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Comment by skizm | Hacker News Reader

Why do the newer versions of these have to have freaking Alexa bundled with them. It's like a giant skid mark on an otherwise premium product. Bose does have the best noise cancelling functionality, but I'm simply never going to buy anything with Alexa, Cortana, or whatever Google's version of a voice assistant is paired to it. I deal with Siri crapware because Apple's incentives are slightly better aligned than these other advertising companies, but even that I hate and would get rid of in an instant if possible.

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It's only marketing. There is no integrated assistant. It's a plain old button that can be used to activate one of these useless voice assistants on your phone because some people like it. If you're like me, you can use it as an extra control to modify noise cancellation.

Yeah, you can change the functionality of the button via the Bose app. However, the Bose app is awful.

Sure, it’s less than ideal, but come on. There are far worse apps and it’s required to update the firmware. At least on iOS you’re also prompted to install it when you connect to the headphones for the first time anyway, so I would imagine adoption is pretty high.

I don't mean "it's not a high tech native experience with dark mode". I mean the app works poorly, all the time, and gets in the way of actually using the headphones. For example: whenever my headphones are paired with both my phone and laptop (because the app allows for two devices to be paired at once??) I have to manually disable my laptop in the app to listen to phone audio, the "drag down to connect" interface rarely works properly, etc. It really is a very poor experience when compared to BT headphones that don't require an app to manage their state.

How does the Bose app talk to the device? Wireshark can probably be used to analyze it. Writing a simple free software replacement for the bad app could be a fun project and the result will no doubt be much better than their proprietary software.

> How does the Bose app talk to the device?

what options can there possibly be? it uses bluetooth.

> Wireshark can probably be used to analyze it.

bluetooth has reasonable security built in. bose products make use of it.

There's a lot of protocols you can run over Bluetooth.

The BT dump tool can be run on the bluetooth device (eg laptop, phone) and so get access to the negotiated crypto keys oe cleartext version of the comms.

I have, at [1], though this is literally the first time I dabble in android apps, so quality is alpha at best. I use it frequently ant works for me though.

[1] https://github.com/DavidVentura/Bose_QC35_Android

Gah, then you have to run an app!

Does a right to use Alexa come without a requirement to send data to Amazon? I'm not sure.

You can use the headphones without the Bose app, and if you really need to configure something, download it, configure, and delete. The assistant integration is totally opt-in

You can politely ask Bose to disable Alexa the same way you can ask Facebook to "delete" your account. They disable the functionality you have access to while still collecting all the data they normally would and having remote access to turn on the microphone and listen in whenever they want without letting you know about it.

you're already buying a set of noise cancelling headphones with an integrated microphone from them. if you're afraid of Bose remotely activating the microphone, that risk exists without the Alexa functionality. Even if the headphones didn't have a usable microphone, they're noise cancelling, meaning they have a microphone for that purpose.

Bose is not an advertising company. They have (had?) less incentive to collect my data. Amazon on the other hand peppers the market with tons of low cost shitware devices that have Alexa integrated in for no reason other than to harvest ambient sound data for Advertising purposes. The fact that Bose is partnered with Amazon makes it less likely I'll buy any of their products now, even without the Alexa since I now know they're cool selling user data (or at least cool accepting money to add Amazon/Google's crapware apps in their otherwise nice hardware).

That's funny because amazon does something similar with your browsing history.

You can turn off browsing history but the button says "hide" not "delete".

I ran into this trying to get a smart thermostat. Nest is problematic right off the bat because Google, and their main competitor Ecobee comes with an onboard mic + alexa. Luckily I found an engineer who posted a comment/review mentioning the alexa mic can be unhooked inside the phillips-screw-accessible rear housing in <30 seconds... so that made it an instant buy. The idea of an always-listing wifi thermostat in my house is incredibly creepy.

This happened again with the LG CX, surprise! It has a mic for alexa too! Luckily it's only on the remote. Guess which little dot is getting a tiny bead of epoxy first thing?

My expectation would have been that a dot of epoxy would drop the sound level by 10-20dB, which wouldn't do much to prevent listening. Does it work better than that or is this a "something is better than nothing" type compromise?

Ecobee now sells the "ecobee lite" which has no Alexa and no microphone.

You're not the only one. I've been buying the last version without Alexa used for about a year now, and prices are going up, not down.

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