Apple quietly stops selling Bose, Sonos and some Logitech gear • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple quietly stops selling Bose, Sonos and some Logitech gear

#51

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 5:03 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #42

Spivak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the answer to all of these and more is having lots of cash needing investment vehicles that do better than just passively investing it in the market. None of these companies are menacingly laughing in board rooms, they’re just seeing other companies prove markets for them and betting that they can compete. If you want to get that first party integration/advantage these companies are happy to partner with you,…

So you're saying Sonos'/Bose's efforts are trivial? Audio is a solved problem for five people and a pizza? What isn't? I mean, Apple is building a Hollywood studio. That's insane. I get the feeling nothing is safe. If Apple wants to do it, they'll do it. Same for Amazon.

Those are the spoils of developing a product that has transformed many, many aspects of basically everyone's lives and cut out many, many middlemen.

It's also a characteristic of software, with its near zero marginal costs allowing a small number of people to obviate and dominate entire fields.

Re: Apple quietly stops selling Bose, Sonos and some Logitech gear

#52

Post by NoSorryCannot » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 5:05 AM UTC

ebg13 wrote: post #26

thinkingkong wrote: post #9

Bose had to have seen this coming. The patent on noise cancelling expired and now its a free for all. Plus, its apples store. Every item would have been listed at apples sole discretion.

My Bose headphones are miles more comfortable and more effective at active noice cancellation than the best Apple Beats. Will that change? Maybe. I mean...I hope so. It's hard having only Bose and Sony credibly competing in the wireless over-the-ear ANC space. It would be really nice to be able to get away from the crap bluetooth scourge like AirPods kinda sorta started doing with their W and H series chips.

Yamaha just announced their first ANC products, in both cans and buds formats if I recall. Don't know how they will stack up.

Re: Apple quietly stops selling Bose, Sonos and some Logitech gear

#53

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 5:06 AM UTC

notJim wrote: post #45

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was blown away when I found out they don’t work as a simple AUX device. My friend has homepods but she was using TV speakers because they can’t accept TV audio. She said it kind of works with Apple TV but audio sync is an issue and that still leaves out things like Nintendo Switch games or movies played off a laptop. Crazy to me that they don’t have AUX in. She recently got a pair of $130 powered speakers from amaz…

That's not really what this type of speaker is for. It's more a speaker for your bedroom or kitchen that you use from your phone or via voice. My Sonos One doesn't have Aux in either, although some of the other speakers do.

My two HomePods work pretty well in conjunction with an Apple TV 4K. But I would stay away from any Apple products if you want to stray outside of Apple's ecosystem.

Re: Apple quietly stops selling Bose, Sonos and some Logitech gear

#54

Post by pers0n » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 5:07 AM UTC

ksec wrote: post #41

echelon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Of course you got downvoted...) How can Apple be, 1. An operating system and business software company 2. A cell phone company 3. An exclusive marketplace for apps 4. A movie studio and streaming service 5. A music studio and streaming service 6. A hardware company whose products predominantly work with and favor other Apple branded hardware 7. ... How can Google, Amazon, and Apple all do this? Pretty soon they're g…

I actually have no problem with them being a 1-3, I just dont understand why they had to do 4 and 5. Music was understandable given there are no Streaming Music alternative other than Spotify. ( But Apple Music still sucks after so many years, and barely caught on to Spotify ). But Making Apple Originals? Pouring Billions into it? And Apple Card? Yes I think Banking and Finance will be there soon. If they have some s…

Pandora is still around and is still superior as a radio station, they just don’t have the variety Spotify does but their algorithm is better

Re: Apple quietly stops selling Bose, Sonos and some Logitech gear

#55

Post by fiddlerwoaroof » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #24

CharlesW wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Siri on HomePod is 1000x worse than Google Assistant responses. For sure, nobody's buying HomePods for Siri. That said, with as assist of Homebridge[1] for device support it's abilities are not substantively different than Alexa's for my family's use cases. [1] https://homebridge.io/

> For sure, nobody's buying HomePods for Siri Well there are better standalone speakers and there are better "smart" speakers. As it stands it doesn't really justify the premium over Sonos, Echo or Google Home. Heck at least let me use bluetooth.

Honestly, I buy Apple devices because of the cross-device integration. I grant that many of Apple’s devices aren’t the best in the category: but I find that, considered as a “computing environment”, they’re pretty hard to beat.

Also, I trust Apple’s “don’t listen for Hey Siri” feature more than the either Google’s or Amazon’s

Re: Apple quietly stops selling Bose, Sonos and some Logitech gear

#56

Post by joegahona » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

croissants wrote: post #2

Is "quietly" really the appropriate word here? Do stores typically put out announcements when they stop stocking certain products? If not, "quietly" just seems to be a way to create an air of vague menace and treachery without saying it.

It’s the new clickbait word du jour. Make mundane and extremely ordinary things sound nefarious.

Re: Apple quietly stops selling Bose, Sonos and some Logitech gear

#57

Post by gnicholas » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 5:21 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #28

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re useless to everyone I know until they add support for functioning as a standard Bluetooth speaker. I don’t understand why Apple is so opposed to this.

Do you know people who use iPhones but require their smart speaker to work as a Bluetooth speaker? I think it’s pretty clear the HomePod is only intended for iPhone (or maybe Mac) users.

My home is all Apple products, but we returned our two HomePods after we learned that we can't use them as a stereo pair if we're playing off a computer (unless the source is iTunes). We could use our iPhone to play to the stereo pair from any app. But on the Mac, they disallow this. You can't even get them to both play the same audio — you have to choose one of them to play and the other to sit silent. This is ridiculous.

I am about to get a Sonos soundbar instead, which I will AirPlay to from whatever app/application I please.

Re: Apple quietly stops selling Bose, Sonos and some Logitech gear

#58

Post by thetechimist » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 5:24 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #25

dheera wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> air of vague menace and treachery (a) Considering their track record of wanting to monopolize and control markets, I wouldn't put it past them. (b) Many stores do put out announcements if they remove products for ideological reasons.

(Of course you got downvoted...) How can Apple be, 1. An operating system and business software company 2. A cell phone company 3. An exclusive marketplace for apps 4. A movie studio and streaming service 5. A music studio and streaming service 6. A hardware company whose products predominantly work with and favor other Apple branded hardware 7. ... How can Google, Amazon, and Apple all do this? Pretty soon they're g…

Oh please. Name three suitcase companies. Quick. Samsonite, American something... (traveler??), and.... a bunch of bit players that don’t have their own stores, commercialized branding with billboards and full-page ads, etc.

The word monopoly means one. Mono = One.

All this crying and hubris about Apple being a monopoly. It’s Apple, Android/Google, Microsoft, and some heavy hitting wanna-be companys.

Want your Windows Phone back? Go get it. Caterpillar makes amazing Android phones. Blackberry is pumping out some nice keyboard based phones. There are privacy-based phones with manual off switches. There are Linux phones. There are many bit players. I have the new Nokia 3310 too. Lots of but players and a few big ones.

Why everyone keeps meaning about “monopoly” is disturbing. Half the time, it mostly sounds like a cesspool of burnt out developers just jealous they didn’t come up with some of this modern stuff first.

There is no monopoly. Not even close. Even when the Windows Phone was a major player, not enough people wanted it to warrant Microsoft to continue selling it. What do you want? Government forced third options and funded by taxpayers? Did Microsoft have the right to discontinue it — or not? It’s not Apple and Google’s fault that consumers mostly chose to avoid the Windows Phone. I personally think it was a smart decision by Microsoft to get out of that market back then (and they should have done it sooner) and focus more on Azure, Office 365, and Windows O/S - along with GitHub and VSC, etc., all of which they’ve been firing on all 8 cylinders lately.

Re: Apple quietly stops selling Bose, Sonos and some Logitech gear

#59

Post by ksec » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 5:32 AM UTC

Apple is rumoured to launch HomePod Mini and AirPod Studio Headphone ( Which to me is a copy of B&W PX headphone ). So I am not surprised since those two items are in direct competition.

Edit: Turns out Bloomberg already has a story on it.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-05/apple-sto...

Re: Apple quietly stops selling Bose, Sonos and some Logitech gear

#60

Post by rangoon626 » Tue, Oct 06, 2020, 5:42 AM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #47

ksec wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually have no problem with them being a 1-3, I just dont understand why they had to do 4 and 5. Music was understandable given there are no Streaming Music alternative other than Spotify. ( But Apple Music still sucks after so many years, and barely caught on to Spotify ). But Making Apple Originals? Pouring Billions into it? And Apple Card? Yes I think Banking and Finance will be there soon. If they have some s…

Apple Music is mostly a holdover from the decade of the iPod and iTunes Music Store. They already had a strong market position and it would have been capitalist suicide to abandon it wholesale. I don't agree that it sucks compared to Spotify, but it does cater to a different audience, preferring curation over algorithms. Apple TV+ is indeed a curious one. Personally I think it's as simple as being a placeholder to al…

I’m not trying to be an annoying nitpick, you bring up good points and I have just a few observations...

Apple Music curation. Has anyone been impressed by this? I found maybe 2-3 songs I didn’t already know about, over the course of at least a year. I was never impressed, even SiriusXM has more variety and relevancy. I think they blew the chance to really do something great.

AppleTV+ makes me feel fatigued. Yes to being a “curious one.”

Apple Card seems to me like Apple’s version of a co-branded airline card. As much as I like to dunk on Apple these days (I used to be a huge fan), Apple Card is something they executed really well on. I’d like to give props to the Apple Pay/Card team. I think they’re doing a great job here and have a solid foundation for wherever they take this. That said I have a hard time imagining using Apple for all my transactions and balances, especially with the callous way they seem to behave lately. But you never know.