Bose does indeed make mediocre, grossly over-priced stuff, but no company anywhere, ever, did, or still does, a better job of marketing and merchandising. As salespeople in places like Circuit City and Best Buy are about as useless as a pimple on one's ass, it's then left up to the manufacturer to sell his product, and no one does it better than Bose. Just walk into any CC or BB store, and look at the impressive Point of Purchase (POP) stuff Bose has all over the place that "self-sells" their products better than any of the cretins working there ever could.

Also, at least in the past, Bose was a "lawsuit-happy" company. When ESS launched its "ESS Wins on Campus" ad campaign, in which double-blind listening tests at various colleges around the U.S. resulted in low priced ESS speakers outscoring the Bose 901, Amar Bose went all but ballistic. Also, when dbx introduced its "Soundfield Imaging" line of loudspeakers, the company received numerous threats of lawsuits from Bose claiming copywright infringement, when nothing of the sort was true.

But the most famous Bose lawsuit was one launched against Consumer Reports for giving the 901 a mediocre rating. Bose actually won that one after years and years of litigation.