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The majority of reviews for the update are NEGATIVE.

  • 15 October 2017
  • 32 replies
  • 1721 views
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32 replies

B
Userlevel 5
Badge +11
Its like we are being punished for owning Sonos with this new update please fix i have house full of your stuff

Fix what? Nobody can read your mind.
jgatie
My post refers specifically to reviews on the Google Play Store, because there is data to back up my statement. If you have a similar histogram of reviews from past releases, feel free to post it here.

There is no point in continuing to belabor this. Sonos seems to have agreed to fix many flaws we have pointed out. The question is how soon can we expect these fixes?

I could give you a 45 page thread full of them, as well as another thread titled almost exactly like this one about terrible app reviews of the 5.0 release. But will it really do any good?
K
Ok, I was wrong. And I am now quite used to the new app and have no issues with it of any kind. I hope - and I am sure that Sonos listens to all here - that for a long time to come only subtle tweaks and evolutionary changes are made to this version. No roll backs.
jgatie
Change always invites negative reviews -- but these reviews aren't just griping about the unfamiliar. This upgrade truly fails in usability compared to previous versions.

Same thing was said about 5.0. Now it is considered the ultimate example of usability. My how things change.
jgatie
No, it is true. And I never said one is better or worse than the other. I don't give much credence to the "science" of UI design, it is more trends and fashion than any real science. As to usability and intuitiveness, people rioted over the usability and intuitiveness of the WordPerfect UI after they changed to WYSIWYG. Is anyone going to tell me that a blue screen, DOS character based, control/shift/alt/arrow key combination based wordprocessor is better than a graphic based, mouse driven, WYSIWYG interface? Of course not, but people did, because that is what they were used to.

Look, Sonos will tweak it, your muscle memory will adapt, and we will all be back here in three years arguing the same things, except by then 8.0 will be perfect and 11.0 will be horrible.
B
Userlevel 5
Badge +7
What is so unpolished about the new design?
(1) Play 1, (1) Play 3, (2) Play 5s Gen 1, (1) Play 5 Gen 2, (1) Connect Amp powering a pair of Wharfedale Diamond 10.1, (2) Echo Dots.
jgatie
I suggest to you that the swapping of the controls on the fighter jets was a perfect example of the lack of science in UI design, i.e. the trends and fashion emphasis I spoke of. Luckily, changes based on fashion or trends in audio system apps don't result in lost lives and multi-million dollar craters in the ground.

At the time of the WordPerfect release, every one of the complainers could not recognize the obvious benefits of WYSIWYG because they were blinded by their familiarity and muscle memory allegiance to the old blue screen of perfection. They utterly refused to believe there could be any improvements, improvements which in hindsight, became stupidly obvious. If familiarity and muscle memory are so powerful as to blind a large portion of a user base to obvious benefits like WYSIWYG, imagine how effective they can be to mask subtle improvements, or just a different style or look with the same functionality? Kind of like how 5.0 was originally horrible until people got used to it, so that now it is intuitive, beautiful and easy to use.

See you all in 3 years.

PS - Sonos never forces upgrades, though if you enable automatic updates on your devices, they will do just that, update automatically. Also, upgrade one device and you will have limited Settings menus until you update your hardware in kind. Ditto for those who update hardware but not controllers.
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