This is pretty much a rhetorical question, but when is Sonos actually going to fix all of the problems in the app???  I am so frustrated.  I get random problems - they are the ones that are identified as being screwed up by the bad update. So I just wait for them to be fixed?

@Lexi11201 

Yes, imo patience and waiting for the next updates is the best way. What else could you do…? Sell all your devices and get frustrated? I wouldn’t choose option two speaking for myself.

So on top of the app update removing my music library and working out how to give Sonos permission to see music folders on the Mac  I also had to reboot both speakers ( one and Beam), and do the long winded full deregister Alexa, Amazon and Sonos skill( it’s not a skill is it more like a one star pia ) etc etc etc. I bought the one so I could use Alexa. This fails so many times it’s not true and the app update forcing me to spend around 40 mins doing this long winded delete, reinstall etc etc as per Sonos instructions is making the family pretty upset. You get used to something then for reasons unknown it breaks. The reset still doesn’t allow Alexa to kill the sound on the one/ Beam so I still have to kill it by tapping on the speakers anyway. It’s clear this is still a huge mess and after waiting 25 mins ( the Sonos bot said 10mins) on customer support I gave up. None of this should be this difficult. Period. It’s starting to loose a lot of the shine. 
 

if anyone is really listening , or interested at Sonos what’s the plan from here on in?  Stock still heading south, products delayed, Chief product officer bailing out his stock options last month, .. 

Actually I’m about to do exactly that, I’m fed up with Sonos not supporting their products and forced deprecation, ridiculous carry on for such expensive speakers. MusicCast here I come!

i’m going to get rid of my 20+ Sonos devices. they are useless pieces of s**** at the moment.

i hate what Sonos management have done to a wonderful product. 

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Serious question. Why would anyone buy a Sonos product now? Answer, they’re not. Despite the deluded belief that releasing headphones will distract people from their app disaster, their share price gives you the most accurate picture. Down nearly 40% since the release of the new app. 
 

I, like so many in this forum have bought and recommended Sonos for more than 12 years. I’m embarassed when so many ask me “ what happened to Sonos?”

The more I continue to try and use the app, the more I am completely stunned at just how appallingly the upgrade and post release has been managed.

I have zero faith this will ever be anywhere as useable as it was, let alone better. To somehow believe that things like alarms are the most critical issue is laughable. The bugs in the volume and speaker management alone should be the first priority.

I like many are waiting for other companies to seize what is an extraordinary opportunity to provide disenchanted Sonos owners with better alternative options, and/ buy the carcass of the company, sack the key people behind the upgrade and make it the once great product it was again.

The new app STILL SUCKS. Shame on you Sonos. You’ve killed a 10 year relationship and there is no coming back from this.

With the last updates of the Sonos app in the Apple App Store, the basic use of the app becomes less intuitive, less responsive and in general harder to use (like having to login over and over again). You can find the details in the App Reviews in the App Store.

These reviews are killing for a couple of months now, basically since that one update that started the general downgrade of the app.

Lots of one and two star rates and all similar feedback. However, no replies in the App Store. Here in this forum, I see similar issues expressed, including “please go back to previous version”, both added recently and a few months ago.

Yet, when I look at your public trello board (great initiative btw), I can't find anything that gives me the impression you do anything with this feedback.

What’s the point of showing your plans to the public if you don't listen to that same public?

Do you actually take the user-feedback serious? Or is this all just a marketing-thingy?

I'm also not a fan of some of the GUI choices Sonos had made on the new app, but I have not found it getting (even) less intuitive in recnet updates. Can you give an example of this?

It’s astonishing that we’re 5months on from when this disastrous App refresh was released and there hasn’t been a real solution put on the table to recapture the excitement and faith of the customer population.  It’s all patchwork.  This is just stubborness and counterproductive. People buy new systems bc they see and hear the sound quality coming out of speakers… so they are being hoodwinked bc they get home and set everything up only to find that it’s completely unreliable bc the software is substandard.  This lagging realization is why the revenues haven’t slumped as much as the stock price… but that reputational wave is coming, bc the hardware might be good, but the software is wretched.

So let’s talk about how to solve this:

1. You can’t solve complexity head on. Release a stripped down player that is rock solid stable, that doesn’t skip or have latency lags, or make speakers disappear randomly… just get us back in the game playing our music with solid and immediate control fidelity, a simple queue, reliable service hooks, and get it playing without interruptions.  Go back to the basics.  you guys got way ahead of yourselves with useless UX “features” and tricks with advert insertion in the streams… something didn’t work right (obviously) and now we all see it’s a complex tangled mess that makes our volume controls flaky, makes our music libraries, services and speakers disappear, makes the tunes stop randomly… Strip it down and get us back playing our music without so much friction-- and the vitriol and hate for the company will start to heal.
2. Use an architecture that is truly microservices and loosely coupled components.  My guess is you guys strayed from this basic principle of building complex systems.  If you’ve tangled too many features in one component or microservice, then you can’t isolate and turn off the problem code and fix it independently. So we’re back to step 1: Start with basic core functionality, test and simplify until rock solid.  Then add back incremental functionality and battle test again.  Release a simple stable player.  The fact that you guys are taking 5mos to resolve this suggests you’re too tangled in a successor update app that is still way to monolithic.
3. Set up at least two independent solve teams. Go back to the last reliable version of the app, and let at least two different power teams innovate different fork solutions.  Let your best people do their best work unimpeded.  Clearly what happened here is Engineering got marginalized. Zero doubt that the best Engineers in the house knew this version of the app would be garbage, but they were overruled and silenced.  
4. Sonos makes money from selling hardware, not software.  So create a gateway and DRM setup that allows you to open up the ecosystem so the world out here can build our own software components (reliably!) and offer them to the Sonos community in an App Catalog.  My guess is the community is capable of producing better software than Sonos is. The gateway can require an advert stream and a secret key credential which approach is easy enough for you guys to build, and if the SDK is done right with components and libraries, then people can build their own controllers.  It is sufficiently complex enough that it becomes a filter in its own right, and ends up getting you a way to import good ideas and robust engineering from outside the company, while allowing the installed base to opt out of bad Management decisions that interfere in our lives in a way that really pisses people off.  Messing with music is messing with people’s lives and they don’t like it.  So let the installed base participate in resolving things in alternative ways… and Sonos can transition to being a company that offers components and services, and not a straightjacket walled garden.

what the f*** is this garbage ass app update that was foisted upon us?  there’s not even any way to select the actively playing device without grouping it with whatever device was previously selected. 

i’ve spent probably close to $10k with y’all over the years, but you f***ed up big time and you assuredly lost my future business.  it’s been this way for months now. what the hell is wrong with your product team that you didn’t just roll back your s***ty app update?

hey sonos?  maybe don’t force product updates when they suck. it should be glaringly obvious that your “improved experience” is anything but when the first thing you hear upon calling Support is an announcement that updates to fix customer complaints about the “experience” are “coming soon”.  y’all suck.

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hot take:  it sucks 

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.