Fed up with Sonos updates - lost one of my speakers

You’ve missed my point, yet again.

My (roughly) 4 year old Motorola phone works just fine. The “cell phone industry’s marketing push” does nothing to stop it from working, nor any other app on it.

Sonos has modified their app so that it won’t run properly on my (roughly) four year old phone. It’s the only app that I use on the phone that worked yesterday but won’t work today because Sonos modified it so that it can’t.

That is what is making my phone obsolete - not the “cell phone industry’s marketing push”.

Do you understand? No - because you don’t want to understand.

Meh, you are in a distinct minority of people who are not affected by the cell phone industry's marketing push.  Why should Sonos worry about you instead of the vast majority of people who upgrade every year or so and want the latest and greatest software features, which are what drives the abandoning of older devices? Ditto to why Sonos should worry about environmental impact of not supporting older OS version.

Am I in a distinct minority? How do you know? Perhaps because you think you are in the majority - that your world view is somehow more valid than mine?

It’s not just my phone that will be affected. I have two 10” Lenovo tablets that are dedicated to controlling my system. When Sonos decide that they won’t let me run their app on those tablets, they too will be obsolete.

Why do I say that this is very bad policy on Sonos’ part? Because to some users, it looks arrogant. It is Sonos, saying to its customers “you think that it’s your system, to use as you want, but we will show you that when we decide you can’t use a piece of your equipment any more, we won’t consult you - we will just change our software so that you can’t”.

The one thing that any company needs more than anything else (IMO) is the trust of its customers. And their arrogance undermines that trust.

Sorry, but I find when human traits such as arrogance or trustworthiness are being ascribed to faceless. corporations, it's time to bow out.  Someone has far too much emotional investment to rationally discuss the topic.  

Perhaps you think it’s irrational that analysts study what causes people to continue to buy products from one company, rather than hopping from one competitor to another?

That sort of analysis makes sense to a corporation - it’s not “emotional investment” on their part.

It may not be the primary thing that drives people’s buying habits, but concern for what we are doing to the environment is playing a bigger part in consumer choice now than it ever did in the past.

Sonos should take care that they don’t alienate their customer base through actions that clearly are not in the best interests of the environment.

Where's the ignore button?

And that’s the point that I made way back up there ^.

The fanboys here don’t want to hear anything that would put any blame at all on Sonos. It’s all someone else’s fault, isn’t it?

Buy once, free support forever is not a very comfortable business model. “Free support forever”, implies that a company must continue to expand its user base by offering currently popular features that will encourage new purchases. A data point that I don’t have access to is what percentage of SONOS sales come from existing customers vs new customers. If virtually all of the revenue comes from new customers, at some point we become a worthless expense.

Would you support a business model requiring fees for continued support of legacy products?

That’s just another diversion, Buzz.

Sonos has already chosen the support costs model (high upfront cost, support for existing users paid for by new customers). What I would prefer isn’t relevant because Sonos aren’t offering me a say in that.

But my criticism is not about the large scale subject of a total support model anyway.

It’s about a relatively small detail: Sonos using Google/Apple as an excuse to skimp on support for older Android/IOS versions - thus making a bad “tech waste” situation worse.

Actually that’s not quite true.  My app informed me that if I wanted to add a speaker to my existing network (a speaker that had dropped off the network then needed to be reconnected) then I had to update ‘the system’ and ‘the controller’.  It was the only choice I had.  So I disagree with your statement that I didn’t have to accept it - I had no choice!  When you get a warning that ‘your system is out of date’ the instinct is to update it - this was long before S2 was around.  You don’t realise at the time that an essential feature is going to be removed.

If I had purchased windows XP, sure its not supported anymore but there would be nothing to stop me from installing XP on a PC and using it - obviously at my risk due to the bugs/security holes and it being unsupported BUT I could still use it.

The ability to add speakers to a network, or create a new networks is a basic essential requirement.  The system should be capable of being rolled back to a factory fresh state and reinstall repeated. But no, I can’t do that now.