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Is Sonos about to revert to the previous app... maybe?

  • 15 August 2024
  • 7 replies
  • 161 views

No doubt somebody else has already posted this, but I didn’t find anything doing a search. Anyway, this looks interesting:

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/08/14/sonos-bring-back-old-app/

Too late now, will make management look week, more and more users supported each day, hopefully learnt for next time tho


The Verge article was posted in another thread. Largely felt to be click-bait as it says it was considered at a high level, but ultimately that can mean it came up in discussion with the board. It does not mean there is a chance of it returning. The old app is now at odds with the latest firmware, and wouldn’t work for Ace owners who would be stuck if their speakers don’t currently work, so wouldn’t be quite the restoration of service that everyone assumes it would be.


They could have two channels, those that want to revert (assuming the previous app could be made current firmware compliant) and those that want to persevere with the current version, including those that have Ace. All speculation on my part 😊


Whilst this is not what those that have spent the last 3 months plus asking for the old app back will want to hear I think this would be a massive mistake by Sonos.

That is not to say that I am happy with the new App, or that I don’t think they should have backed it out on 8th May, its just that we know they have made some firmware changes for the new App and that these are incompatible with the old App. That means they have to do development work on the old App to make this happen.

If Sonos do this now I think that we will have to choose between two buggy Apps, or maybe use both at the same time, and that we will have to endure this for months. Personally I don’t see how doing this now will make things better, its too late and has been for some time now.


As I mentioned, upon reading The Verge article, the semantics and precise wording in the article is for the purposes of creating a news story because they know Sonos issues drive clicks/visits. It’s also why MacRumors has chosen to write about The Verge article. And it won’t be the last.

At some point, a news outlet will doubtless say it IS coming back because they have not understood the nuance of the original piece...


As mentioned above, ‘click-bait’, that is now spreading, including this thread 😀


Why are you guys so sure that the old app is incompatible with the new firmware?  Other old apps are working just fine - e.g. the Windows client and SonoPhone.  Also, it would be possible for Sonos to revert to the old firmware as well if that was really necessary.

Finally, I know that Sonos wanted a “clean slate” for the new app to enable quicker development cycles and more modern practices.  But considering the irony of what actually happened, it is quite possible that the nice clean well structured new app has suffered code spaghettification of a level equivalent to the old app and is getting harder to maintain already.  Especially as it seems they did not get the architecture right in the first place.


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