[godelski]

That kinda defeats the point of having a device. Sure it works in some cases but we're talking about a soundbar here and that has to interact with other devices. It's whole purpose is to interact with other devices.

Even if it doesn't need to contact the internet you're still going to want it to connect through cables. There's good reason to connect through bluetooth.

But why should it contact over the internet? Well it sure is nice to be able to stream music from my NAS. There's utility in that. There's also utility in the parent company updating firmware to support new audio codecs. Or to support new algorithms. If my device is gaining more utility, that's a great thing! And of course, if it is connected wirelessly in any way (including bluetooth) I sure as hell would like updates with respect to security.

Without this, the thing becomes e-waste. The environment moves. Time marches on. No thing can exist in isolation, no matter how hard you try. Again, software rots, not because the software changes, but because the world does.

But that's not the problem here. The problem is abuse of that power. It isn't for the benefit of the customer. The problem is managers pushing to release before things are ready. The need for speed with no direction. To not even consider in the calculus of decision making the tremendous costs of when things go wrong. And how this lesson is never learned despite facing the problem time and time again. Issues like this now cost tons of engineering hours, tons of lawyer hours, and ultimately will cost tons in rebates and refunds. How many weeks of work is that equivalent to? Sure, it doesn't always result in catastrophic failure like this, sometimes it results in smaller failures, sometimes small enough they can be brushed off. But those are still costs that no one considers. That's the problem here.

[Ma8ee]

In my case, my stereo is connected to an inexpensive Airplay adapter.

So I do get all the advantages of a connected device, but if the adapter is bricked, I can easily replace just that small device. And more likely, when there’s a new standard, most of my equipment is unaffected.

[godelski]

s/soundbar/airplay adapter/g

I believe you're missing the forest for the trees. My argument is invariant to the specific device we're talking about.

[Ma8ee]

No, you are missing my point. In the same way as we do (or at least should do) when we develop software, we isolate the volatile parts from the stable ones. The loudspeakers have looked the same for decades. No revolutionary changes in amplifiers in a long time. The same with DACs. That means that when a software update bricks my adapter, or a new much better standard comes along, or I decide to leave the Apple ecosystem, I only need to replace one small part of my stereo system, not all of it.

[godelski]

This should be done internally to the device. I do agree that nothing you do should affect how speaker sure input is processed. But if you want those other features it's much more convenient to integrate them on device or rather place them within the housing as there's lots of empty space.

With electronics you can still isolate functionality like in software how we wrap things into functions. But like software sometimes we need to break that for optimization. Think like Apple M chips. They do it in the most annoying way, but integration is helpful. Ideally in a speaker though you should be able to fuck everything up and still allow for raw input.

As for the Apple thing, well that's a bigger issue because we really should be using open protocols and fuck walled gardens. Walled gardens are part of the problem we're talking about