Changing the name of a speaker

Having run Trueplay in 3 Sonos-equipped rooms, I can say that switching it on and off does make a noticeable difference, and the difference is a big improvement.

Since Trueplay can only be run on an iPhone, the suggestion for non iPhone owners is to borrow one.

if you are doing so, then borrowing it to add/reconfigure speakers and setups, and running Trueplay, is not so very different, and usually doesn’t take very long.

Agreed, for non-iPhone users this is not ideal. There’s a lot in life that’s like that.

Sonos is losing their innovative edge or in other words losing perspective of technology. I am a Canadian but will quote a famous US president : not because they are easy, but because they are hard: Sonos is becoming a company that is taking the EASY way out.

I’ve been saying that for years. I owned a software company for 25 years. No matter how you look at it, maintaining four sets of code is part of the business. Yes, some things they can’t fix like the ‘from this iPhone’ feature when it is an Apple requirement, but like removing the renaming feature from the desktop version... what’s the point? It’s already in there. Instead of maintaining, they remove. First rule of thumb in software development is NEVER remove a feature. Sonos doesn’t care. That’s just incompetent and/or lazy.

Renaming a room is part of Room Settings, which is now behind a sign-in authentication. To retain it on the Desktop Controller would have meant adding in all the sign-in code. Not lazy, just a business priority decision on where to focus resources.

Renaming a room is part of Room Settings, which is now behind a sign-in authentication. To retain it on the Desktop Controller would have meant adding in the all sign-in code. Not lazy, just a business priority decision on where to focus resources.

I think this is probably true. The small number of people affected by this - which has a simple workaround - compared to the number of people clamouring for Alexa and Google voice support, and improvements on the initially released capabilities of that feature, make it an obvious business decision.

Of course, the alternative would be a huge price hike for new speaker purchases, which would upset existing users wanting to add to their setup and would reduce new-to-Sonos-ownership numbers so that Sonos can build its software development team.

The hardware is software driven. A software development team should already be part of the numbers. Judging from the amount of time it takes for relatively minor features that make it into an update and the amount of time between those updates tells me that team is lacking and inept at best.

Whether the software team's productivity is X or Y, they're a finite resource whose priorities must be set. My point was that to retain the renaming option in the Desktop Controller was not just a question of "leaving it there", there would have needed to be not insignificant effort to port the user account authentication functionality across.

Renaming a room is part of Room Settings, which is now behind a sign-in authentication. To retain it on the Desktop Controller would have meant adding in the all sign-in code. Not lazy, just a business priority decision on where to focus resources.

Not remotely true. The only room setting behind Auth is max-volume-limit. Everything else is still on the long-existing LAN APIs. It actually took a lot more work to remove the Room Rename feature on Desktop than it would have to have left it in. Its not like this API has changed, ever, so maintenance cost is zero. This particular feature deletion really didn't make any engineering sense at all, unlike some that arguably did (eg Setup, Add Speakers).

Room Rename was about the simplest feature I added to my own app: one UPNP API call, and a UI so simple even I could code it up quickly.

Renaming a room is part of Room Settings, which is now behind a sign-in authentication. To retain it on the Desktop Controller would have meant adding in the all sign-in code. Not lazy, just a business priority decision on where to focus resources.Not remotely true.
Do this:

• reset a controller (I just tested on an iDevice)
• restart it and associate it with the household
• hit More/Settings/Room Settings
• you get a 'sign in to access more features' screen before you can proceed

I'm not interested in what you can do behind the scenes. I was talking about the functionality presented to the user.

You said they removed the entire Room Settings feature from Desktop because it required auth, and that is incorrect. They could have left it all as it was, and simply not attempted to add Volume Limit to Desktop, and pissed off a lot fewer people.

They decided to throw the baby [All Room Settings] out with the bathwater [Volume Limit].

You said they removed the entire Room Settings feature from Desktop because it required auth, and that is incorrect.
Sonos chose to put all room settings behind auth on other controllers for security reasons. It stands to reason that they would want consistency across platforms.