Three Things Nobody Needs

I’m not saying this has been a pleasant experience in the slightest and ignoring the political side of things, the Sonos App has constantly received bad comments about the layout.  So to say the old App was ‘perfectly fine’ is a stretch.  However, it did work!

There is also the the aspect of rearchitecting the App to support future products. e.g. the Ace.  The reality is that for a product like the Sonos App, any change will be resisted, even if it was a perfect match for the functionality and had no defects - lot’s of people just don’t like change.

I do agree that the Sonos approach of not announcing a high level roadmap, so that customers have some visibility of the changes due, has made this release a much bigger problem than it needed to be. 

A simple set of release notes, that stated that an App release has been created to support the new products but unless you are using one of the new products, don’t accept that update, would have negated most of the negative aspects of the new App.

The old version of the app was simple and as a dealer I could walk the most tech ignorant clients through it. They could then take over and work the basics of the system without issue. The tab system was easy to find what you needed to just play music. There was a couple corky issues with it, but this constant swiping to find anything is absolutely terrible. Not to mention I’m getting phone calls and texts from clients on missing devices, features, and slow to no response from the app. 

That’s actually hysterical, because I can show you almost identical posts from when the “old app” was brand new (and when the one before that was brand new, too).   People hated the tabs, they hated the color scheme, they complained about too many swipes and clicks, they called it “unintuitive”, “clunky”, “inelegant”, etc.  UI/UX design “science” is a joke.  “Elegant” just  means familiar.  “Intuitive” just means muscle memory has developed.  Is the app incomplete?  Yes, it never should have been released half-baked.  Is it unfamiliar?  Yes.  Will it be the longed for elegant, intuitive app people are screaming to get back when Sonos updates the UI again in a few years?  I’d bet my house on it (and I have history to prove it).

Do these thread titles look familiar?

• Sonos iOS update is shockingly bad - first impressions

That’s actually hysterical, because I can show you almost identical posts from when the “old app” was brand new (and when the one before that was brand new, too).   People hated the tabs, they hated the color scheme, they complained about too many swipes and clicks, they called it “unintuitive”, “clunky”, “inelegant”, etc.  UI/UX design “science” is a joke.  “Elegant” just  means familiar.  “Intuitive” just means muscle memory has developed.  Is the app incomplete?  Yes, it never should have been released half-baked.  Is it unfamiliar?  Yes.  Will it be the longed for elegant, intuitive app people are screaming to get back when Sonos updates the UI again in a few years?  I’d bet my house on it (and I have history to prove it).

Do these thread titles look familiar?

The S1 version and S2 as it began are what made Sonos a household name. Prior versions of their app was why only computer savvy users were into Sonos. The quality of the product is wasted if it’s not simple for a customer of any technical level to operate. Everyone can find something to complain about, but this Russound knockoff app release is going to make existing customers apprehensive of buying new products from Sonos and their dealers.