Legacy Customer Betrayal

  • 29 August 2021
  • 7 replies
  • 184 views

Userlevel 1

I’m in the same boat as many other legacy Sonus customers.  The lack of integration of new products like Roam and Move with our legacy S1 products is a betrayal of those loyal Customers that helped make the company successful.

I could understand Sonus developing S2 to take advantage of additional features that may not be available for S1 compatible equipment, but to not make them backward compatible at some basic level is either lazy or incompetent - the alternative, suggesting this by design smacks of a company seeking to generate future revenue from planned obsolescence rather than innovation.

Only option for me at this point is to take both the Roam devices back to the store and no longer consider myself a Sonus Customer.


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7 replies

Userlevel 7

Isn’t the Move compatible with the S1 app?

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4786?language=en_US

Userlevel 7
Badge +21

Btw is Sonos not Sonus. If you are that unhappy, and spamming this community about the same issue, then take it back would be my advice.
 

There are many reasons why the newest devices can’t work with old hardware. Key being all Speakers need the same firmware, and the extra facilities the newer hardware offers means larger Firmware, which cannot fit on the older devices. Hence the S1 and S2 split.  You can run both in a single household too.  
Go buy Bose, then you’ll soon understand what obsolescence is. 

I’m in the same boat as many other legacy Sonus customers.  The lack of integration of new products like Roam and Move with our legacy S1 products is a betrayal of those loyal Customers that helped make the company successful.

 

As a legacy customer, I agree it is disappointing but it is a stretch to call it a betrayal when legacy products still work fine under S1 that continues to get updates. There are now other options to expanding wireless music presence in the home as well...get these if you wish, it is a free market in that sense.

This subject was covered in detail here and here. There’s no point in opening yet another thread to reheat the same old debate.

I’m in the same boat as many other legacy Sonus customers.  The lack of integration of new products like Roam and Move with our legacy S1 products is a betrayal of those loyal Customers that helped make the company successful.

I could understand Sonus developing S2 to take advantage of additional features that may not be available for S1 compatible equipment, but to not make them backward compatible at some basic level is either lazy or incompetent - the alternative, suggesting this by design smacks of a company seeking to generate future revenue from planned obsolescence rather than innovation.

Only option for me at this point is to take both the Roam devices back to the store and no longer consider myself a Sonus Customer.

 

It’s not a “betrayal”, it’s basic engineering.  Here’s the situation:

S2 cannot run on S1 only devices, and S1 is frozen because it uses almost all the resources on the S1 devices.  Now, in order for an S1 device to play in sync with an S2 device, the S1 device has to know how the S2 device is defined.  Since an S1 device can only run S1, and the Roam didn’t even exist when S1 was frozen, how are they supposed to define the Roam in the S1 app?  Hence the reason why S2 devices that were defined at the split can run on S1, and why S2 devices which came after the split cannot. 

I’m in the same boat as many other legacy Sonus customers.  The lack of integration of new products like Roam and Move with our legacy S1 products is a betrayal of those loyal Customers that helped make the company successful.

I could understand Sonus developing S2 to take advantage of additional features that may not be available for S1 compatible equipment, but to not make them backward compatible at some basic level is either lazy or incompetent - the alternative, suggesting this by design smacks of a company seeking to generate future revenue from planned obsolescence rather than innovation.

Only option for me at this point is to take both the Roam devices back to the store and no longer consider myself a Sonus Customer.

 

It’s not a “betrayal”, it’s basic engineering.  Here’s the situation:

S2 cannot run on S1 only devices, and S1 is frozen because it uses almost all the resources on the S1 devices.  Now, in order for an S1 device to play in sync with an S2 device, the S1 device has to know how the S2 device is defined.  Since an S1 device can only run S1, and the Roam didn’t even exist when S1 was frozen, how are they supposed to define the Roam in the S1 app?  Hence the reason why S2 devices that were defined at the split can run on S1, and why S2 devices which came after the split cannot. 

 

Even if there is room on S1 devices for what might be a rather minor update to the S1 system, it would still add a significant amount of development for new products.  In addition to what is all ready required to bring a new product to S2,  a different version of the firmware would need to be created and tested within S1, most likely with only a subset of the features available on S2. For example, the Roam’s ability to share it’s bluetooth source might not be available on S1.  And while that’s technically understandable, customers would be confused and upset that the feature isn’t there, and probably claim Sonos is lazy and incompetent anyway.

Maybe more importantly, the volume of S1 customers is surely not large in comparison to S2, and will only shrink going forward.  Many of those customers are not introduced in new products, even if Sonos made any for S1.  Sonos would likely lose money on the effort to continue development under S1.

 

 

Even if there is room on S1 devices for what might be a rather minor update to the S1 system, it would still add a significant amount of development for new products.  In addition to what is all ready required to bring a new product to S2,  a different version of the firmware would need to be created and tested within S1, most likely with only a subset of the features available on S2. For example, the Roam’s ability to share it’s bluetooth source might not be available on S1.  And while that’s technically understandable, customers would be confused and upset that the feature isn’t there, and probably claim Sonos is lazy and incompetent anyway.

Maybe more importantly, the volume of S1 customers is surely not large in comparison to S2, and will only shrink going forward.  Many of those customers are not introduced in new products, even if Sonos made any for S1.  Sonos would likely lose money on the effort to continue development under S1.

 

 

I would imagine what little spare space is left in S1 they are saving for future bug fixes and security patches.