Sonos for Apple Watch

OK - so we have three apple watches in the household and used them in anger from Friday evening its my opinion that this will be a great way to control Sonos. Having said that I think the post from Chris saying that its a 3 month development plan is probably correct. Where Chris I think is wrong is that the watch SDK was made available to many technology companies way before the release of the watch, many companies had allocated resources to work on the development and a number of them had the privilege to receive an emulator (similar to that in the apple stores demonstrating the watch apps).... so development could (and in my opinion should) have been underway.

If I look at the competition for Sonos (Bose for example) they have firmly placed themselves in the airplay camp and as such control of the Bose systems works through Apple's associated way of playing music.... I guess for me the two are therefore related - no true Apple airplay support and a lack of watch app is a great disappointment.

Don't get me wrong - I love the Sonos gear, it works fantastically in my house and zones well with everyone able to control and use it as they see fit..... but (and I run a technology company) if you are positioning yourselves as a company as Sonos do they must embrace technology like the watch much quicker ...... I won't change my view that the stuff is very well made and easy to connect and sounds fantastic but a little innovation goes a long way.

Just my opinion so don't shoot me!

Sonos definitely moves on a very slow conservative pace whe it comes to software .... Good and bad. Hardware they told to stick to their core and can't blame them. as conservative as they normally are with software why I think they didn't devote much to Apple watch until release. I still stand by my 3 month prediction. However for simple function once Apple allows direct apps that don't interface with smartphone I'm sure we will see a third party remote. That is really what is needed and not supported yet by Apple.

I didn't say they couldn't do. I said they historically have not and obviously haven't. It would be better though to be a remote app that didn't have to go through iPhone. Which can't be done now as far as I have heard.

This is a need and not a want

Sonos should be very proud of having such a unique, intelligent, and loyal following!  I have never seen a forum that is filled with as many constructive ideas and positive criticism.   I find forums to be the best endorsement OR disparagement for consumer/ prosumer products and the companies that manufacturer or sell these products.

I’ve had several friends recommend SONOS but I had way too much invested in multi zone amps with digital keypads in every room etc…. However, as a result of these recommendations I visited the Sonos website and decided to upgrade, mostly as a result of reading the comments made by members of the Sonos community. My original Connect purchase turned into, 1 Sonos Amp, which turned into 2 Sonos Amps, which turned into 5 Sonos Amps, then a Play1 for my kid’s bathroom.  I wasn’t in the market for any audio equipment, and the above happened over the course of a weekend, but what was so amazing to me is everything just worked!!!!   

Visiting forums of any given consumer oriented company, on any given topic and you can almost count on 90% of them have a third of the users which are trying to be helpful, the other third tries to comment and have product suggestions based on opinions for which the laws of physics, engineering, or common sense don’t apply…  The final third tries to either disagree with everyone who commented previously or use the forum as a place to offload aggression at people or topics without having anything constructive to say.   It is refreshing, that this is not the case with Sonos.  Most everyone seems to have an understanding of reality and agree on almost everything!  

Sonos seems to have the best hardware in the business.  However the software side has room for improvement: Users are telling the company exactly what to do.  The only questions is why the delay? There were no improvement suggestions that I saw which were contested by other users, or impractical, in fact almost every suggestion was embraced by other users.

As I have seen some other users own their businesses or run their organizations they work for, I am certain they would agree… I would love if my customers would tell me exactly (with the level of detail in this forum) what to do to improve my company in order to get more of their business!!!   This data is invaluable. 

So:  Apple watch app: Sonos I can’t understand why you’d be so ambiguous with your response on this.  Clearly the Apple Watch goes hand and hand with your product. The SDK has been out since November and I can’t imagine you haven’t been working on it.

There are so many other great suggestions in this forum that are mere tweaks to the current software. 

Crossfade improvements:

Multizone improvements:

Home screen access to Controller:

etc… 

Thanks for manufacturing a great product. Thanks in advance for dedicating the necessary resources to provide your users with the Apple Watch App soon, as well as to continually make improvements to the applications that control your hardware. 

Another watch user hoping for a Sonos update here.

I have noticed quite a few apps with updates recently that include support for Apple "Watch" Sorry to say this again sonos but you're missing the boat on this one.

Alaska Airlines whipped up an Apple Watch app, but still no Sonos controller app. Hmmm.....

Yes please! This would be one of my most used apple watch apps around the house!!!! Please make this happen ASAP!

@Mark Guildord I think you'll find that everyone here is very passionate about sonos and would love to see a function that would enable them to control their sonos setup from the Apple "Watch" So yes they might be over enthusiastic but I don't think they are being outrageous in requesting this functionality on the Apple Watch.

I think the "no brainer" comment is in regards to the thought that there would be demand for this, not any commentary on what's going on with the development cycle at Sonos.

In fairness, the Apple Watch SDK was available for quite some time, and numerous other apps were ready to go on launch day for the Apple Watch, while Sonos hasn't really said much about their plans.

That's rather disappointing, and sends a different message than a company that either is always on top of being compatible with our latest devices, or at least is providing detailed communication regarding future compatibility.

So the "no brainer" statement is all about eventual support, not a development cycle?  Then you continue in your post to criticize the fact that Sonos did not deliver a watch app prior to launch?  So in other words, the discussion of who knows what about a software development cycle is on the table after all?

Well I'll tell you what I know about software development:  A company like Sonos is not going to dedicate the man-hours to something like a watch app until there is a sufficient market for the app.  They are certainly not going to support what may be a vanity niche item right out of the box.  They are going to wait to see what the market impact is, just as they did with the iPad, Android, and Windows Mobile platforms.

I wouldn't think we would get more then Current Song Playing, pause/play, forward, back.  Which for a basic remote as the watch would be should be plenty.  Maybe background behind the info above be the album art (watermarked behind).