sure. But it's arguably an even better signal to see that they're willing to listen to their customers even when there is no direct financial incentive for them.
Their financial incentive is negative. They were hoping to force everyone to buy new speakers, driving sales. But if the community is able to get open source firmware to run spotifyd on them, there is a non-zero (not everyone, but it's non-zero) amount of people that will just not buy new speakers from them.
> Their financial incentive is negative. They were hoping to force...
Maybe?
People stuck with Bose bricks might show a preference for non-Bose replacements.
People who thought Bose speakers would stay useful longer might prefer Bose, or be willing to pay for a more expensive Bose speaker model.
(Yes, I agree that some PHB's at Bose were almost certainly imagining that their customers would be forced to re-purchase Bose speakers. I'm questioning the validity of their initial assumptions.)
From talking to friends and family, so n=10-ish, non-computer people have not realized that sticking computers in things means they die on computer lifetimes, not appliance lifetimes. No more switches that last for the life of the house; no more speakers that your kids can do modest maintenance to and keep using.
And, if I, a non-Bose customer, hear that Bose open sourced a previous version of their speaker, which gives me some confidence that a present purchase might be somewhat future-proofed, then I am more likely to buy a new Bose product vs a competitor who does not provide sources.
If they can make this OS story go viral, then they stand to have a lot of customers defect from their competitors even people who would never really care about open source.
It's not negative, though, or at least they don't think so. The fact that they are doing this OSS release means that they believe any loss of new sales would be dwarfed by a loss of goodwill if they'd bricked the old devices.
This is why I said "direct". This is an indirect financial incentive, and there are other indirect financial incentives at play here (as others have noted).
I've got a simple formula in life for when people do things beneficial to me: I praise them for it and encourage them to keep it going. If someone does things antagonistic to my interests, and then corrects course in reaction to objection, they can be sure they're going to be rewarded. This has worked for me.
If your belief is that some other tactic works, then I can see why you'd do that. For my part, carrot + stick has always worked better than stick + more stick.
It works on dogs, children, and adults, the inability to praise the good because they did something bad prior feels like more of the online black/white moralism that used to characterise Twitter dogpiles.
When presented with information that you're acting in bad faith, if you choose to change: that is praiseworthy.
It's very brave to take that in, and not worry about "brand damage" or "appearing weak". It's brave to even challenge yourself when someone tells you you're wrong. It's entirely admirable.
Bose: does something bad.
People: complain.
Bose: undoes what they did and does something slightly better.
You: complain.
I'm not sure I get the logic here.
Slowly but steadily I'm comprehending why companies are getting tired of some people. No matter what companies do, people will always complain. Don't get me wrong, there's always room for more improvement, but a slight complement for their slight improvement won't hurt anyone + a change in tone from complaining to suggesting improvements would be a nice bonus.
Why should Bose not get credit for this? If you are saying that people should treat them the same regardless of whether they listen to their consumers or not, then why would they ever bother listening to the consumers?
Also remember that there is no believer like a convert. A community helping guide a company towards open source culture could make for a very strong ally.
Then again I know nothing about Bose’s open source culture so take it with a grain of salt.
Bose's original plan was to remove all WiFi-dependent functionality (no AirPlay and no Spotify Connect)-- while they wouldn't quite be "dumb speakers" at that point (since Bluetooth would've still worked), it would've turned them into pretty much just overcomplicated Bluetooth speakers.
I've read that document. As I understand, the "smart" capabilities are exactly the presets. Those need their server to function. Do you see anything saying otherwise?
I don't understand this attitude. Bose listened to feedback, and responded in a positive way.
That's a good outcome for the community, and refusing to "praise" Bose's actions just because they didn't originally do what you wanted is petty and churlish.
"Bose blows" is a popular comment amongst the audiophile community but, to me, it seems like they don't blow at all[0]. In fact quite the opposite: this is a fantastic example for other companies to follow. Top marks, Bose!
[0] What is actually true is that they are opinionated about sound reproduction in ways that a bunch of people don't agree with but which in the right context are often effective and enjoyable to listen to.
> "Bose blows" is a popular comment amongst the audiophile community but, to me, it seems like they don't blow at all[0]
That comment is not wrong, you are imo just not making an important distinction that the criteria on which audiophiles judge Bose as “blowing” (which is almost purely the sound profile + a few other smaller things like physical comfort/connectivity/price/etc.) vs. what you judge it on (which is more in the long-term technical user/community product support, idk how to describe that area much better) are almost entirely disjoint.
It is perfectly fine and valid for an audio product to “blow” from an opinionated audiophile perspective, while being exceptionally great from the long-term product/user/community product support perspective.
I heavily agree with you btw, Bose should be heavily lauded for making a decision to open-up their speaker firmware after it reaches the official end of support deadline. The fact that this is an exceptional practice is imo, a little bit sad, because I believe that it should be way more common.
Build quality of Bose products is good in my opinion. The headphones are alright but so are Sony, Plantronics and Apple. I love the sound of Airpods Pro in particular even if they don't want to stay in my ears [1] and the pairing experience even with the iPhone isn't what I expect of >$100 headphones in 2016.
If you want really good stereo or 5.1 sound there is no substitute for big speakers that can move a lot of air.
[1] maybe it is that gene polymorphism that makes my ears overflow with wax and has my doctor warning they will plug up one of these days
Agreed on pretty much all points. There is no "ultimate audio equipment piece" that is just perfect in all aspects, and the choice criteria are spread across both user preferences and specific use-cases as well.
I love the new airpods pro for my daily commute (subway, not a car; just clarifying before I get hammered down in replies for driving and using airpods at the same time), doubly so given their compactness+heavily improved ANC.
For home, I love my open-back Beyerdynamic DT1990Pro pair, due to the audio profile + insanely good physical comfort when worn for prolonged periods of time.
For gatherings with friends for when I need a somewhat-portable bluetooth speaker (that also happen to look good when sitting on a bookshelf outside of active use), I have a TE-OB4.
If I had a larger living space, I would consider getting a pair of high-quality speakers again too.
But there is not a single "this is it" piece of audio equipment that would just replace everything, so you gotta pick and choose your poison.
Build quality is trash consumer with a hefty markup. The older CD player era equipment has the cheapest CD mechanisms I've ever seen for the era. The audio pathway is the same hybrids that everyone else uses. Bose is 100% mass marketing. I'm old enough to remember the endless ads in the back of magazines.
Until the rest of the market caught up, Bose's noise cancelling algorithms were top notch. As soon as Apple entered the fray a bunch of money was thrown at the problem, the bar was raised, and now good quality noise cancelling is the norm.
But for awhile Bose's headphones had the best noise cancelling out there.
Their old ads were super irritating though, and many people (such as you and me!) are still irritated about them decades later.
> Until the rest of the market caught up, Bose's noise cancelling algorithms were top notch. As soon as Apple entered the fray a bunch of money was thrown at the problem, the bar was raised, and now good quality noise cancelling is the norm.
A minor nitpick: while Apple entering the ANC arena certainly set fire under the existing mainstream brands to improve their ANC headphones, imo Bose started facing serious competition on that front even before Apple moved in.
I remember Sony releasing their MDR-1000X par being the first crack in the wall. I specifically remember this, because I picked up those headphones in favor of Bose options at the time.
P.S. Yes, the naming scheme on Sony's side is atrocious, because MDR-1000X is the first gen of their very popular WH-1000XM line of ANC headphones that people treat as a flagship ANC headphone pair (with the most recent one being WH-1000XM6).
I had forgotten about Sony. They were indeed going back and forth with Bose on who could make the highest quality ANC.
I actually had a pair of Sennheiser noise cancelling headphones and they had a really good BT implementation, super low latency and the ANC was really good. Sadly they developed a persistent hiss in one earpiece.
Bose is fine for what it is, but it is overpriced for what it is. IMO the main point the audiophiles make is that you can get a superior product for the same cost.
If you haven't tried foam replacement tips, they make a world of difference for me. I couldn't use the airpods (non-pro) at all. I could barely use the silicon tipped pros. But when I put a foam tip on them it not only blocks out ambient sound better, they stay in place. Unfortunately the foam wears out rather quickly and I replace them around three times a year.
To be fair I'm pretty satisfied with the AirPod fit situation if I am sitting at my computer where the noise reduction is handy when the guy across the hall for me at the office is talking up a storm administering contracts and when my son is practicing guitar scales upstairs at home.
They don't fall out often and when they do I'm not worried about losing them.
Out in public is different. (1) It's a pet peeve of mine that people are wearing them and oblivious to warnings about environmental threats or sitting in a machine at the gym for 20 minutes doing nothing looking at their phone and hard to get in contact with. (2) I am doing a practice that increases sensory awareness when I "go out" and listening to music with noise canceling isn't compatible with that.
The audiophile community usually are people with more money than ears, their opinion on the quality of particular brands is easy to discard, it is usually correlated more with expense than actual measured performance.
Except from what I remember Bose audio stuff is measurable bad by any standards (its been a while since I even took note). Their noise cancelling was good in the past though.
My personal experience of Bose PA and HiFi equipment is that is belongs in the trash.
Came here to say exactly this. I consider myself an audiophile (the sane kind) and, if I want “that sound” and have time, I use my HiFi, but if I want to enjoy music and just relax, I use my Bose headphones with whatever thing I have close.
I like how they color sound, and how they use psychoacoustics to do what they do.
Audiophiles using music to listen their systems are missing the point.
In a previous life, I was the platform architect for the Bluetooth headphones at Bowers & Wilkins. We, naturally, did tons of competitive analysis, and I tend to agree Bose blows sound quality-wise, but their active noise cancelling is hands-down the best in the biz, and they have the weight and comfort extremely dialed-in.
Glad to see them setting a great example here instead of letting these speakers become expensive paperweights.
> "Bose blows" is a popular comment amongst the audiophile community
I have a 15 years old Bose system. Is it audio-transparent ? Absolutely not, its frequency response is well documented. But the sound is very pleasing, it's reliable and nearly invisble in my living room.
We have some really old Bose speakers my brothers and I bought 30+ years ago at my Moms place. Just listened to them over the recent holidays. Not ann audiofile but they sounded pretty good even now.
"Bose blows" is typically in regards to their price/performance, and especially with how they marketed themselves throughout the 90s and early 2000s.
Bose used to advertise that they were the best sounding speaker out there, while also running advertisements that made claims which violated the laws of physics.
For the same price as a Bose system you could get something much higher quality. Bose was selling at luxury prices w/o luxury quality. They got away with it because compared to the cheap garbage most people listened to, Bose's stuff was nicer. Their quality was mid to upper mid tier, and the build quality was generally good.
But people got irritated by a decade ads saying a tiny speaker is more powerful than a proper speaker setup.
Now days Bose makes good quality noise cancelling headphones (and I suspect they made more revenue selling NC headphones during the open office and then COVID era than they ever did selling speakers in the 90s!) and they brand car stereo systems.
Their noise cancelling headphones are good, even if the ear pads wear our way too fast.
Pretty much no one has a home hi-fi setup anymore, everyone just has a sound bar. I do have a hi-fi music setup, people are rather shocked when they come over that I even bothered. I got it for $2k on Craigslist years ago, the setup cost someone a small fortune when they were brand new. IMHO buying new hi-fi gear is pointless, Speakers made in 2005 sound just as good as speakers made in 2025, the laws of physics haven't changed any!
Speakers often use materials that degrade over time unfortunately. For example electronics in the crossover, foam, glue, and depending on the environment paper.
Seems to me like an executive saw klipsch failures and saw an opening to kill two birds with one stone.
One, to show their support for audiophiles who supported them.
Two, make superior products to klipsch that - ummm - actually state the real ranges of the speakers and use real copper windings instead of “painted” copper.
Well, Bose has a long history of continually hyping whatever they're selling as the complete & utter pinnacle of sound reproduction technology, whether or not that's actually the case. Before the internet it was through their print media ads, starting with their Direct/Reflecting home speaker tech, continued through the 800 series PA speakers, Acoustic Wave tabletop radio, etc. Not to say there were not benefits, but that the choices they made -- single driver size, requiring certain room boundaries/geometry for optimal sound, need for active EQ/processing to get full-range response before the tech was really there to do so optimally -- did not always equal great trouble-free sound as advertised.
That said their implementation of noise-cancelling headphones/earbuds was a legit game-changer. And good on them for open-sourcing these speakers!
My comment about sound reproduction was more a point on Bose's longstanding philosophy in building speakers than in anything about this specific software but, to answer your question... quite possibly. Bose intentionally colour the sound and apply, at the very least, EQ and some sort of active processing to it to get what they believe is the best out of the speakers and enclosures they use.
And I'm couching this all in very neutral terms, not because I have an axe to grind with them, but because I don't want to get into a flame war with the kind of audiophiles who hate Bose.
FWIW the Bose products I've heard and used all sounded pretty good. At the end of the day they're designed for people to enjoy music within a particular target context, not necessarily to be the most accurate at reproducing the recording exactly.
(I'll say this as well: reproducing the recording exactly isn't necessarily what you want to get something to sound good. A lot of albums from the loudness war era benefit significantly from rolling off some of the higher frequencies, where clipping occurs, for example. So I have one amplifier that includes - gasp, shock, horror - tone controls that I sometimes use and, on another system where the amp doesn't have tone controls, I've hooked up a [true] stereo graphic equalizer. You also have to take the listening environment into account and when you do that some element of processing the sound before it comes out of the speakers can also prove to be beneficial. Anyway, I shall now go and brace myself for some righteous abuse from the purists.)
A better way to say that is "This will boost the second-hand value of older Bose speakers".
Budget-aware folks will buy these second-hand, neophiles will buy new, confident that long term solutions will exist even after "long term support" is over.
Heck, even knowing there's a second-hand market makes me more likely to buy Bose new.
Many companies miss how important this is, too: they get caught up in "but if they buy it second-hand, they're not buying our new stuff!". When people buy the stuff second-hand, though, they become Bose fans — that means when the second-hand Bose stuff dies, they're more likely to replace it with new Bose stuff. That's particularly true with audio equipment, where people become attached not only to how something works but how it sounds. If they like Bose's rather particular audio signature, they'll keep buying more.
Between that and the good-will they're getting from this move, this is making a ton of life-long Bose fans out of a lot of audio geeks. And if there's a community well-known for creating religions out of their hardware preferences...
Another thing companies miss is that the second-value is priced in to the price. If I know I can resell a thing for some value, that makes it more valuable than if I can't resell it all, and I can pay more for it. Contrary to what the companies think, they were in fact compensated for the after market value, and it's even better then they hoped, because that compensation occurred at time of first sale rather than some random time years later.
The most amusing anti-example of this was the Switch generation: $60 for a cartridge, or $60 for a digital license. Guess which is actually more valuable? Guess which you were more likely to find discounted, even if only by a marginal amount, by some store desperate to move stock out of the way?
By contrast, I'm not worried about the fact I can't resell my copy of Game X I got on Steam when I only paid $5 for it in the first place.
Indeed, and also people buying second-hand are pretty unlikely to buy brand new if they aren't able to find the second-hand item (or use it). It's similar to piracy in that respect, that some people who pirate might have actually bought it, but the majority likely would not have anyway so can't just say "1,000 people pirated our thing, therefore we lost 1,000 sales". The cynic in me thinks they know that and just use it as a convenient way to over-inflate the damage piracy is doing to them, but that's a separate topic
On the other hand, lots of people buying audio gear new DO take the second-hand market into account, and will spend more on the initial purchase if they think the product will retain its value.
Bose products seem like they are most popular with older, non-technical people who see it as a luxury brand. This is the same reaction that I would have with this news because I like modifying hardware/firmware, but I was never in the market to buy Bose products in the first place. My parents on the other hand have at least 3 wave radios in the house.
Bose hardware quality is rather low and, and their sound quality is sub-par, while forcing you to pay the Bose brand tax, riding the corpse of Amar around for profit.
People keep bringing dead Bose bluetooth speakers to our repair café. These are a lot more expensive than the competitors. Bose has a reputation so people think they’ll last longer, but they don’t, they’ll fail just out of warranty just like cheaper brands. They also don’t sound meaningfully better. And they’re not at all engineered to be repaired. I’d avoid.
I personally prefer corded headphones and mains powered speakers, but if I were to buy a small wireless speaker I would buy a cheaper brand and ideally second hand, because this category of devices are basically consumables.
> To be more specific, Sound Reproduction Fidelity is not the same as Pleasant Music
If a speaker reproduces some music with 100% accuracy and the result is unpleasant, doesn’t that just mean the original music—as created by the artist—is unpleasant?
Where possible, I’d prefer a speaker that respects the artist’s decisions instead of inserting itself into the creative process.
Unless you are listening through the same studio monitors in the same room or headphones as the mixing engineer, it will never be the same.
IMHO, people place too much importance on "accuracy". While accuracy might be objectively measured, it means nothing when it comes to individual taste.
There’s a whole field of research on this (look up Floyd Toole) - while any one individual can have skewed taste, on aggregate people prefer speakers that are as close to neutral as possible.
Signal reproduction matters quite a bit more for music production than it does for music listening and enjoyment. That's why producers and engineers look for 'monitors', rather than hi-fi speakers.
Hi-fi speakers, tube amps, and other accessories generally "degrade" the sound with added harmonics and natural smile EQs. That's what makes them sound more pleasing.
(I'm not disagreeing with you, just adding more color.)
You can certainly measure it, but the catch is that there is not always a single "correct" value. So just because you can measure what the speakers are outputting and then adjust it, it doesn't mean there is one correct output value.
Yeah that was a very interesting thing to learn. When my room was being tuned (after being built to a specification for acoustics) the acoustician then actually tuned in several switchable curves because it was so flat in response he wanted to make it sound more natural to work in.
There's arguably a subjective quality to sound enjoyment, though. The fidelity of reproduction can be measured, but I'd argue there's personal preference in the types of artifacts generated by inaccuracies in reproduction.
you can absolutely quantify certain metrics, and you can even generalize what "good" is by surveying listener preference but that isn't the same thing as any one individual's subjective preference.
Bose in general (there are many models...) is not what I'd call high-fidelity. It doesn't mean you can't enjoy your music or your movies with it. Just don't buy this if you care about transparency, otherwise it's usually a pleasing hearing experience. Their PA line is IMO overpriced and sacrifices too much to the design and weight.
I've been playing with the idea for a bit, can you give me an order of magnitude for "entry-level HiFi"? Even if that's an oxymoron, how many zeroes does it take to get an experience that's noticeably superior to, say, default car speakers or built-in Smart TV speakers?
It's like buying a gun or a car, there are all kinds of offers and all kinds of prices. You should be able to find great offers with amp+speakers under 1k€, including VAT. Probably even less with 2.0 or 2.1 systems.
It doesn't usually take much, because very few cars or TVs come with powered subwoofers or 6x9s or quality tweeters. Second hand amps, receivers, etc. are usually a good deal, entry-level speakers are pretty cheap new though.
Similar experience, even after picking up the new airpod pro 3's (the hearing aid stuff i great for my ailing ears) I still prefer, when I'm sitting at my desk working while listening to music, the quietcomfort 2 earbuds. The noise cancellation is hands down better than apple's an it's a more comfortable fit.
Some of their high priced noise cancelling headphones have excellent quality. I purchased the QC-25 ages ago, and when it stopped working I reached out to support, this was beyond their 3y warranty, provided serial number and they sent me a new QC-35 no questions asked replacement unit.
I am very happy with my QC-35 headphones. They are probably 5y+ now and they go with me everywhere. I think it is unfair to state their hw quality is low. It is much better than low.
Bose's QC/QC Ultra lines continue to receive praise for comfort, durability, sound quality, noise cancellation, etc. They make pretty great consumer quality headphones.
Until quite recently, they were widely one of if not the most recommended wireless headphones. The new Sennheiser's that come with a USB-C dongle might have finally stepped past what Bose has been delivering, but at a higher price.
I had the new QC Ultra and gave it away. The sound was mediocre at best and you can't turn NC off - a dealbreaker for me (no, passthru is not the same as off). Hope it helps someone make my mistake aa they are quite pricey.
Now if I could change the firmware to turn NC off, that would be something entirely different...
Is it auto-adjusted NC? I'm thinking of the Sony equivalents that reduce or increase the strength of the NC depending on the environment, but do not allow you to just choose the strength.
I love my QCII earbuds, comfort and noise cancellation blow the airpodpro3's out of the water. But sadly the new hearing aid features of the airpodpros are very handy to me, so I have both. I wear the QC2's when I'm at home alone, and the app3s when I'm out and about and expect to have to have some conversations. My ears aren't so bad yet that I need hearing aids, but they are bad enough that I'm forced to lean in more than I used to. Aging is the worst.
My wife normally isn’t one to splurge but after her Bose headphones died, we tried a couple other brands, returned them, and went with the QC-35 II despite them being more expensive. The “comfort” part is key, she’s on the spectrum and has a hard time with headphones irritating her, and these are hands down the most comfortable.
We also like the Bose soundbar as it has a mode that makes dialogue more intelligible on our TV.
Typical so called audiophile stance here. I have numerous headphones (including high ends ones) and always been happy with my Bose. Sound is great and gently enhanced for listening enjoyment, whatever snobs could say about it, and the hardware is really nice. My Bose SoundSport earbuds are the best fit I ever had in 30+ years of wearing earbuds and my QC35 never failed on me. That move from them adds to all the great things I can say about this brand.
If you're talking about their headphones, I agree they _feel_ cheaply-made, but they are by no means low-quality. When you make headphones with premium materials, they get heavy, and that makes them uncomfortable/painful to wear. Speaking from prior experience. It's an incredibly delicate balancing act. Bose optimizes for comfort, which is important for e.g. long plane rides.
If you were going to consider Bose, you should at least take a look at Sennheiser. They are similar in a “can’t really go too wrong” sense. Nice build quality, generally pretty flat and analytical usually.
They are such a standard response that presumably a real audiophile will come along to point out that their favorite model is much better, than a particular well known Sennheiser model, but as far as one can say in brand terms they are solid.
Sennheiser sold out to a Chinese factory, and recently even stopped producing their flagship stuff in-house. They're even shutting their "cheap" Irish factory down (where modern HD650s and HD660Ss were made).
All the Chinese-made Sennheiser stuff has awful QA.
Beyerdynamic announced earlier last year they're finally exiting pro and flagship tier stuff, and selling out to a Chinese equity firm.
Their build quality is exceptional, and they're built like tanks. The only problem, imo, is the Beyer house sound is very shouty and fatiguing, especially with the "990" versions of the product line over the years.
Disclaimer: I owned a Beyer DT880/600ohm (the neutral one of the 770/880/990 siblings), paired with an amp that could properly handle it. Its one of the few headphones I sold and did not retain in my collection, it deserved someone that could love it. The new Tesla-based drivers are better (such as that 1990), but still retain that Beyer sound.
I can't stand Beyerdynamic audio and don't understand why anyone recommends it. It has an awful treble peak you can't stop noticing once you hear it, and you can't drive their headphones without an amp.
I recommend HiFiMan Sundara/Ananda if they fit your head and there aren't any CPU fans in your room.
Hifiman QA is exceptionally bad, and they tend to not stand by their warranty, and their US repair facility is just some dude's house.
The threads on /r/headphones over Hifiman shafting them are numerous.
Disclaimer: I too had a Hifiman pair, they sounded great, but their physical design just didn't hold up to daily use, no matter how much I babied them.
That's probably true, they do look hard to repair.
My best sounding headphones are a pair of old Stax with the worst construction I've ever seen on anything, so I mostly keep them locked up assuming they'll break if I breathe in them.
This this also good marketing, if other companies I currently buy speakers from follow their footsteps I'll keep supporting them, but I might otherwise just move towards Bose in the future. I wish Apple would do this for their ultra legacy stuff, Microsoft does it for their legacy stuff. Not sure if we'll ever get a fully open sourced legacy version of Windows (ignoring the source code leak) but it would be cool to one day see the Windows XP source code on GitHub.
It would be an unwise business move. The moment that is done, Linux/WINE will be able to run the bulk of the software that keeps a substantial number of people locked into Windows. Most people don't need the newest version of their software to stay productive.
If society progresses as envisaged, people will always want newer and better technology. Living standards should improve for all, as the older technology is purchased second-hand by those who cannot afford the latest versions, and/or repaired as desired.
When a businesses chooses to drop support for a product entirely (hardware or spares no longer produced, and software no longer updated), they've presumably already made the business decision to drop the product for sale. If the product were still in demand and the existing devices still function, dropping product support could effectively render the devices useless or destined for landfill.
This often happens when: online services are dropped, devices cannot be repaired, or worse, software cannot be simply updated for security and compatibility reasons etc.
If manufacturers want existing users with working technology to upgrade, they should design compelling improved products, not force a load of e-waste and bricked devices. There's little reason for a manufacturer to quickly drop support without following this model of open sourcing, unless they know they are forcing existing customers to an unnecessary upgrade.
Manufacturers should support their products, innovate, or let them go over time. The "market" (consumer choice) should dictate when a product is obsolete. We own our products and should have the rights to maintain them. They should be paying us and taxed for damaging the environment for dropping support early and/or without open-sourcing.
Most newer technology hasn't seemed better in a while.
It's almost impossible to find a phone with a removable battery, or one that's easily fixable, and has a headphone jack. My galaxy S3 was all of those things. USB3 is good though.
I myself would be more inclined to move if I had an option to run Adobe suite, Excel, TouchDesigner, Ableton and Recordbox through WINE without significant tinkering.
Maybe the general rule should be like, if something isn’t in the users control and the user doesn’t want it anymore or can no longer function despite not being damaged, then the company should take back the hardware and refund the user.
So the company still have two options, either refund or open-source the systems needed for the device so that the user or third-party can continue supporting it.
All cars period should have their service software freely available. I shouldn't need to hunt down software on a Russian torrent site to help someone figure out why their ABS light is on.
This should be in the law imho. No hardware or software should have its support abandonned unless the spec / schematics / parts list and/or source code is released in a public repo.
It's not like consumer electronics contain top secret tech like EUV machines. All supply chain for firmware / software of 99.99% devices is very boring, contains absolutely nothing secret and the only reason why it's "difficult" is because IP owners was not bothered.
Once single EU / US legislation introduced that force manufacturers into opening end-of-life products all IP right owners will either immediately make it possible or go out of business.
Since everyone will be forced to do the same no one will gain any advantages.
I’m more thinking of patents and licensed third-party technology and firmware. There are standard tech stacks controlled by industry associations that you simply can’t open source because the association would sue you and kick you out.
These associations do not just exist in vacuum. They have licenses like this because law allow it and it's beneficial to them. Once there are regulation that demand something else they'll just follow the law.
Also it's not like every single bit of firmware / software must be open sourced - it's could very much be trade off where devices just need to be unlocked for modification and documentation made available.
If the publish the API for the server, as well as allow the device to specify the API hostname to connect to, that's all I need. We can write our own server implementation fairly easily, and this saves us the hassle of having to reverse-engineer the API, plus makes setup much easier if we can just tell the device where to connect.
I wish more manufacturers would unlock their devices for local use when they don't want to support them any more. Or maybe even, hear me out, before support ends! Maybe we could even vote with our wallets and buy open stuff instead of walled gardens.
Exactly. Open source is great and all, but all 99% of these devices need is simply a way to configure them to connect to a different server, when the manufacturer inevitably turns their own server down (usually) bricking devices.
The open source community will happily reverse-engineer the protocol and clean-room develop their own server code.
> 99% of these devices need is simply a way to configure them to connect to a different server, when the manufacturer inevitably turns their own server down (usually) bricking devices.
The same can be said about a lot of games, and should be the case with them as well. Big MMOs for example. See the plethora of WoW private servers as an example of how it can be done.
I think the stop killing games initiative in the EU was pushing for it but not sure how far they've gotten, but like with hardware, once a game studio no longer wants to run the servers for their game, they should be forced to turn it over to the community so the players can continue playing long after the studio is gone.
Bose's brand is built on audio quality. There is close to little negative impact open sourcing the API (server) in this case will bring to their brand.
For a game, open sourcing the server generally means anyone can basically mess it up and with the internet make it available to everyone to see. Then the responsibility is on the developer to protect their "brand".
The plethora of WoW private servers is not a good example. These are from individuals, or groups of people who willfully reverse engineered it on their own. This is different from a company expressly permissing and implicitly giving a grant on allowing a similar product to exist - the difference is that one gives credibility, which the other does not.
That's exactly what the "NoLongerEvil" Nest thermostat server did[0]. They just injected their own CA bundle and modified the /etc/hosts file to "free" the devices.
No, the law must mandate that. You either provide active support, or if you end it you must open-source all tools necessary to perform maintenance. It's one of those things that has to be mandated by law to provide a uniform floor on all companies and manufacturers, like food safety laws, fire codes, or accessibility for the physically disabled.
I do not get why not more companies are doing this! Also it pays so much into your brand perception etc.; also you will always have all ecological folks on your side because of "not producing new stuff".
This is the cheapest and best way to get the most out of your investment after it entered end-of-life.
I suspect it's because the technical staff have already been let go or replaced with outsourced maintenance-only staffing firms, which means the non-technical leadership doesn't know whether the source code would contain damaging information.
The reason I've heard for games which I assume is similar here, is that there's licensed code used which the developer can not release because they don't own it (someone else does)
i’d love for this to be required by law. i’m probably not thinking of some great reason why that might be a bad idea, but it seems like an effective way to reduce e-waste.
Eh, even if it just means that someone can offer a 3rd-party smartphone app to control them, it's a pretty big win versus the normal end-of-life support story
Everyone here thinks that everyone="all hacking-experienced people", where I mean everyone is the whole world. MOST people are not going to hack their device.
I don’t care if most people aren’t going to do that. The company flat out shouldn’t be permitted to brick a device they already sold you, and this is a viable alternative.
This could fail if too many players start to abandon/open source their products at the same time. It could lead to an overload.
Plus, I purchased my product thinking it will last forever. Sudden announcements for EOL is a terrible trend. Laws should regulate having proper disclosures that a product is promised to be serviced for x number of years at minimum, and/or mandate manufacturers themselves provide updates to allow the product to work independently of them.
Fascinating research. The idea that humans were using compound tools with poison 60,000 years ago really challenges our assumptions about "primitive" technology. Our ancestors were far more sophisticated than we often give them credit for.
Whenever this stuff comes up I try to remind people that we only get to see a tiny little glimpse of what these folks were up to. Folks look at the stone tools that have only been found after their owners were done with them and left them in the ground for eons, and imagine that in general everything was “rough” and “crude.”
We don’t get to see the overwhelming majority of their craft — there’s no doubt a whole world of wood and leather artistry and so on that don’t get to survive. Humans are clever, adaptable and often times really fucking obsessive. That same instinct that makes one spend hundreds of hours on Factorio was around in prehistory, applying itself to whatever.
I often times hear anthropologists speculate that large stone handaxes were a means of seduction — that the girls would have swooned over the guys who were better able to make more effective tools. I know too many nerds to believe this. I think that back then, there were people who kept obsessing over making finer tools and theorizing about designs and where materials could be found, and it was about as sexually appealing as my homelab. Which is to say, absolutely fucking not, but who cares, I want to tell you about my idea for a subnet optimized to allow doomcoder agents to handle their own infra needs
Having a great hand axe might be more analogous to the boy with the “bitchin Camaro” to attract the girls. Or more recently, performance in a street takeover.
modern humans be here for atleast 200k years. why would we only use tools in the last half if we have developed brains already.
there is tons of evidences of tool use etc. way before this date. its just filtered out because people used to be fired, ridiculed and pushed out of the scientific community if they would say anything that challenge some big names. Archeology was especially toxic in that regard....
Slightly unrelated but the proliferation of LLMs has totally thrown off my own Turing Test when reading comments online. I wonder if people are speaking more like LLMs too?
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