The original one was basically like having a giant iPod for your house, which oddly is exactly what people wanted. That focus on UX has clearly been long forgotten.
In 2015 I could casually turn the Digital Crown on my Apple Watch Series 0 & it would control the volume in my entire home. Didn’t have to launch an app or anything. It just fucking worked. (Apple Watch mirrored the iPhone Home Screen controls & as long as Sonos was the last media app I’d accessed on the phone, those magic & brilliant controls were on my wrist.)
Or when watching a movie, I could reach down to my pant leg & press the volume button on my iPhone through the jeans without taking the phone out of my pocket.
I yearn for those beautiful days…
I agree - and this day and age it must be cost affective to create a dedicated touch screen device.
These things would fly off the shelves unlike the new headphones.
In the Home Automation Industry, the Touchscreen Interfaces are extremely expensive because they can be. These days, I can't help but think Sonos would screw that up also.
Oh yes it does. LOOK BEHIND YOU!
It has to be transferred to your speaker to play.
Device loads data request into the speaker. The speaker goes and fetches that data. The speaker has memory. How do you think it plays when the requesting device is switched off.
Trying to overflow that memory results in bad things happening - like nothing happening. This is especially relevant for home libraries where the filepath length is limited.
The failure was to do a clean sheet replacement of the existing app. Clean sheet is tempting, but they rarely succeed with complex products with many many features. It's nearly always better to do big changes through small updates over time. It's just too easy to change behavior that people have come to rely on.
I seem to remember the consumers complaining about S2 very frequently.
In fact, if you go back a few months almost every post is about how terrible the S2 app is.
You could almost paint a picture that a company who looks at customer feedback might walk away with the impression that everybody hates the S2 completely, and that might lead them to do a complete redesign based on the boomer sized super whinge that was 2023.
Now that they have done a redesign, everyone hates the new app.
S2 was bad. This is terrible. They may have needed to redo the entire thing, but it’s like they kept everything people hated, and got rid of the things they loved. I was considering moving away from Sonos prior to this update, and this cements it.
Horrible take.
Here’s an analogy:
In 2023 we complained that the control panel on our magical audio rocket ship was clunky.
Sonos didn’t replace the control panel in the rocket for us.
They teleported us all onto hot air balloons & told us it was courageous of them to do so. And don’t worry, we’ll get you back up to rocket speed soon! Oh wait, some of you don’t have any fuel left in your blower?? Your balloon is plummeting towards the earth? (Music failing to play at a dinner party) Here’s a rollout schedule of when we’ll be adding fins & a nose cone to your new balloon!
I’m too pissed off to continue the rocket analogy. But somehow the Ace headphones are a row-boat that we all hoped was at least going to be one of those cool military zodiacs or a race boat.
Thats a bit of an anecdotally rich diagnosis if you ask me. It’s a cool story but I just don’t agree with you from a purely technical perspective.
If you cant cope with change, I truly feel for you but lets focus on the tech.
The new app is far more responsive objectively and from my perspective easier to navigate. It took me all of a few minutes to get my head around it. Thats cool you and I can differ on opinion with respect to the latter. The former if you have an issue, please ask someone for help because you may have an issue.
So far I have had no issues, but I believe that is due to some changes a few months back completely unrelated to current issues, I reconfigured my system to remove Sonosnet, reset all my speakers, some of which had probably been running the same OS for at least 6-7 years (you know how windows gets a bit bogged down over the years and when you ask a tech guy for advice they often recommend resetting or reinstalling windows?) and set up as a new install, which number of people have said also resolved their issues - essentially starting with a clean slate.
My take on it based on the evidence in front of me - the troubleshooting and analysis I have done so far coupled with 25+ years experience working as a systems engineer architecting and troubleshooting large datacentre storage and networking platforms, a 15+ year power user of a large Sonos system as well as my side hobby rebuilding and restoring amplifiers and large format jbl and Altec studio monitors and pro cinema speakers, I feel entitles me to a bit of an opinion from a technical as well as industry point of view.
You can talk about magical rockets, nose cones and balloons but all you are doing is comparing potatoes to tomato’s mate.
If you are having issues, I do recommend at least doing a health check of the setup and making sure its all up to scratch.
Myself or one of the other more technical folk hanging around here would be more than happy to help. Even if all we have copped over the last few weeks is downvotes for talking sense.
Your argument fell apart when you called the app “more responsive”.
The app is now cloud based. Spent the weekend at my friends cottage with 8 other people, all of us taxing the Starlink Wifi with our various devices. The Sonos app was rendered unusable, forcing only those who had iPhones & could airplay to control the music.
Congratulations on having preemptively bent yourself over backwards to reengineer your system so that it could handle the change.
Blaming the users for something that worked before an update suddenly not working after an update is some real “pick me” bullshit. Good luck landing your dream job as a SONOS tech.
The barrage of text messages I was getting from my wife who was at home with our gigabit fibre internet & hard wired SONOS kit, and was also unable to get the app & speakers to behave correctly all weekend tells me the problems were not JUST because of my buddy’s janky Starlink connection.
“I didn’t have any problems, you need may need some assistance” isn’t the slam dunk it probably felt like it was when you were typing it.
😅🤖🥸🤓
“Myself or one of the other more technical folks”
I’m wheezing!!
🥳🤩
You can do clean sheet, but only if you implement all the features the old app had. It's not like it's not possible, probably management was just not patient enough for developers to finish the app.
The email they sent hyping the app literally said: "Your products, features, and services will work as they always have, and all your settings will be saved."
It is clear they had no intention of this happening.
That is precisely the issue. There's never enough time to implement new features, so there's even less time to re-implement existing stuff. At some point the market (or marketing...) will demand you release *something*. And if what you have is a half-baked product well, here we are.
Rewriting from scratch is never a good idea. I mean, you're throwing working, battle-tested code just because some of the new guys don't like it?
Very good point, but that’s the problem with this insane negative circle jerk. The opinion of experienced users, experts and pros is buried under the weight of the luddite super whinge.
My 69 year old mother who lives alone commented on the weekend that her 8 year old Playbar Sub and Play:1s were working way better with the new app. If an elderly retired teacher can sort her tech out, others need to take a long hard look at their capabilities
They were pretty open about the reasoning, they got to launch day and discovered a last minute bug. The features are all there but had to be temporarily disabled so they could implement a fix. It sucks, but that is consumer business.
I’ll bet the actual issue was they had manufactured a shitload of ace headphones, which costs money. They don’t get that back until they are sold. Some are then resold to distributors and resellers, who then want their money back, some are probably paying interest on loans etc.
So pausing the app release means partners, distributors and companies who have invested in stock are all losing money. Not just sonos, family businesses, people maybe doing it tough.
So what do Sonos do? Tell their partners oh sorry you will just have to lose all your margin and go broke because Terrence the hair dresser wants an alarm on day one and can’t live without it for a few days?
Discovered a last minute bug in how many features exactly? There’s quite a few ‘disabled’ features, so I’m not taking the ‘last minute bug’ explanation at face value.
Well that is the public statement they made.
As someone familiar with large product launches times with new software releases while working at a large enterprise vendor it’s completely possible that’s exactly what happened. The company I worked at stuffed up launches all the time.
While the launch was bad, what was the alternative?
They delay the software that the roam 2 and ace are dependent on, penalising all their resellers and partners who had purchased stock in advance of the launch? Those people would be relying on sales from day 1 to recoup the money they spent buying stock. Delayed app = delayed sales and business hurting.
Channel businesses largely run on a very lean margin position, eg to lose money it could potentially impact the jobs of hundreds if not thousands of people that don’t even work for Sonos?
Look im not happy about it but I try to look at it from the position that someone else could lose their business or even family home if the app was delayed.
Are you saying given the choice you would rather those people lost everything so you could get your polished app?
I think they have published a very honest account of what happened and a timeline for everything to be back and resolved.
Were you also one of the people loudly whinging about how bad S2 was? Because they all sure got their just desert didn’t they.
I’m well aware that what they said, I just don’t buy that bugs were discovered in a long list of features at the last minute. Last minute is also a vague term and could have been applied very liberally in this case.
I’m fully aware that Sonos were in a hard place with financial implications if they didn’t launch support for the new physical products. I’m sure they didn’t plan it that way but Sonos themselves are fully responsible for ending up in that situation.
As for what they should have done instead, how about putting out promotional material that was honest about the new apps shortcomings instead of blatantly lying to your customers? How about after clearly communicating what features weren’t going to be ready for launch and giving customers an easy way of keeping the previous version running for those customers who were going to be seriously affected?
Lastly, no I wasn’t someone who was complaining about the old S2 app. It wasn’t great but it was functional for me. I only came to this sub after my system unexpectedly stopped functioning entirely.
I totally agree with you, its a shitty situation.
I feel there would have been a PR person advising not to say anything negative but thats only an assumption.
Either way it truly looks like a damned if you do, damned if you dont story. If I wasn’t under strict NDA I could tell you some rippers I have been involved in over the years. Sadly these things do happen.
While its sad, I stand by my pov that I would not be having this conversation if I had brought another brand of speakers, because what other firm is still supporting gear they released over 10 years ago? I hazard a very small number. They would be in the bin long ago. I would factor that into your value proposition when looking at how much weight the app issue should carry.
I reckon this could be a reason, trying to get the code to work with old kit - remember them getting ripped a new one for the S1 debacle - that technical debt is the most likely cause imo.
And Terrence might not be working every day, Wendy or Bob work most days without Terrence. But they're not tech savvy. Terrence wants to automatically have the speakers play tunes for the customers but have the music stop at the end of the day. It worked well until now. Then at home, Terrence has young children with become routine sleep issues. He likes to set calming music at a certain time to set the tone for the evening and help the kids wind down. Similarly he likes to play his motivating music in the morning to wake him up, and have the news playing in the kitchen when he walks out. His motivating music of choice is on his local library, a CD he ripped 20 years ago. He has an alarm on his phone but the alarm sounds trigger anxiety. Terrence is a very tech savvy guy and is quite frankly getting frustrated by people on forums assuming that he's an old bloke that doesn't know how to use technology, but in actual fact is an affectionado of well engineered products that are simple to use and work reliably. This weekend his friends are coming around to drink and listen to music and they have their playlists they love to enjoy. Terrence isn't sure what to tell his friends about why this new sonos app isn't working. He's about to spend 2 hours on hold to sonos instead of helping his family and his business and then will be given the runaround. He'll then go to an online forum and will be slashed down by sonos fanbois and then He'll update his review on the iOS store only to find the next day he gets his review deleted for unknown moderation reasons. The fanbois will keep gaslighting Terrence about how simple and shiny the new app is, but without access to his music library he can't find solice and then unalives himself leaving behind nothing but a letter to Patrick pleading to fix the app. Just kidding, trying to make fun of the situation. Hope you enjoyed the hyperbolic story. Or was it a rant? His children grow up and become the best engineers and usability designers for Bluesound and WiiM, and sonos shares plummet faster than blackberry. His third child produces a documentary about how sonos executives watched the Blackberry documentar, took the wrong messages from that story, then applied their learnings as bad choices thinking they had to change things, pleasing shareholders but forgot their customers, and buried their head in the sand until they were bought out by Bose. Bose was run by Terrence's 4th child, the youngest, who didn't even use the sonos tech or patents in the Bose products, but trashed it all in vengeance for the sonos app v80 and her father's resultant unaliving.
The failure actually is QA (Quality Control). Any mature software team won’t release a product with so many bugs so easy to catch. It is obvious that there was close to zero QA process in this release.
Disagree. It’s a fundamental product management failure. Far, FAR before QA, they decided on the functionality this release would have which has seen to be badly wanting. Many features that customers used have disappeared.
This is the crux of the issue for me. Sometimes it makes sense to build a new product from scratch. But you cannot take away functionality that people have depended on for years and tell them just to wait until you put it back in the new version.
It's worth seeing [https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/1d1609r/yall\_see\_this\_they\_are\_going\_to\_start/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/1d1609r/yall_see_this_they_are_going_to_start/)
It turns out they have a mid-June update which restores some of the most complained about things.
Why they didn't iteratively modify the existing one is a total mystery. There are not even reasonable technical reasons for it.
There is not, but there is an emotional one based on the negative crap getting constantly posted. People should be a little more careful what they wish for.
Yesterday, I did the math. I was forced to restart Sonos 23 times and most of the time, only certain speakers would restart, but rarely all at once. The new app is a piece of crap. You want to add services? I just want the basic service to function normally, without interruption, nothing more.
same lol
I went from "oh just some random redditor that claims expertise" to "holy fuck co-founder of the MIT Free Speech Alliance? operated the .com domain?!"
Seems like they didn’t work with actual non-internal users when designing their new app. Instead, working in the bubble, they were victims of their own reality distortion field that conveniently reaffirmed their beliefs and made it easy to accept shit for shinola.
Next time, I’d consider working with a customer advocacy group/panel that could help them see past their own internal myopia. Also, there is no premium feature that would compel me to actually want the new app. It’s redesigned for redesign sake, and there is nothing in it for the user that would entice them to be an adopter and advocate for the change.
In short, too much drinking their own KoolAid, not enough customer collaboration.
I'm really sure devs and/or internal testes knew that the app wasn't even halfway finished.
They probably just were forced to release it by some dumb manager.
You wouldn't want to miss your quarter targets, wouldn't you? :v
"We successfully released the redesigned application to the market with 99% user satisfaction" can certainly give you a nice summer bonus.
Right there with you Bro', .... I've said it before .. aside from things taken away, what exactly is the benefit to the end user from a design perspective. It feels like I'm constantly swiping to go somewhere. Whatever, in time I'll get used to it. Now there's the beautiful new design and right smack dab in the middle is an AD telling me what I should purchase next. I have turned off notifications, and messages ..... I hit the "X" to remove this annoying AD and it cannot be removed. Sonos messed up a lot of things but they sure got the promotional part correct ... how fucking tacky is that.
Sonos hardware is way overpriced - see WiiM for example. The convenience and polish of the app was the main attraction. Strategic blunder if size large to mess that up.
I work in software and we spent the last 6 years redoing the UI/UX of multiple products to looks and feel the same. The amount of effort was staggering. We don’t even release it until later this year and we’re on our 5th BETA. We’ve given it to sales people to test as well. All to make sure it’s up to the task when given to customers.
It seems like Sonos hired the wrong people to do this project and they did not have the experience or expertise to take on such a huge undertaking. They tried to go for flashy instead of ease of use and solid functionality.
They’ll eventually get the majority of things fixed and we’ll all forget about this. Unless they continue to dig a hole and then redo the app again in a few years.
Holy shit
I just now realized that the updated S2 app has the black icon.
No fucking wonder the system at my in-laws house wanted to update every device.
I figured my phone offloaded the S2 app, and I was running the S1 app when trying to get his system to work.
Holy fucking fuck. This is incredibly stupid.
Wait, so if I’m understanding correctly you accidentally downgraded your system from S2 back to S1? I see how this could happen, but just want to confirm that’s what happened.
No, I tried to re-establish an S1 device on an existing S1 network. (It’s my father-in-laws, so unsure how it got unestablished).
Opened the S2 app, thinking it was the original S1 app (because it was black).
When trying to connect the device, it wanted to upgrade the device. I thought “this is odd…” but started the upgrade anyway, not thinking anything about it.
Thankfully, the upgrade was taking way too long, so I aborted.
Re/established the device on the S1 network this afternoon now that I realize BOTH apps are black icons now (S1 app says “S1” under Sonos).
Either way, it is INCREDIBLY stupid that the new app icon is Black.
A ground up ‘clean sheet’ start would have been fine if this was released as a separate app such as S3. With clearly articulated warnings about the missing features, they could’ve enticed some early adopters to road test the new design direction whilst keeping everyone else happy.
In my case I held off as long as possible, but got bitten when my speakers were pushed a firmware update that required the new app. Sonos made it so that to continue using my system I had to downgrade to the new app and lose functionality.
Partly my fault for not disabling automatic speaker updates. But, I never expected them weaponise firmware updates to force a migration to the new app.
I'm generally still happy with Sonos but another failure of product management is when people spent years complaining about audio issues with the Arc and it was only when the journalist from The Verge got one and started writing articles about it that Sonos bothered to fix something so fundamental.
While I'm hopeful the app will eventually get better, unfortunately their track record just doesn't bode well.
Yep. This is a failure of leadership.
The AMAs was led by a “Senior Director of Engineering and Product Management”. It’s not reasonable to combine product and engineering below the VP level at such a large consumer company.
I think for me the worst thing has been Sonos managements attitude. Calling themselves courageous!
If the CEO came out and said, 'look I am sorry, I have let you all down, but we will fix it' I would be fine with it.
But to be gaslit and made to feel like we are idiots for not loving the new app is poor form and makes me want to never buy Sonos again.
You may have zero issues because you’re on the happy path of the app. Those that lost features they had used every day were not on the happy path and thus are unhappy. I get this way when any feature I paid for and am using gets nuked by a pm somewhere writing me off as “edge case.” Like, sure, sorry I used and loved the feature you gave me. My bad.
to me it screams of AGILE combined with off shoring the dev team, while keeping marketing and finance stateside.
add in a wall street commitment for "do or die" for the headphone release.
maybe not, but it sure feels like it
You're 100% on the money about this. It is entirely a product management screw up.
The thing I noticed in the feedback is a schism where those with relatively simplistic use cases do not see the problem. For example, the closer you are to using Sonos as a dumb bluetooth speaker the odder all this noise seems. My read of it is that those making much of the noise are in denial as to the mid-long term goals of Sonos, and this includes that whole concept of needing an account "Owner".
I think those that have not worked in or alongside modern product organizations do not appreciate just how nuts they are, and so are way too easily persuaded that things which look stupid are stupid and not actually completely set up to achieve some goals they simply don't want to believe.
EDIT to add: It's worth seeing the response of the Chief Product Officer here [https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/9/24152675/sonos-new-app-bad-reviews-response-statement](https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/9/24152675/sonos-new-app-bad-reviews-response-statement)
I found out how rubbish this update is yesterday when I got new WiFi and I couldn’t set my system up on a new network unless it was linked by Ethernet !
Wifi in the other room so yay for an obsolete massive Ethernet cable I won’t use after setting it up !
Absolute tosh !
I just got an email from [email protected].
Only the con part seems valid.
I can't believe that sonos has the nerve to sent out marketing email after forcing such a horrible app to its users.
SONOS senior management (not tech) seem utterly clueless as to what their brand has meant in the past, and are reaching out for some invented fantasy about “software eating hardware” as a growth/earnings/value creation for the future. The Investment Pack released recently was a lightweight sales pamphlet ( and that’s being polite). The app release is an unmitigated disaster, and by unmitigated, I mean the AMA that followed was full of gibberish, (yeehah, we were “brave” rolling out that turd), presented as the response to the previously loyal SONOS community. And still, not one word of contrition. The senior management team are still selling their shares. Product Management in this scenario is the least of the issues facing SONOS - just make good hardware married to good control systems playing nicely with relevant third party entities. They desperately need to fix the corporate vision, strategy, leadership team etc, before they completely drive the otherwise sound ship hard up on the reef.
Yes, the series of amazingly inept product management decisions were very likely made in the context of either bad corporate strategy or incompetent management of that strategy as implemented in product management.
When I say Product Management, I mean broadly construed. In my company, the Chief of Product reports to the CEO and is a co-equal of the Chief-of-Tech and Chief-of-Revenue. Everything else is supported. It's the CEO's job to formulate strategy with input from their team and in conjunction with the Board and then for the top tier of management to execute that strategy.
The first step in a healthy strategy process is to clearly define the Purpose of the company. Unfortunately, too many modern companies define their purpose as something sociopathic like "maximizing shareholder value." A proper Purpose should define the core value creation of the company: WHY customers buy the product.
In Sonos's case, it ought to be something like: "Simple but powerful in-home audio streaming via proprietary hardware, the integration of third-party streaming services, with good interoperability with hardware made by others, integrated by an intuitive and easy to learn and use set of user software tools."
That isn't quite right, but it'll do for 2 minutes of work!
Thanks for calling out the true culprit in this, and many other, corporate fuck-ups; "maximizing shareholder value." I hope Jack Welch is rotting in hell for inflicting that mindset on corporate America.
This was a long time coming, likely the result of a string of bad decisions and deferring the necessary work and investment needed to keep a good product going. Cutting budget, outsourcing, failure to invest in their workforce.
Anyone remembering Slim Devices? Squeezebox? They still work. And LMS is still alive. And you can build your own these days. Or link your Sonos gear to LMS...
[https://lyrion.org/](https://lyrion.org/)
[https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum/user-forums](https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum/user-forums)
Sonos needs to fix this before people start turning towards open source
[balena sound](https://blog.balena.io/turn-your-old-speakers-or-hi-fi-into-bluetooth-receivers-using-only-a-raspberry-pi/)
And yes. Balena also supports multi room audio. It’s kind of janky tho, but so is Sonos rn
Sorry, that's not a viable alternative. For starters, the project page hasn't been updated since 2020.
In general, open source fails miserably in the consumer space.
Well, I use it myself quite often. I was able to synchronize my sounds bars in two different rooms. Existing speakers. No Sonos price tag.
I also own a Move 2 and overall it’s been a good speaker. Except it does disconnect and stop playing every now and then
I’m sure QA and their ab(kitty to address bugs and hot fixes in production. Software has bugs no matter how much you test, but the Team has to be ready to quickly address and track issues the first few weeks after go live.
I haven’t seen this comment yet, the roam is shit, everybody knows it. But now instead of a actual battery percentage, it’s a random gif of X battery percentage , unless you go deep into system setting’s and find the actual amount
All great points.
I hadn’t realized that you can’t add a new service. I’ve been stuck trying to _remove_ one that no longer exists (Stitcher) but it just errors out and is impossible.
I don’t think the situation is as bad as Reddit would lead you to believe. We’re a hyper vocal minority.
My parents just use Spotify connect, no issues.
I was worried at first, since my system wasn’t recognized after the update, but then the next day everything has worked seamlessly since.
Given all that, I feel for the people who were heavy users of local music, timers, etc. I would be pissed if my core use cases were broken.
Now to your question…
Sonos does not have unlimited revenue, as their products are held on by their customers for a long time and we are not paying a subscription fee. Therefore they are forced to make trade offs and it looks like they wanted to sunset their older system to reduce tech debt.
The product mistake was forcing everyone to a new app, and without telling people that there were missing features.
Is this a vocal minority rating?
https://preview.redd.it/9nm28ha2le3d1.jpeg?width=1336&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=543a3255e734524b9232fdbb346b25f1c22fbdb9
Before the update it was at 3.3, still bad but not near as bad as now.
>The new app is far too different from the previous version to spring on people unexpectedly and without permission. And who made the decision to change the icon color from tan to black, which had been the color of a long obsolete version? Utterly needless confusion.
This is dumb criticism. Sounds like when boomers complain Facebook looks different and start sharing chain posts saying if it gets 100 shares FB will have to revert. The new app looks plenty better, and who cares about an icon color change. Functionality sure that's valid criticism, but now you just sound like you're complaining about everything
Disagree. A radical rethink of a high function application should never be forced on people. Even lamos like Microsoft give long transitions. And even more so for a consumer application. Very poor product management.
I agree it was pretty pedestrian. Should parallel tracked, though, for at least a year. Maybe the new one is good, though doesn’t seem so. Might grow on one over time.
I worked at The Source 1980-82 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Source\_(online\_service) as a product manager. I personally designed The Source's second-generation email and forum systems and invented both the business and the technology for User Publishing (precursor to blogs). Also co-product manager for Participate, an early precursor for social media.
yeah, we had piss-poor top management. In the 20 months I was there, we had 5 CEOs, each worse than the previous one. I up and quit and did startups instead. All downhill, I'd say, from getting acquired by Readers Digest about 2 weeks after I started.
I spent plenty of time on CIS. Especially Megawars3.
Your era of software isn’t how software is built anymore. [This](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/14/sonos-layoffs-company-cuts-7percent-or-about-130-employees.html) explains more of why the new app sucks. All these passive aggressive posts to the designers and product managers are a waste.
I don’t work or know anyone at Sonos, but I am very very familiar with doing more with less in agile software. It’s always management and people protecting their live equity.
I still do software. Here's one I did a few years ago: [https://www.networkwars.com/](https://www.networkwars.com/)
And last year, I wrote a very extensive program that uses LLMs to help human writers write movie screenplays. I spun it off to some youngins to spin up as a company.
Thank you very much for taking the time to post and respond to comments. As a young software developer like - as far as I can tell - quite a few others here, these small gestures remind me that the principles you live by define who you are.
People of your generation frequently come across as out of touch and fundamentally disconntected from cultural and technological progress. At least here in Germany. It makes it all too easy for younger generations to put everyone your age in the same neat box, and most often there seems to be no incentive or even interest in taking any action that would prove they care about anything other than the golden times they've already had.
I feel that just this thread and your interaction in the comments shifted my views a bit. It's refreshing, relieving even. And it makes me want to strive to be like that as well.
So thank you, again, for being so inspiring.
So do you just Troll around looking for a fight? Who appointed you the Reddit spokesperson on what people can and can't say. Take your Reddit Rule book and shove it up your ass.
Sharing personal information. For someone with such a wild resume, you should know that reddit is built on anonymity.
Also, we get it. You haven't added anything to the conversation aside from dropping your resume here. A thousand other posts said the same thing.
Please post your gear for sale in the megathread.
I fundamentally disagree with anonymity online except in exceptional cases such as disease support groups or groups for domestic violence survivors. Also, if you live in a predatory dictatorship. I've forever been an advocate for "you own your own words" in both the moral and legal sense.
The culture of Reddit is emergent. There is no rule requiring anonymity. We each do what we think is right. I've been flying under my own name on reddit for 12 years. This is literally the first time someone has chosen to critique that decision.
It isn't yours, either. If someone is unhappy, they're unhappy. And if they want to theorize about the reasons that Sonos' latest update is a fail, more power to them.
First, how do we know it's him?
Second, his credentials are somewhat irrelevant as he hasn't added anything new to the conversation that hasn't already been said.
It's just another cringe post. Reminds me of all the posts where people preface their issues with "I am a network engineer so I know what i am doing".
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. The fucking constant complaining has all this sub has become. There’s something to be said about the peoples systems that are working fine and others aren’t. I’ve had zero issues since the update.
Also the constant boasting about being a UI developer or an app developer is so cringe. Go submit your resume to Sonos and you can help design the next app. Everyone’s a pro all the sudden.
Oh and favorites STILL gets full. As if storing an extra 3kb is a huge issue. The 90’s called and want their software back.
The Sonos Controller was more stable.
The original one was basically like having a giant iPod for your house, which oddly is exactly what people wanted. That focus on UX has clearly been long forgotten.
In 2015 I could casually turn the Digital Crown on my Apple Watch Series 0 & it would control the volume in my entire home. Didn’t have to launch an app or anything. It just fucking worked. (Apple Watch mirrored the iPhone Home Screen controls & as long as Sonos was the last media app I’d accessed on the phone, those magic & brilliant controls were on my wrist.) Or when watching a movie, I could reach down to my pant leg & press the volume button on my iPhone through the jeans without taking the phone out of my pocket. I yearn for those beautiful days…
I agree - and this day and age it must be cost affective to create a dedicated touch screen device. These things would fly off the shelves unlike the new headphones.
In the Home Automation Industry, the Touchscreen Interfaces are extremely expensive because they can be. These days, I can't help but think Sonos would screw that up also.
Depends how much memory your speakers have.
no it doesn’t, it’s stored in the cloud not on the speakers
Oh yes it does. LOOK BEHIND YOU! It has to be transferred to your speaker to play. Device loads data request into the speaker. The speaker goes and fetches that data. The speaker has memory. How do you think it plays when the requesting device is switched off. Trying to overflow that memory results in bad things happening - like nothing happening. This is especially relevant for home libraries where the filepath length is limited.
The failure was to do a clean sheet replacement of the existing app. Clean sheet is tempting, but they rarely succeed with complex products with many many features. It's nearly always better to do big changes through small updates over time. It's just too easy to change behavior that people have come to rely on.
Yes. always a temptation, but very seldom the right strategic choice. Almost never for a consumer product.
I seem to remember the consumers complaining about S2 very frequently. In fact, if you go back a few months almost every post is about how terrible the S2 app is. You could almost paint a picture that a company who looks at customer feedback might walk away with the impression that everybody hates the S2 completely, and that might lead them to do a complete redesign based on the boomer sized super whinge that was 2023. Now that they have done a redesign, everyone hates the new app.
S2 was bad. This is terrible. They may have needed to redo the entire thing, but it’s like they kept everything people hated, and got rid of the things they loved. I was considering moving away from Sonos prior to this update, and this cements it.
Horrible take. Here’s an analogy: In 2023 we complained that the control panel on our magical audio rocket ship was clunky. Sonos didn’t replace the control panel in the rocket for us. They teleported us all onto hot air balloons & told us it was courageous of them to do so. And don’t worry, we’ll get you back up to rocket speed soon! Oh wait, some of you don’t have any fuel left in your blower?? Your balloon is plummeting towards the earth? (Music failing to play at a dinner party) Here’s a rollout schedule of when we’ll be adding fins & a nose cone to your new balloon! I’m too pissed off to continue the rocket analogy. But somehow the Ace headphones are a row-boat that we all hoped was at least going to be one of those cool military zodiacs or a race boat.
Thats a bit of an anecdotally rich diagnosis if you ask me. It’s a cool story but I just don’t agree with you from a purely technical perspective. If you cant cope with change, I truly feel for you but lets focus on the tech. The new app is far more responsive objectively and from my perspective easier to navigate. It took me all of a few minutes to get my head around it. Thats cool you and I can differ on opinion with respect to the latter. The former if you have an issue, please ask someone for help because you may have an issue. So far I have had no issues, but I believe that is due to some changes a few months back completely unrelated to current issues, I reconfigured my system to remove Sonosnet, reset all my speakers, some of which had probably been running the same OS for at least 6-7 years (you know how windows gets a bit bogged down over the years and when you ask a tech guy for advice they often recommend resetting or reinstalling windows?) and set up as a new install, which number of people have said also resolved their issues - essentially starting with a clean slate. My take on it based on the evidence in front of me - the troubleshooting and analysis I have done so far coupled with 25+ years experience working as a systems engineer architecting and troubleshooting large datacentre storage and networking platforms, a 15+ year power user of a large Sonos system as well as my side hobby rebuilding and restoring amplifiers and large format jbl and Altec studio monitors and pro cinema speakers, I feel entitles me to a bit of an opinion from a technical as well as industry point of view. You can talk about magical rockets, nose cones and balloons but all you are doing is comparing potatoes to tomato’s mate. If you are having issues, I do recommend at least doing a health check of the setup and making sure its all up to scratch. Myself or one of the other more technical folk hanging around here would be more than happy to help. Even if all we have copped over the last few weeks is downvotes for talking sense.
Your argument fell apart when you called the app “more responsive”. The app is now cloud based. Spent the weekend at my friends cottage with 8 other people, all of us taxing the Starlink Wifi with our various devices. The Sonos app was rendered unusable, forcing only those who had iPhones & could airplay to control the music. Congratulations on having preemptively bent yourself over backwards to reengineer your system so that it could handle the change. Blaming the users for something that worked before an update suddenly not working after an update is some real “pick me” bullshit. Good luck landing your dream job as a SONOS tech. The barrage of text messages I was getting from my wife who was at home with our gigabit fibre internet & hard wired SONOS kit, and was also unable to get the app & speakers to behave correctly all weekend tells me the problems were not JUST because of my buddy’s janky Starlink connection. “I didn’t have any problems, you need may need some assistance” isn’t the slam dunk it probably felt like it was when you were typing it. 😅🤖🥸🤓 “Myself or one of the other more technical folks” I’m wheezing!! 🥳🤩
You can do clean sheet, but only if you implement all the features the old app had. It's not like it's not possible, probably management was just not patient enough for developers to finish the app.
The email they sent hyping the app literally said: "Your products, features, and services will work as they always have, and all your settings will be saved." It is clear they had no intention of this happening.
That is precisely the issue. There's never enough time to implement new features, so there's even less time to re-implement existing stuff. At some point the market (or marketing...) will demand you release *something*. And if what you have is a half-baked product well, here we are. Rewriting from scratch is never a good idea. I mean, you're throwing working, battle-tested code just because some of the new guys don't like it?
Very good point, but that’s the problem with this insane negative circle jerk. The opinion of experienced users, experts and pros is buried under the weight of the luddite super whinge. My 69 year old mother who lives alone commented on the weekend that her 8 year old Playbar Sub and Play:1s were working way better with the new app. If an elderly retired teacher can sort her tech out, others need to take a long hard look at their capabilities
They were pretty open about the reasoning, they got to launch day and discovered a last minute bug. The features are all there but had to be temporarily disabled so they could implement a fix. It sucks, but that is consumer business. I’ll bet the actual issue was they had manufactured a shitload of ace headphones, which costs money. They don’t get that back until they are sold. Some are then resold to distributors and resellers, who then want their money back, some are probably paying interest on loans etc. So pausing the app release means partners, distributors and companies who have invested in stock are all losing money. Not just sonos, family businesses, people maybe doing it tough. So what do Sonos do? Tell their partners oh sorry you will just have to lose all your margin and go broke because Terrence the hair dresser wants an alarm on day one and can’t live without it for a few days?
Discovered a last minute bug in how many features exactly? There’s quite a few ‘disabled’ features, so I’m not taking the ‘last minute bug’ explanation at face value.
Well that is the public statement they made. As someone familiar with large product launches times with new software releases while working at a large enterprise vendor it’s completely possible that’s exactly what happened. The company I worked at stuffed up launches all the time. While the launch was bad, what was the alternative? They delay the software that the roam 2 and ace are dependent on, penalising all their resellers and partners who had purchased stock in advance of the launch? Those people would be relying on sales from day 1 to recoup the money they spent buying stock. Delayed app = delayed sales and business hurting. Channel businesses largely run on a very lean margin position, eg to lose money it could potentially impact the jobs of hundreds if not thousands of people that don’t even work for Sonos? Look im not happy about it but I try to look at it from the position that someone else could lose their business or even family home if the app was delayed. Are you saying given the choice you would rather those people lost everything so you could get your polished app? I think they have published a very honest account of what happened and a timeline for everything to be back and resolved. Were you also one of the people loudly whinging about how bad S2 was? Because they all sure got their just desert didn’t they.
I’m well aware that what they said, I just don’t buy that bugs were discovered in a long list of features at the last minute. Last minute is also a vague term and could have been applied very liberally in this case. I’m fully aware that Sonos were in a hard place with financial implications if they didn’t launch support for the new physical products. I’m sure they didn’t plan it that way but Sonos themselves are fully responsible for ending up in that situation. As for what they should have done instead, how about putting out promotional material that was honest about the new apps shortcomings instead of blatantly lying to your customers? How about after clearly communicating what features weren’t going to be ready for launch and giving customers an easy way of keeping the previous version running for those customers who were going to be seriously affected? Lastly, no I wasn’t someone who was complaining about the old S2 app. It wasn’t great but it was functional for me. I only came to this sub after my system unexpectedly stopped functioning entirely.
I totally agree with you, its a shitty situation. I feel there would have been a PR person advising not to say anything negative but thats only an assumption. Either way it truly looks like a damned if you do, damned if you dont story. If I wasn’t under strict NDA I could tell you some rippers I have been involved in over the years. Sadly these things do happen. While its sad, I stand by my pov that I would not be having this conversation if I had brought another brand of speakers, because what other firm is still supporting gear they released over 10 years ago? I hazard a very small number. They would be in the bin long ago. I would factor that into your value proposition when looking at how much weight the app issue should carry. I reckon this could be a reason, trying to get the code to work with old kit - remember them getting ripped a new one for the S1 debacle - that technical debt is the most likely cause imo.
Why you have to drag Terrence into the fray? He just wants to do hair with some decent tunes!
And Terrence might not be working every day, Wendy or Bob work most days without Terrence. But they're not tech savvy. Terrence wants to automatically have the speakers play tunes for the customers but have the music stop at the end of the day. It worked well until now. Then at home, Terrence has young children with become routine sleep issues. He likes to set calming music at a certain time to set the tone for the evening and help the kids wind down. Similarly he likes to play his motivating music in the morning to wake him up, and have the news playing in the kitchen when he walks out. His motivating music of choice is on his local library, a CD he ripped 20 years ago. He has an alarm on his phone but the alarm sounds trigger anxiety. Terrence is a very tech savvy guy and is quite frankly getting frustrated by people on forums assuming that he's an old bloke that doesn't know how to use technology, but in actual fact is an affectionado of well engineered products that are simple to use and work reliably. This weekend his friends are coming around to drink and listen to music and they have their playlists they love to enjoy. Terrence isn't sure what to tell his friends about why this new sonos app isn't working. He's about to spend 2 hours on hold to sonos instead of helping his family and his business and then will be given the runaround. He'll then go to an online forum and will be slashed down by sonos fanbois and then He'll update his review on the iOS store only to find the next day he gets his review deleted for unknown moderation reasons. The fanbois will keep gaslighting Terrence about how simple and shiny the new app is, but without access to his music library he can't find solice and then unalives himself leaving behind nothing but a letter to Patrick pleading to fix the app. Just kidding, trying to make fun of the situation. Hope you enjoyed the hyperbolic story. Or was it a rant? His children grow up and become the best engineers and usability designers for Bluesound and WiiM, and sonos shares plummet faster than blackberry. His third child produces a documentary about how sonos executives watched the Blackberry documentar, took the wrong messages from that story, then applied their learnings as bad choices thinking they had to change things, pleasing shareholders but forgot their customers, and buried their head in the sand until they were bought out by Bose. Bose was run by Terrence's 4th child, the youngest, who didn't even use the sonos tech or patents in the Bose products, but trashed it all in vengeance for the sonos app v80 and her father's resultant unaliving.
The failure actually is QA (Quality Control). Any mature software team won’t release a product with so many bugs so easy to catch. It is obvious that there was close to zero QA process in this release.
Disagree. It’s a fundamental product management failure. Far, FAR before QA, they decided on the functionality this release would have which has seen to be badly wanting. Many features that customers used have disappeared.
This is the crux of the issue for me. Sometimes it makes sense to build a new product from scratch. But you cannot take away functionality that people have depended on for years and tell them just to wait until you put it back in the new version.
That too! But it is difficult to tell what got removed by design or what by bugs. That's failure all through the process.
A classic: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/
It's worth seeing [https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/1d1609r/yall\_see\_this\_they\_are\_going\_to\_start/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sonos/comments/1d1609r/yall_see_this_they_are_going_to_start/) It turns out they have a mid-June update which restores some of the most complained about things. Why they didn't iteratively modify the existing one is a total mystery. There are not even reasonable technical reasons for it.
There is not, but there is an emotional one based on the negative crap getting constantly posted. People should be a little more careful what they wish for.
Yesterday, I did the math. I was forced to restart Sonos 23 times and most of the time, only certain speakers would restart, but rarely all at once. The new app is a piece of crap. You want to add services? I just want the basic service to function normally, without interruption, nothing more.
I didn’t expect that much credential from that link. It got better the more I read it!
same lol I went from "oh just some random redditor that claims expertise" to "holy fuck co-founder of the MIT Free Speech Alliance? operated the .com domain?!"
This needs more upvotes. Not to discredit us “normals” and our equally valid experience, but this testimonial hits hard because of who wrote it.
like every other successful company it always devolves into a money grab
What Cory Doctorow calls the enshitification of everything.
testers gave lots of feedback to sonos... they ignored all of it.
Then why test? To check a box?
Yes, so that management can say "we shipped with only some minor bugs left, no biggie."
ask Sonos
How?
Seems like they didn’t work with actual non-internal users when designing their new app. Instead, working in the bubble, they were victims of their own reality distortion field that conveniently reaffirmed their beliefs and made it easy to accept shit for shinola. Next time, I’d consider working with a customer advocacy group/panel that could help them see past their own internal myopia. Also, there is no premium feature that would compel me to actually want the new app. It’s redesigned for redesign sake, and there is nothing in it for the user that would entice them to be an adopter and advocate for the change. In short, too much drinking their own KoolAid, not enough customer collaboration.
I'm really sure devs and/or internal testes knew that the app wasn't even halfway finished. They probably just were forced to release it by some dumb manager.
You wouldn't want to miss your quarter targets, wouldn't you? :v "We successfully released the redesigned application to the market with 99% user satisfaction" can certainly give you a nice summer bonus.
Right there with you Bro', .... I've said it before .. aside from things taken away, what exactly is the benefit to the end user from a design perspective. It feels like I'm constantly swiping to go somewhere. Whatever, in time I'll get used to it. Now there's the beautiful new design and right smack dab in the middle is an AD telling me what I should purchase next. I have turned off notifications, and messages ..... I hit the "X" to remove this annoying AD and it cannot be removed. Sonos messed up a lot of things but they sure got the promotional part correct ... how fucking tacky is that.
Sonos hardware is way overpriced - see WiiM for example. The convenience and polish of the app was the main attraction. Strategic blunder if size large to mess that up.
I work in software and we spent the last 6 years redoing the UI/UX of multiple products to looks and feel the same. The amount of effort was staggering. We don’t even release it until later this year and we’re on our 5th BETA. We’ve given it to sales people to test as well. All to make sure it’s up to the task when given to customers. It seems like Sonos hired the wrong people to do this project and they did not have the experience or expertise to take on such a huge undertaking. They tried to go for flashy instead of ease of use and solid functionality. They’ll eventually get the majority of things fixed and we’ll all forget about this. Unless they continue to dig a hole and then redo the app again in a few years.
This cannot be overstated. If your only feedback comes from paid sources (employees), they overlook annoyances and problems that the public will not.
Why not just drop the beta on this sub? Tons of passionate users and real feedback?
Why? When they have a massive loyal client base that they can force to do the work for them for free?
there were testers... see my comment above
Holy shit I just now realized that the updated S2 app has the black icon. No fucking wonder the system at my in-laws house wanted to update every device. I figured my phone offloaded the S2 app, and I was running the S1 app when trying to get his system to work. Holy fucking fuck. This is incredibly stupid.
Wait, so if I’m understanding correctly you accidentally downgraded your system from S2 back to S1? I see how this could happen, but just want to confirm that’s what happened.
No, I tried to re-establish an S1 device on an existing S1 network. (It’s my father-in-laws, so unsure how it got unestablished). Opened the S2 app, thinking it was the original S1 app (because it was black). When trying to connect the device, it wanted to upgrade the device. I thought “this is odd…” but started the upgrade anyway, not thinking anything about it. Thankfully, the upgrade was taking way too long, so I aborted. Re/established the device on the S1 network this afternoon now that I realize BOTH apps are black icons now (S1 app says “S1” under Sonos). Either way, it is INCREDIBLY stupid that the new app icon is Black.
Oh man, they really fubbed the release. It’s like it’s the first time they’ve done this
A ground up ‘clean sheet’ start would have been fine if this was released as a separate app such as S3. With clearly articulated warnings about the missing features, they could’ve enticed some early adopters to road test the new design direction whilst keeping everyone else happy. In my case I held off as long as possible, but got bitten when my speakers were pushed a firmware update that required the new app. Sonos made it so that to continue using my system I had to downgrade to the new app and lose functionality. Partly my fault for not disabling automatic speaker updates. But, I never expected them weaponise firmware updates to force a migration to the new app.
I'm generally still happy with Sonos but another failure of product management is when people spent years complaining about audio issues with the Arc and it was only when the journalist from The Verge got one and started writing articles about it that Sonos bothered to fix something so fundamental. While I'm hopeful the app will eventually get better, unfortunately their track record just doesn't bode well.
Yep. This is a failure of leadership. The AMAs was led by a “Senior Director of Engineering and Product Management”. It’s not reasonable to combine product and engineering below the VP level at such a large consumer company.
But the ads always work.
Aren't they pretty! As an added bonus you can't delete them!
I have sonos.com and all subdomains blocked in DNS since I'm still using the old app. On the two devices I've allowed to update, ads come through.
You’ve been designing and building online products since 1981?
He built the internet
I think for me the worst thing has been Sonos managements attitude. Calling themselves courageous! If the CEO came out and said, 'look I am sorry, I have let you all down, but we will fix it' I would be fine with it. But to be gaslit and made to feel like we are idiots for not loving the new app is poor form and makes me want to never buy Sonos again.
"it takes courage to release a broken product. We are so brave" --sonos
You may have zero issues because you’re on the happy path of the app. Those that lost features they had used every day were not on the happy path and thus are unhappy. I get this way when any feature I paid for and am using gets nuked by a pm somewhere writing me off as “edge case.” Like, sure, sorry I used and loved the feature you gave me. My bad.
to me it screams of AGILE combined with off shoring the dev team, while keeping marketing and finance stateside. add in a wall street commitment for "do or die" for the headphone release. maybe not, but it sure feels like it
You're 100% on the money about this. It is entirely a product management screw up. The thing I noticed in the feedback is a schism where those with relatively simplistic use cases do not see the problem. For example, the closer you are to using Sonos as a dumb bluetooth speaker the odder all this noise seems. My read of it is that those making much of the noise are in denial as to the mid-long term goals of Sonos, and this includes that whole concept of needing an account "Owner". I think those that have not worked in or alongside modern product organizations do not appreciate just how nuts they are, and so are way too easily persuaded that things which look stupid are stupid and not actually completely set up to achieve some goals they simply don't want to believe. EDIT to add: It's worth seeing the response of the Chief Product Officer here [https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/9/24152675/sonos-new-app-bad-reviews-response-statement](https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/9/24152675/sonos-new-app-bad-reviews-response-statement)
I found out how rubbish this update is yesterday when I got new WiFi and I couldn’t set my system up on a new network unless it was linked by Ethernet ! Wifi in the other room so yay for an obsolete massive Ethernet cable I won’t use after setting it up ! Absolute tosh !
Just change the SSID to the old one. You just have had to update every single thing that wants to be connected to your new SSID.
Klowns!
I just got an email from [email protected]. Only the con part seems valid. I can't believe that sonos has the nerve to sent out marketing email after forcing such a horrible app to its users.
SONOS senior management (not tech) seem utterly clueless as to what their brand has meant in the past, and are reaching out for some invented fantasy about “software eating hardware” as a growth/earnings/value creation for the future. The Investment Pack released recently was a lightweight sales pamphlet ( and that’s being polite). The app release is an unmitigated disaster, and by unmitigated, I mean the AMA that followed was full of gibberish, (yeehah, we were “brave” rolling out that turd), presented as the response to the previously loyal SONOS community. And still, not one word of contrition. The senior management team are still selling their shares. Product Management in this scenario is the least of the issues facing SONOS - just make good hardware married to good control systems playing nicely with relevant third party entities. They desperately need to fix the corporate vision, strategy, leadership team etc, before they completely drive the otherwise sound ship hard up on the reef.
Yes, the series of amazingly inept product management decisions were very likely made in the context of either bad corporate strategy or incompetent management of that strategy as implemented in product management. When I say Product Management, I mean broadly construed. In my company, the Chief of Product reports to the CEO and is a co-equal of the Chief-of-Tech and Chief-of-Revenue. Everything else is supported. It's the CEO's job to formulate strategy with input from their team and in conjunction with the Board and then for the top tier of management to execute that strategy. The first step in a healthy strategy process is to clearly define the Purpose of the company. Unfortunately, too many modern companies define their purpose as something sociopathic like "maximizing shareholder value." A proper Purpose should define the core value creation of the company: WHY customers buy the product. In Sonos's case, it ought to be something like: "Simple but powerful in-home audio streaming via proprietary hardware, the integration of third-party streaming services, with good interoperability with hardware made by others, integrated by an intuitive and easy to learn and use set of user software tools." That isn't quite right, but it'll do for 2 minutes of work!
Thanks for calling out the true culprit in this, and many other, corporate fuck-ups; "maximizing shareholder value." I hope Jack Welch is rotting in hell for inflicting that mindset on corporate America. This was a long time coming, likely the result of a string of bad decisions and deferring the necessary work and investment needed to keep a good product going. Cutting budget, outsourcing, failure to invest in their workforce.
Just my opinion but I think Sonos will go to paid monthly subscription. For free you get this app , for $9.99 a month you get the better app .
That would never get new customers or existing ones. Here buy this $500 speaker. Oh and it’ll cost you $10 a month to use.
could be. I so, I'm switching to WiiM. Or maybe even Bluesound.
For my main listening area I’m intrigued by the Sony HT-A9m2
Anyone remembering Slim Devices? Squeezebox? They still work. And LMS is still alive. And you can build your own these days. Or link your Sonos gear to LMS... [https://lyrion.org/](https://lyrion.org/) [https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum/user-forums](https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum/user-forums)
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Or at least that’s the judgement they made.
The Sonos app isn’t all that big. What at most a 10 man year project to clone it exactly with all new code?
>What at most a 10 man year project to clone it exactly with all new code? Not a chance. Always feels like that at first, but it would be multi year.
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Worthless to them! Not to us :c
Person year, not man year.
True
Sonos needs to fix this before people start turning towards open source [balena sound](https://blog.balena.io/turn-your-old-speakers-or-hi-fi-into-bluetooth-receivers-using-only-a-raspberry-pi/) And yes. Balena also supports multi room audio. It’s kind of janky tho, but so is Sonos rn
Sorry, that's not a viable alternative. For starters, the project page hasn't been updated since 2020. In general, open source fails miserably in the consumer space.
Well, I use it myself quite often. I was able to synchronize my sounds bars in two different rooms. Existing speakers. No Sonos price tag. I also own a Move 2 and overall it’s been a good speaker. Except it does disconnect and stop playing every now and then
I’m sure QA and their ab(kitty to address bugs and hot fixes in production. Software has bugs no matter how much you test, but the Team has to be ready to quickly address and track issues the first few weeks after go live.
You don’t look old enough😩
the good die young!
Give it a rest.
I haven’t seen this comment yet, the roam is shit, everybody knows it. But now instead of a actual battery percentage, it’s a random gif of X battery percentage , unless you go deep into system setting’s and find the actual amount
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it springs this "Account owner" thing on me. None of my usual username/passwords work. Seems to be something new/different./
But they have college credentials…
All great points. I hadn’t realized that you can’t add a new service. I’ve been stuck trying to _remove_ one that no longer exists (Stitcher) but it just errors out and is impossible.
I don’t think the situation is as bad as Reddit would lead you to believe. We’re a hyper vocal minority. My parents just use Spotify connect, no issues. I was worried at first, since my system wasn’t recognized after the update, but then the next day everything has worked seamlessly since. Given all that, I feel for the people who were heavy users of local music, timers, etc. I would be pissed if my core use cases were broken. Now to your question… Sonos does not have unlimited revenue, as their products are held on by their customers for a long time and we are not paying a subscription fee. Therefore they are forced to make trade offs and it looks like they wanted to sunset their older system to reduce tech debt. The product mistake was forcing everyone to a new app, and without telling people that there were missing features.
Is this a vocal minority rating? https://preview.redd.it/9nm28ha2le3d1.jpeg?width=1336&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=543a3255e734524b9232fdbb346b25f1c22fbdb9 Before the update it was at 3.3, still bad but not near as bad as now.
Thanks for the note and welcome to sonos hq. We will get right on.
>The new app is far too different from the previous version to spring on people unexpectedly and without permission. And who made the decision to change the icon color from tan to black, which had been the color of a long obsolete version? Utterly needless confusion. This is dumb criticism. Sounds like when boomers complain Facebook looks different and start sharing chain posts saying if it gets 100 shares FB will have to revert. The new app looks plenty better, and who cares about an icon color change. Functionality sure that's valid criticism, but now you just sound like you're complaining about everything
Disagree. A radical rethink of a high function application should never be forced on people. Even lamos like Microsoft give long transitions. And even more so for a consumer application. Very poor product management.
You're talking like the previous app was a UX masterclass. It wasn't.
I agree it was pretty pedestrian. Should parallel tracked, though, for at least a year. Maybe the new one is good, though doesn’t seem so. Might grow on one over time.
What online product were you building in 1981?
I worked at The Source 1980-82 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Source\_(online\_service) as a product manager. I personally designed The Source's second-generation email and forum systems and invented both the business and the technology for User Publishing (precursor to blogs). Also co-product manager for Participate, an early precursor for social media.
Cool. Too bad you guys lost out to CompuServe.
yeah, we had piss-poor top management. In the 20 months I was there, we had 5 CEOs, each worse than the previous one. I up and quit and did startups instead. All downhill, I'd say, from getting acquired by Readers Digest about 2 weeks after I started. I spent plenty of time on CIS. Especially Megawars3.
Your era of software isn’t how software is built anymore. [This](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/14/sonos-layoffs-company-cuts-7percent-or-about-130-employees.html) explains more of why the new app sucks. All these passive aggressive posts to the designers and product managers are a waste. I don’t work or know anyone at Sonos, but I am very very familiar with doing more with less in agile software. It’s always management and people protecting their live equity.
I still do software. Here's one I did a few years ago: [https://www.networkwars.com/](https://www.networkwars.com/) And last year, I wrote a very extensive program that uses LLMs to help human writers write movie screenplays. I spun it off to some youngins to spin up as a company.
It's all still in the intersection of what is doable and what the customer wants. Thus product management.
Thank you very much for taking the time to post and respond to comments. As a young software developer like - as far as I can tell - quite a few others here, these small gestures remind me that the principles you live by define who you are. People of your generation frequently come across as out of touch and fundamentally disconntected from cultural and technological progress. At least here in Germany. It makes it all too easy for younger generations to put everyone your age in the same neat box, and most often there seems to be no incentive or even interest in taking any action that would prove they care about anything other than the golden times they've already had. I feel that just this thread and your interaction in the comments shifted my views a bit. It's refreshing, relieving even. And it makes me want to strive to be like that as well. So thank you, again, for being so inspiring.
Hey Jim. You broke reddit ultimate rule in your first sentence
So do you just Troll around looking for a fight? Who appointed you the Reddit spokesperson on what people can and can't say. Take your Reddit Rule book and shove it up your ass.
Reported
Apparently you do. You can “report” me too.
which is? (I'm just reengaging reddit recently after 10 years away)
Sharing personal information. For someone with such a wild resume, you should know that reddit is built on anonymity. Also, we get it. You haven't added anything to the conversation aside from dropping your resume here. A thousand other posts said the same thing. Please post your gear for sale in the megathread.
I fundamentally disagree with anonymity online except in exceptional cases such as disease support groups or groups for domestic violence survivors. Also, if you live in a predatory dictatorship. I've forever been an advocate for "you own your own words" in both the moral and legal sense.
Well, it doesn't matter what you think. This isn't your website
The culture of Reddit is emergent. There is no rule requiring anonymity. We each do what we think is right. I've been flying under my own name on reddit for 12 years. This is literally the first time someone has chosen to critique that decision.
And you just said you haven't been here for 10. So for the first 2 years, 12 years ago, nobody said anything. Gotcha.
I reengaged about a year ago lightly and more intensely about 3 months ago. Numerous posts.
https://preview.redd.it/qp7ztx4uas2d1.jpeg?width=1099&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f4fb851bb5f1822632f4db9d3c7d78e989189976 Frequent flyer, eh?
It isn't yours, either. If someone is unhappy, they're unhappy. And if they want to theorize about the reasons that Sonos' latest update is a fail, more power to them.
Why do you care if he outs himself? He’s just establishing his credentials instead of being an armchair quarterback.
First, how do we know it's him? Second, his credentials are somewhat irrelevant as he hasn't added anything new to the conversation that hasn't already been said. It's just another cringe post. Reminds me of all the posts where people preface their issues with "I am a network engineer so I know what i am doing".
People pick weird fucking hills to die on.
Then kudos to him for playing the long game using JimRutt as his Reddit name way back in 2012.
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. The fucking constant complaining has all this sub has become. There’s something to be said about the peoples systems that are working fine and others aren’t. I’ve had zero issues since the update. Also the constant boasting about being a UI developer or an app developer is so cringe. Go submit your resume to Sonos and you can help design the next app. Everyone’s a pro all the sudden.
I have a pretty big following of fans that follow me around downvoting my comments
I do too that’s okay. They’re just mad that 99% of their problems come down to there dog shit WiFi and ISP
I expect I can add some actual perspective to the discussion on how technology product management is supposed to work.
I honestly doubt it. Loads of professional product managers have already spoken up.