by Dan Moren
Bose open sources discontinued speaker API
Scharon Harding, writing at Ars Technica:
Bose released the Application Programming Interface (API) documentation for its SoundTouch speakers today, putting a silver lining around the impending end-of-life (EoL) of the expensive home theater devices.
More like this, please. There’s nothing more frustrating than a useful piece of tech turning into e-waste because the manufacturer doesn’t want to support it anymore.
Jason’s made this point recently with another great example, the iMac and current lack of a Target Display Mode. This past week I ran into a similar issue with the Logitech Harmony remote that I set up for my parents: while Logitech’s mobile app for it still technically works, options are extremely limited for adding new devices.
To me, this feels like it goes hand-in-hand with Right to Repair for hardware devices. If a company decides it wants to stop making a device, that’s fine—that’s its business. But to be responsible stewards of not only their products but the environment, they ought to seriously consider enabling the community to support it themselves.