Trending Lyricist I

New app update horrible, giving a leg up to the competitors

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
October 8, 2017
43 replies
2622 views

I can only speak for myself, but the SONOS app before 8.0 was near perfect. It was ultra fast, selecting room and what music to play was super intuitive. Everything important was on the same page screen. I've had lots of friends ask me about why get SONOS instead of competitors like HEOS and such. Even though HEOS and others can offer a wider variety of physical connections, sound formats DTS etc...there was before 8.0 an extremely easy answer to this: The APP. It is super fast, never buggy. You come home from work, go into the sonos app and within 2 presses there is music in the living room. It doesn't matter how great the hardware is if the software doesn't work, but with the SONOS app, it just works, always, and so EASY.

But now that argument is gone. The new sonos app, with all the stuff on the home screen, and now you have to go into seperate tabs to select room and search for music......you RUINED it. You downgraded the app to something similiar to HEOS' already awful app. What were you thinking?

UI

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chicks

Sigh.

C

cbuk

Lyricist II

Long time user....definitely a step back..icons need to be much smaller, colors are stark and distracting and the selection methodology is not intuitive. Allow selection of playlist and then room and vise versa..My family is turning music on/off in all the wrong rooms now. With a family of 5 and 9 zones with dozens of playlists there is way too much scrolling and switching back and forth between menus that we weren't doing before. I agree with simonlesley, after recommending this to all my friends who are now Sonos users this update takes one of those reasons to recommend Sonos off the table.

J

John B

I am not here to defend the changes, but to pick up the OP's point about selecting a room and playing music....

Swipe down the Now Playing screen, tap rooms button if necessary, double tap required room, hit play. Takes me about a second. Is that really so demanding and difficult? Is that really ruined? I cannot put it anything like as strongly.

Takes a couple of seconds to do it, but how long did it take you to find out how? Be honest! Like others, I am a long time serious user of the hardware, but hate the iOS app and cannot understand this continual upgrading for no real purpose.Honestly, a couple of minutes. I used to swipe down the screen a lot in the old app so it is a natural thing for me to try. It would have made life easier if the bar had been on the Now Playing screen.
By the way, have you read the release notes?

C

cbuk

Lyricist II

How about devoting more space to the room on the playing now menu, my kids are now turning music on and off in all the wrong rooms. The problem arises because when you re-enter the app it defaults to where you left off. I'd like to see this changed to always default to the room view or user selectable.

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johncanter

Enthusiast II

Oh god, not another one 'sighing' all the time

M

mstraupman

Lyricist I

I totally agree. The app update is one of the worst updates I have seen in any app. The other one worked fine and was intuitive. This is one of the least intuitive I have ever seen — it's just awful. Come on Sonos!

D

Diceman

Enthusiast II

Some people loved the previous app version. But not the users who have come on here and said it was rubbish and a disaster and should be rolled back to the previous version....

I shall reserve full judgement until I have used it for a while

I am one of those. Would still prefer 5.0 - best version ever.
7 was a downgrade and 8 is even better.

TBH all the user problems could be sorted with very little effort by Sonos.

1) Choice of Skins
2) Open pages on List (now in more) rather than HUGE Icons
3) One tap on a song ads to queue (maybe double tap for instant play? Personally no need)
4) My Sonos to be TOTALLY customisable ------------there is a clue in the name !!

S

skipmid

Contributor I

I've been a Beta user for Sonos for 3 years... with this update given out to the Beta community a few months ago, our house backed out of the Beta program. On my exit I sent them copious notes on specifics - noting a lot of "if it aint broke", don't let Amazon change your UI, and relating multiple stories of New Coke from the 70's.... not surprisingly...ok, a little surprisingly, the loosed this turd from the stables anyway.... I don't know how much iOS and Amazon affect product development at Sonos, but its a damn shame that another dog's tail is wagging their dog... I have to assume anyways, because this update is such a turn from what I consider intuitive interfacing at its best.... Shame...

nicka99

Local Superstar

I've been a Beta user for Sonos for 3 years... with this update given out to the Beta community a few months ago, our house backed out of the Beta program. On my exit I sent them copious notes on specifics - noting a lot of "if it aint broke", don't let Amazon change your UI, and relating multiple stories of New Coke from the 70's.... not surprisingly...ok, a little surprisingly, the loosed this turd from the stables anyway.... I don't know how much iOS and Amazon affect product development at Sonos, but its a damn shame that another dog's tail is wagging their dog... I have to assume anyways, because this update is such a turn from what I consider intuitive interfacing at its best.... Shame...

I don’t think apple or amazon have any power over front end design of the sonos app whatsoever - design / UI choice is totally up to Sonos

S

skipmid

Contributor I

I think changes were made to accommodate Amazon's Alexis and I do believe Amazon had some impact. iOS latest update going to only 64bit completely changed Control4 - creating a hardware change now to stay compatible.

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