From Reuters / Yahoo Tech:
Bose headphones spy on listeners - lawsuit
Bose Corp spies on its wireless headphone customers by using an app that tracks the music, podcasts and other audio they listen to, and violates their privacy rights by selling the information without permission, a lawsuit charged.
The complaint filed on Tuesday by Kyle Zak in federal court in Chicago seeks an injunction to stop Bose's "wholesale disregard" for the privacy of customers who download its free Bose Connect app from Apple Inc or Google Play stores to their smartphones.
"People should be uncomfortable with it," Christopher Dore, a lawyer representing Zak, said in an interview. "People put headphones on their head because they think it's private, but they can be giving out information they don't want to share."
Not good at all. My main reason for disliking Bose is that they use very cheap speaker drivers and correct for the frequency irregularities by using active (ie: powered) equalization. This is using phase to solve a frequency problem and the trouble here is that it completely messes with the sound stage. Close your eyes and listen to a guitar solo with a Bose system and that poor musician is flying all around the stage. A symphony orchestra or ensemble turns to mush.
One of the ways that Bose promotes themselves is by selling cheap systems to large theaters - Sound by Bose - the systems there are all monaural so the lack of solid sound-stage is not an issue.
As they say: No Highs? No Lows? Must be Bose.
Their noise cancelling headphones are very effective and good - there you are not concerned about high fidelity, you are just concerned with noise reduction and using active electronics allows you to do that well.
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