This used to be a feature on the legacy app too. It’s long gone from there, too.
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Sonos Said Rolling Out Widely Criticized App Redesign Took 'Courage'
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Maybe I'm just a moron, but if your new app is missing important features, why not just wait until those features are ready before launching the new app? This seems like a repeat of the SiriusXM debacle from a few months ago. No one is clamoring for a new app, so just wait until the the app is finished before releasing it. This seems like common sense to me, but I don't have a marketing degree, so what do I know?
Nothing beats a wired system, there's no denying that.
I’m sorry, but what the f@$&?!?!?!?!?!
How in the heck do you rebuild the app but make it worse? You can’t take a step back when trying to make the app better. You have to go forward and try not to remove features.
Looks like Sonos DID NOT do any research into what users wanted nor did any closed public beta testing in the app before releasing it to the wild.
Sono is going to lose a lot of customers to either Google or Apple because of this app debacle. Apps that control the speakers matter a lot.
Have never distributed so many heart-likes in such a quick glance for so many comments in this thread…
Plane analogy: “we got a perfectly flying working plane, it does the job and then some more… but it’s outdated; so, we are going to retire it and give you the all new plane2, it took courage to make, it got a fuselage and all! Just no cockpit, no wings and no landing gear… but don’t you worry, wings will be next.”
And no, it isn’t “pandemic” or “work from home” faults, this has been going for damn too long.
(for personal proof: we just released a full fledged game in record time and record budget for one of the biggest streaming platforms with a tiny team 100% work from home… the trick? We only had a kinda sort of a half manager/producer; no bean counters or bureaucracy for the most part, only developers/artists).
Today it’s a joke.
But the few that manage to kidnap a process, product, culture, domain, etc. manipulating data so that they get promoted by avoiding accepting reality, in the name of a quick buck and promotions is poisoning everything and everybody else’s honest approaches. It’s narcissistic, egotistical and full of denial.
It has tainted the health industry, construction, arts, media/movies/games, science, politics… everything. It gets tiring.
Anyways, this ended up being a rant, this SONOS was the last drop for this week… good thing it’s Friday.
Truly I don’t know what’s up or what has been happening in the last 10+ years regarding tech development in general.
Plane analogy: “we got a perfectly flying working plane, it does the job and then some more… but it’s outdated; so, we are going to retire it and give you the all new plane2, it took courage to make, it got a fuselage and all! Just no cockpit, no wings and no landing gear… but don’t you worry, wings will be next.”
And no, it isn’t “pandemic” or “work from home” faults, this has been going for damn too long.
(for personal proof: we just released a full fledged game in record time and record budget for one of the biggest streaming platforms with a tiny team 100% work from home… the trick? We only had a kinda sort of a half manager/producer; no bean counters or bureaucracy for the most part, only developers/artists).
Exactly, before it wasn’t even an option, once the cartridge contents got sent to the packaging machines off it went, it was a fully working 99.9% bug free game. Sure, some extreme rare bugs would be exploitable (as the speed runners take advantage of), but at worst they are endearing and almost a feature.
Today it’s a joke.
The whole finance-major/MBA/trigger-happy-lawyer dude bro mindset is going to eat this world alive… no offense to those that embark on such endeavors, they do require hard work and focus to finalize them let alone succeed in this competitive environment.
But the few that manage to kidnap a process, product, culture, domain, etc. manipulating data so that they get promoted by avoiding accepting reality, in the name of a quick buck and promotions is poisoning everything and everybody else’s honest approaches. It’s narcissistic, egotistical and full of denial.
It has tainted the health industry, construction, arts, media/movies/games, science, politics… everything. It gets tiring.
Anyways, this ended up being a rant, this SONOS was the last drop for this week… good thing it’s Friday.
Ugh. I should have read this before I updated. Alarm is the only real feature I use for Sonos. This is such BS
You actually couldn’t be more wrong. This is exactly the direction our IT management was pushing to modernize software development: ship a minimally viable product (MVP), patch it with continuous integration/deployment (CI/CD), perform QA within the same team as you go. I think their biggest mistake might have been in the determination of what the MVP was, and it sounds like they also didn’t write enough test cases (I won’t go into why I think this approach is wrongheaded in this case).
As to why they did this now, as some have mentioned it could have been necessary to support new SONOS products, but I’ve done tons of releases just to keep up with security requirements, library deprecation, cost reduction (licensing or support issues), and corporate compliance and standards. Sometimes the end user wouldn’t have any idea that something changed, but other times the changes were invasive enough that a rewrite was cheaper than retrofitting.
BTW, I am no SONOS apologist. Once my “S1” stuff stops working I’ll be done.
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Something taking courage doesn’t automatically make it a wise decision. Slapping Mike Tyson in the back of the head takes great courage. I do not recommend it.
Sonos has a point. It does take courage to deprive users -- many of whom have invested thousands dollars in Sonos hardware -- of basic functions they've come to rely on. Takes stoopidity too.
I've never used the Sonos App so I'm not too familiar with the missing features. What's apparent to anyone outside their office though is that this is bad product management. Based on this quote, they had every intent to ship rebuilt software that was lacking features people relied upon. How the F you don't give your extremely loyal user base a heads up as soon as you know is just bologna.
They should have sent out a press release a year ago saying 'Our software team is working on rebuilding our base code so you may see an update that's missing features you rely upon. Either don't upgrade right away or sit tight while we roll out more updates'. But no - we don't get the option to not upgrade software these days. Stuff gets updated whether you want the features or not.
Frankly, I'm personally fed up with hardware that relies on software updates and the whims of a developer or marketing manager or CEO. It's becoming more and more frequent where a software or firmware update gets rolled out without you knowing causing primary interface elements and features to go missing. I don't have the time or the ducks to give to be a multi million dollar company's beta tester and sit with a chat bot to troubleshoot something they couldn't hire proper developers to debug before the product shipped.
I'm actually looking to buy a new home soon and was considering installing Sonos throughout the home. Never will I touch a Sonos product now. I'd sooner run wires and control basement-installed amplifiers with a remote control the old fashioned way. I've been in the home automation industry for over 25 years and have worked with electronics years longer. What will always be true is that heat causes failure and "software" means always relying on someone else to accomplish basic tasks.
Edit: had to alter some "bad words".
I think what you've instead defined is the fine line between courage and stupidity. Which absolutely applies to this Sonos story.
I was always taught the most important thing in major UI updates was to ensure feature parity with what it replaced. If you do remove a feature, it needs to be apparent why. Ideally because new features make what was removed useless.
Now how many current and potential future customers will have the courage to not spend money on Sonos products until this hypothetical "exciting" future arrives? 🤡
And who cares about this exactly? You just know whenever filler articles like this are churned out it's because one of the authors who started it has an autistic fetish over some small thing seething over something no one else cares about.
Oh boy. I found this comment in the linked Reddit thread
You know what takes courage? The CEO telling shareholders they've misjudged a product launch.
You know what takes courage? The CEO telling shareholders they've misjudged a product launch.
They removed the headphone jack to "encourage" people to buy the Airpods...
See also: Apple Books, a.k.a. iBooks, a.k.a. the books section in iTunes.
We still haven't recovered from that travesty.
Wow - completely missed this "update" but took a look just now - what a confusing mess they have made!
Fully invested in Sonos (3 soundbars, +15 speakers) but about 60% of the day I still using the macOS Controller app, 30% we run from Home Assistant and only 10% from the iOS app.
Still happy we can manage alarms from the macOS Controller...
Fully invested in Sonos (3 soundbars, +15 speakers) but about 60% of the day I still using the macOS Controller app, 30% we run from Home Assistant and only 10% from the iOS app.
Still happy we can manage alarms from the macOS Controller...
I’ll never understand companies that update their software knowing that it breaks some features and is straight up missing others. If the old app was still working fine, at the least make it still available and release the updated app as a new app. This way Sonos can gain valuable insight from users of the new app, and actively work on its bugs and missing features, but still allows for users to stay on the old tried and true app until the new one is (at the least) back to feature parity.
Considering that over 70 people have commented, including you, I’d say quite a few people care.