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Every App update makes things worse - where do we go from here?

  • June 3, 2024
  • 5 replies
  • 150 views
K
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In 2016, SONOS blew my mind and I recommended it to everyone I know. While the speakers get better, the app just continues to get worse. This latest update is one of the worst experiences I’ve had with an app, and as someone that works with digital products, I have a strong spidey sense that the app was rushed to push out functionality for the headphones while not caring much about anything else.

I’m not sure I can continue to give them my money. Not only is the latest app rough from a UI/UX aspect, the quiet removal or exclusion of legacy features has my system unstable at best. The removal of support for Boost, is possibly the final straw. Without it, my system is constantly disappearing, my products are hard to decipher (i.e., my arc is working, but also offline?)

I can see on this forum that others are feeling the same. What do you plan to do? Are there alternatives? Is there a different way I can engage with the products and company? If I am home, music is playing. It’s frustrating to now have to troubleshoot so much to make that happen.

 

Edit: Looks like you cannot buy Boost from sonos.com anymore. Not sure if that’s new or old news. Hopefully there’s a replacement in mind.

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5 replies

S
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  • stevepow
  • Prominent Collaborator I
  • 198 replies
  • June 3, 2024

There’s a lot of competition now that didn’t exist when Sonos started up.  When you build brand loyalty, that’s not so big a deal, but when you destroy brand loyalty…

For now, you can hack Sonos back together with the SonoPhone app or Plex (which is not so great so far).  When looking for new components, you can look into alternatives like Roon, Wiim, Bluesound, Heos, etc.

I have a good bit of money tied up in this stuff, so I’m not throwing the baby out with the bath water just yet...trying to make the Plex and SonoPhone solution work.  Plex is flakey but works - you get search back for local media on your NAS.  A hodge-podge of fiddly bits - yes, Sonos have put us between a rock and a hard place.

Seems Sonos has decided most of their customers use the product to stream and watch TV.  And they may be right.  The gen of people ripping CD collections to a NAS will shrink and eventually die off...in twenty years or so.  But for us who aren’t dead yet, we’ll probably have to look elsewhere.  Who dies first, me or Sonos?  I bet I outlast them if they stay on this path of customer disregard.

 

As for Boost, I think they want you to get off of SonosNet and onto a solid WiFi network of your own making.  They don’t want to be in the WiFi business which almost no one had back when Sonos launched, so they needed SonosNet and the Boost repeater. That’s my guess.

A
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  • Antifon
  • Prodigy III
  • 390 replies
  • June 3, 2024

Have you yet accepted any firmware updates? If not then one way forward (and the one that I am using) is to use Android devices for the app, and revert to version 16.1. The method to do this is easy to find and quite easy to follow. I’m planning to stay on that forever, or such time as Sonos get their act together (which could of course be many months away yet...).

press250
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  • press250
  • Prodigy III
  • 633 replies
  • June 3, 2024

Have you yet accepted any firmware updates? If not then one way forward (and the one that I am using) is to use Android devices for the app, and revert to version 16.1. The method to do this is easy to find and quite easy to follow. I’m planning to stay on that forever, or such time as Sonos get their act together (which could of course be many months away yet...).

FWIW, my system updated to the v16.2 firmware and the Android v16.1 app works great. That said, I’ve since disabled firmware updates.

A
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  • Antifon
  • Prodigy III
  • 390 replies
  • June 3, 2024

Thanks - that’s useful info.

K
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  • Kimchi750
  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • 4 replies
  • June 3, 2024

There’s a lot of competition now that didn’t exist when Sonos started up.  When you build brand loyalty, that’s not so big a deal, but when you destroy brand loyalty…

For now, you can hack Sonos back together with the SonoPhone app or Plex (which is not so great so far).  When looking for new components, you can look into alternatives like Roon, Wiim, Bluesound, Heos, etc.

I have a good bit of money tied up in this stuff, so I’m not throwing the baby out with the bath water just yet...trying to make the Plex and SonoPhone solution work.  Plex is flakey but works - you get search back for local media on your NAS.  A hodge-podge of fiddly bits - yes, Sonos have put us between a rock and a hard place.

Seems Sonos has decided most of their customers use the product to stream and watch TV.  And they may be right.  The gen of people ripping CD collections to a NAS will shrink and eventually die off...in twenty years or so.  But for us who aren’t dead yet, we’ll probably have to look elsewhere.  Who dies first, me or Sonos?  I bet I outlast them if they stay on this path of customer disregard.

 

As for Boost, I think they want you to get off of SonosNet and onto a solid WiFi network of your own making.  They don’t want to be in the WiFi business which almost no one had back when Sonos launched, so they needed SonosNet and the Boost repeater. That’s my guess.

 

Thanks for this response - definitely helpful. I think you’re right about Sonos not wanting to be in the WiFi business. I believe the longtime users have watched them create functionality they needed at the time, and then offload it once it becomes ‘common’. I think I’m more so irked at how poorly they’ve removed support (or seemingly removed).

I’ve got a ton of money wrapped up in SONOS. Hell, I even own a bunch of their stock (which is also failing me). The resell market is strong… no telling if it’ll stay strong with this app. But, we’re in a sweet spot now where getting something else is a definite possibility. I’d hate to stick it out just because it’s familiar.

I like the conversation about the firmware updates as well… but, more work than I’m interested in 😁

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