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.

Go to the linked site.

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