I met the VP of marketing for Bose at a party once. I told him I was into audio, but didn't tell him to what degree. To my surprise he pretty much said what you have said. Bose is a marketing company--not an audio company. Mind you, this was the VP of marketing so he was blowing his own horn. But he readily admitted that Bose does not sound that good, but most people don't need something that sounds so good. What they need is simple, easy to use, and packaged in a way they can relate to it.
Can you imagine the guy that bought the one box surround system with 5 mini speakers and a subwoofer, that all neatly plugs into each other in a matter of 5 minutes being the least bit interested in cables that cost more than the whole system--and the fact that you need 20 pairs of cables to set up a really state of the art Levinson, bi-amped monster system?
Marketing efforts (this includes their design philosophy) from Bose target the mass market, which is why they can put ads in general interest magazines and run TV ads. High end audio would fail miserably with that type of marketing, unless they changed their design philosophy to something that "sounds good enough for most, and is very easy to use" thereby meeting the needs of the general public--but then it wouldn't be high end, would it?
Can you imagine the guy that bought the one box surround system with 5 mini speakers and a subwoofer, that all neatly plugs into each other in a matter of 5 minutes being the least bit interested in cables that cost more than the whole system--and the fact that you need 20 pairs of cables to set up a really state of the art Levinson, bi-amped monster system?
Marketing efforts (this includes their design philosophy) from Bose target the mass market, which is why they can put ads in general interest magazines and run TV ads. High end audio would fail miserably with that type of marketing, unless they changed their design philosophy to something that "sounds good enough for most, and is very easy to use" thereby meeting the needs of the general public--but then it wouldn't be high end, would it?