Show some courage Sonos... Withdraw the new App

The last major UI update caused a much larger kerfluffle. Dozens of whiners back then. This thread is nothing in comparison, lol.

Very true and in that instance a lot of it was resistance to change accompanied by some minor usability issues. It took Sonos some 12 months to accept there was an issue and fix it. You think that they would have learned from that experience.

The current new app I am sure is getting some whining because it is different. However, it is fundamentaly a very poor design visually and has flattened the navigation drastically. This is fine for a single room/speaker application but has made multi room control very clumsy and non-intuitive.

Given that good multiroom audio is starting to be the only differentiator that Sonos has from the growing competition it does look like an own goal.

I have seen the claim made that they have loads of positive feedback. I have to say that this is very difficult to give any credibility. Many of us are professional designers and can recognise this as a lamentably poor design that would never see the light of day in any organisation with the lightest usability testing in place.

I know that Sonos won't have the courage to pull this, they don't respond to user feedback. This used to work OK when they were the only good option available.

The dogs are almost upon them and this is not a good time to alienate their loyal customers for the sake of principle.

This is a copy of the email I sent to Patrick Spence yesterday. I thought I'd post it here in case it got lost amongst hundreds of other emails in his inbox :)


I have got a bit heated over the last couple of days on the forums and I don't like that. I usually like to remain positive about software because I know what it's like to put your whole life into a software package and then people pick fault with it.

At the moment I feel like I'm trapped by Sonos and I don't like that feeling. I have no option but to accept the latest ios app which has completely spoiled my enjoyment of the hardware that I've bought from your company over the last few years (since 2009). At the moment I've resorted to using my old CR100 and CR200 controllers due to the problems with the ios app.

I've just been for a long walk to think over if I should sell all my Sonos gear, I wouldn't do this lightly but I would if I can't get rid of this feeling of Sonos not caring about existing users and treating them badly by not keeping them informed about anything and forcing unpopular updates on people. I have no option but to use Sonos software as far as I know because it's a closed system.

My current problems with the app are that it's not as quick and intuitive to use as the previous version. I liked the previous version and used to show it to visitors proudly. The My Sonos page is virtually useless for me because it only shows up to 8 favourite radio stations and then you have to click on See All. The main problem I have with the My Sonos page is that it keeps starting my NAS drive up to look for the album artwork for my FLAC playlists. I want to be the one who decides when to access my NAS drive - that should only happen on the evenings when I want to listen to my own music. At the moment it's starting the drive up every time I go to the My Sonos page and I find that unacceptable.

I'm hoping that there's something that a lot of users don't know about, and that we're using the app wrongly.

Regards

There's a great opportunity for third party developers to provide a good alternative UI.

Does anyone know if Sonopad still works for IOS?

Is there an equivalent Android offering?

Sorry JohnG666 its unlikely to fix your NAS issue

Android users just google 'sonos 7.4 apk' and download it, delete 8.0 and install 7.4 again

There's a great opportunity for third party developers to provide a good alternative UI.

Does anyone know if Sonopad still works for IOS?

Is there an equivalent Android offering?

Sorry JohnG666 its unlikely to fix your NAS issue

Just checked out SonoPad and it still exists. The developer still maintains the app. It was last updated last July. I just bought the app for €1.09. Works like a charm on my iPad. I feel immediately at home on it. It's not perfect, but it feels nicer than the current Sonos controller app.

Thanks for the tip, Lozboz!

Cheers. I might give that a go myself.

It might be worth telling Sonos how much better it is!!

just as an update and to post something more positive than I have been doing over the last few days!!

I'm still not pleased with the new version of the app due to reasons I've already outlined but I am more pleased with Sonos as a company. I'm currently in conversation with a couple of people from Sonos and with their support team.

Because these people have taken the time to reply to my emails I am feeling more like a valued customer and I'm starting to believe that things might get sorted so that the majority of us will be happy again.

I have a bit of a workaround for my problems with the app which, whilst not ideal, do allow me to continue using the app (with fingers crossed for a better version to come 🙂 )

just as an update and to post something more positive than I have been doing over the last few days!!

I'm still not pleased with the new version of the app due to reasons I've already outlined but I am more pleased with Sonos as a company. I'm currently in conversation with a couple of people from Sonos and with their support team.

Because these people have taken the time to reply to my emails I am feeling more like a valued customer and I'm starting to believe that things might get sorted so that the majority of us will be happy again.

I have a bit of a workaround for my problems with the app which, whilst not ideal, do allow me to continue using the app (with fingers crossed for a better version to come 🙂 )


That's encouraging news.

As to the app itself, this is a solid foundation that we're going to be building on. A lot of basic steps had to be taken, and now with that done, we can work on more improvements. You can expect to see the app change as we continue to work on it. Keep on sending in constructive feedback, we'd love to send it along to the development team so they can build an app that as many people as possible enjoy using.

I don't doubt that the team is trying to improve things. But... the new approach to navigation, especially favourites, has issues (why are the first 8 favourite "others", sorry, "artists", more important and easier to access in a feature that is specifically designed for quick access?). The play/queue interaction is still completely broken and unintuitive, 15 months on - seriously, try explaining "play all"/double-click (replace queue and play) versus "play all->play now/play next" (insert into queue whether running or expired) to a new user. We shouldn't have to learn which buttons to avoid, or whether hitting something as simple as a "play" button is going to add/insert/replace.

I don't doubt that Sonos do user testing. The user is not always right. This user is not always right. I also assume that there's a "new features not bug fixes" approach in Sonos, and getting fixes out is hard, especially given the infrequent waterfall release schedule Sonos stick to. Design is hard. Software is hard. We get it. But people built this thing, and people decided to ship it. Maybe a blog post explaining how to use the software and why it's designed that way (as opposed to what you intended to build) would help us. Of course, if you have to explain your software, you already failed...