Sonos iOS update is shockingly bad - first impressions

There are are lot of people — some first time posters — saying they don’t like the app.

There are about 3 posters trying to persuade them they are all wrong. Why is this?

Andrew

It IS familiarity and muscle memory.

Not it's not, it's about a redesign that significantly less efficient and user friendly than the previous one, which - let's be clear about it - wasn't all that great either. Don't think a single controller in the history of sonos every was. But at least they were relatively reasonable to use.

People that use now playing as their default screen for example - and their appear to be quite some of us - need to click a lot more than before, while often jumping from top of the screen to the bottom and vice versa.

Take the case of switching to another room. In the past that ment clicking on the little dropdown of the current source and selecting another source. Eh voila, you are good to go. Want to change the configuration while you're at it. you can do that too.

In the new model I suddenly have to click the little arrow at the top, then select 'rooms' at the bottom, and from there start scrolling to the speakers of interest, to achieve the exact same thing. That's not an improvement.

Regardless of people knowing how to do it or even getting used to it, it's stil a lot less efficient than simply using that dropdown on the now playing screen. And turn and twist it like you want, that sucks.

And in regards to that scrolling. How is fitting only 2,5 instead of 5 speakers in a single screen an improvement? We don't need to see what's playing first before we can select the right speakers. That can done afterwards. Instead we now need to scroll to do sowhere previously we didn't.

The white design sits in the same boat. Not only does it pose issues in with dimmed lighting, it's also less clear which items are most important or belong together. On that same speakers screen for example. I currently have a bigger block at the top telling me 'no music'. Underneath it, it says kitchen, but that those 2 things go together is hardly visible.

Again, that sucks and it a typical example of form over function. And that for a rather questionable form at best.

That you fail to acknowledge all this as well as several other elements, and instead constantly blame people for pointing this out, is pretty sad.

PS - And by the way, the thread I took nick's post from was FORTY-FIVE pages long. The ones on 8.0 barely tip 5 pages. You guys are friggin pikers. 😃

So nicka99, care to mention what your thoughts of the 5.0 app were when it first came out compared to now? ;)

PS - And you know that no amount of "refinement" would ever stave off the complaints due to unfamiliarity. You only have to look at 5.0 to see that. The reason 5.0 got "better" is not due to "refinement" because quite frankly, the tweaks were about 10% of what people were asking for. It got better because people got used to it.

To be honest its so long ago I dont recall my initial thoughts. I do agree regarding unfamiliarity which can take some time to overcome but there are some pretty annoying things about the new version that are even familiarity wont fix:
- the layout of 'my sonos' with different (over)sized icons and number rows per section ('stations' vs the others) where the first items you scroll horizontally then you want more you hit 'show all' then it flips 90 degrees to a vertical list. why so inconsistent ? Better to just allow users to create whatever sections they want, put them as a submenu under 'my sonos' button and go direct to the list view. Even better - put this as a top level menu under 'Browse'
- the colour scheme is awful in low light. light grey on white - ugh !
- the oversized icons on the rooms list meaning extra scrolling
- the loss of the quick access to settings from rooms list
- the loss of showing the next track
- the splitting of Favorites and Playlists from Browse (why?)
- the loss of the hazy background album art (served no purpose but looked nice!)
- no menu bar on 'Now Playing'
...

So nicka99, care to mention what your thoughts of the 5.0 app were when it first came out compared to now? 😉

For your reading pleasure . . . Sherman, set the Wayback Machine:

New App = Horrible

See you all in three years when 8.0 is perfection! 😉

Hence the transformation of the old UI from horrible to perfection over the course of time.
Now I'm not saying this is the case with this UI, and there are definitely some enhancements to be made (and I too still don't like the queue defaults, but have learned to live with them). But I've found over the years to not trust my first impressions until my muscle memory has time to adapt, and that first impressions are often based on unfamiliarity rather than an unbiased analysis, We are only human.

Don't remember the UI being horrible, bought into Sonos late 2009 and watched it improve until the mid-2016 v7 release, which is terrible only because it's still unfinished/abandoned (also, desktop and mobile controllers are diverging because the desktop development seems to have stopped).

Interesting you mention "queue defaults", because they don't currently exist, except maybe in a Sonos blog post. Think about it - as you navigate through browsing down to the album/playlist/etc you want to play, the default play action switches from "ephemeral queue - default is replace and play" to "persistent queue - default is to insert regardless of whether it makes sense in the current playing/paused/expired queue context". We have all learned how to navigate the app, and how to understand whether a given play action does what you intuitively expect, or just random crazy behaviour that has to be learned. This is why I have such an issue with the Sonos UI - not the intended design (which is fine), but the reality of the unfinished software they have spent the last 15 months shipping.

Thanks for your honesty. I submit to you that muscle memory is neither hardwired, nor unlearnable, nor unadaptable. Hence the transformation of the old UI from horrible to perfection over the course of time. I'm old enough to remember the mobs with torches and pitchforks that stormed the gates of Corel when they dared to switch from the old Word Perfect control key interface to some new fangled thing called WYSIWYG. Much the same complaints about counter-intuitiveness, longer times to produce product, nobody likes it, horrible interface, etc. were tossed around like hand grenades with far more rancor that even here. Turns out, the old Word Perfect interface was about as intuitive as driving a car with your feet on the steering wheel and your hands on the pedals, but when you've always driven that way, the right way seems wrong.

Now I'm not saying this is the case with this UI, and there are definitely some enhancements to be made (and I too still don't like the queue defaults, but have learned to live with them). But I've found over the years to not trust my first impressions until my muscle memory has time to adapt, and that first impressions are often based on unfamiliarity rather than an unbiased analysis, We are only human.

It honestly ain’t that bad, I got used to the new layout almost immediately. It reminded me of the Apple Music app for iOS. It is more polished and modern. I think people just got super comfortable with the old version and when it is time for a design update, it messed up people’s routine. There are a few suggestions I have, which I’ve created a thread about, but they were the same suggestions I had from the old version.

Hey. I just signed up for an account so I could chime in. It's really bad!!! I actually was showing people the old app as an example of a great user interface. There were so many things you could do in there and it was all easy. Now it's been a few weeks and I still can barely figure out how to do anything at least on the first try. You really should take a look at this and consider reverting. I don't understand why you would mess up something so good.

I’ve never complained about the Sonos app in my life because I have never found anything worth complaining about. You can defend the indefensible as much as you like. I am sure you have heard the expression “perception is reality” - seems that my perception like many others is that this thing is broke. You have a right to disagree in which case get off the thread but don”t tell me my perception is wrong because it differs from yours.

I have never claimed the app has great new features. I hope you are not mistaking me for a Sonos employee. I have attempted to help at the following thread.

https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/user-guide-for-v8-app-6792817/index1.html#post16159012

I think you are missing the point. Nobody cares about “great new features” when they cannot do the basics. You personally think the app is “easy to use” but as you can see from these multiple threads - that is not the consensus. They took something that was intuitive and made it complex and/or buggy. Right now I am unclear if this sh@t does not work because I am doing it wrong or because it is buggy - but either way this means it is “broken”.

Like everyone else here, I am not worried about “being left behind”.......left behind because of what exactly? I don’t need new features that screw the easy experience.....really I don’t. I just want to easily play my music across multiple rooms......I had that and now I do not