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Comment by loki2005 | Hacker News Reader

loki2005

Why should one need an app to control their headphones?

Give me hardware interface to control the functions.

You couldn't physically fit those controls onto a pair of headphones. There's simple stuff like the level of noise cancellation, but also language settings for the voice prompts and saved profiles for different paired devices.

The Bose app is relatively simple as headphone apps go. Nuro and Even offer headphones with custom DSP profiles to match your hearing and the Audeze Mobius has spatial audio with motion tracking. It's simply not possible to implement features like that without some kind of companion app.

id argue that the bose app was only really useful for updating firmware, noise cancellation level could be adjusted on the device and it didnt really do much of anything else last time i used it

the mobius is different though but only slightly, all the sound modes etc are switchable on the device its only the head tracking setup that really needs the app

(by the way im not complaining, anyone with my spotify username can know what ive been listening to and it doesnt bother me one bit)

An embedded web server would take care of that. And you'd not need an App, besides it would also work for people without smartphones.

There's over-engineering, and then there's putting a web server in a pair of headphones. There are obvious disadvantages in terms of cost, complexity, security and battery life.

Absolutely but those are still much less bad than having an app that leaks your data back to the manufacturer.

The real problem is that most consumers just don't care about privacy at all.

Losing the 0.01% of people who care about their privacy is no incentive for manufacturers to change their shady practices.

It would be nice to have some kind of privacy certification, then consumers could have an easy way of knowing the product they're buying respects their privacy.

It's a sad state of affairs that this would be needed to buy a set of headphones.

Or publish the APIs for at least allowing a third-party implementation?

Now you have APIs that people depend on and will get pissed if they change. If you do it all internally then major API changes are not a problem.

Assuming you are talking about lock-step updates of firmware and app, how would an app work with firmware lagging hardware, or updated firmware but old app?

People have multiple devices (eg tablet and phone) which means they'd easily get into such a state.

I imagine they have to keep the most of backwards compatibility for their internal purposes as well (or at least their developers' sanity :)).

I am pretty sure having open APIs (that evolve) would still be more appreciated than not.

But then you need to bring the conversation back around to "why ruin it with hidden data collection"

When I set up my QC35 II, I couldn't get it to pair, so I reluctantly downloaded the app. I got my headphones set up and noticed the other features, which I thought could be useful, but uninstalled the app anyway, because the amount of times I would change these settings didn't outweigh having another app on my phone that could be collecting data.

I hate that I was correct in uninstalling the software due to privacy concerns, and only reinforces my distrust of hardware and software vendors.

In the instance of these headphones, the app allows you to adjust the level of active noise cancellation as well as choose which sources can send audio to the headphones. Neither of which are set up to be done directly via the device.

The source choosing can be done (with the power slider) without the app. Just FYI.

I used the app breifly when setting mine up before deleting it. The 2 things I used it for was updating the firmware and remapping the voice control button to instead change the noise canceling amount.

The app doesn't do anything in Color Soundlink models that you can't do with the buttons. I couldn't even set the bass/treble so I erased it. It's quite useless.

It hasn’t been useful for the past 2-years since they’ve stopped making firmware updates for that device.

The one thing I use the app for is system updates.

I too have these headphones. I don't really know what the frequent firmware updates do, or if they are necessary.

I can understand why the mechanism for firmware updates exists, but this constant updating of every single thing is insane. Bluetooth headphones aren't even exposed/connected to the internet.

You can update the headphones through a PC application: https://btu.bose.com/

My $35 pair of Phaiser BHS-760 bluetooth headphones connect far, far better than my $350 Bose QCII headphones and the BHS-760s don't require an app.

Your $35'rs aren't a good comparison when they don't provide noise cancelation.

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