Sonos iOS update is shockingly bad - first impressions

For your reading pleasure . . . Sherman, set the Wayback Machine:

New App = Horrible

See you all in three years when 8.0 is perfection! 😉

a few tweaks (major tweaks, but still tweaks) were all it needed. I suggest the same is true today...

I guess therein lies the problem. It really seems that each new UI launch is rushed out of the door in response to who knows what and then the changes only start when the complaints begin. Why not do some proper research upfront and/or in alpha and apply whatever tweaks are needed (within reason) before rolling out to the masses. I recall a prior new UI (dont know which) where the volume slider was missing from the Now Playing window. Thats just madness. You could say the same on this release as to why the toolbar is missing from the 'Now Playing' which I know was highlighted before general release. These are small things which could easily be incorporated into the release when the UI is introduced rather than in reaction to the ensuing uproar that follows delivering something in a seemingly 'unfinished' state. No one ever is shouting for a completely new UI so even a delay of a few months to 'refine' it based on some wider user feedback is surely preferable to the current approach of deliver 75%, face a barrage of criticism, then deliver the rest in 5% increments later on

So nicka99, care to mention what your thoughts of the 5.0 app were when it first came out compared to now? 😉

PS - And you know that no amount of "refinement" would ever stave off the complaints due to unfamiliarity. You only have to look at 5.0 to see that. The reason 5.0 got "better" is not due to "refinement" because quite frankly, the tweaks were about 10% of what people were asking for. It got better because people got used to it.

So nicka99, care to mention what your thoughts of the 5.0 app were when it first came out compared to now? ;)

PS - And you know that no amount of "refinement" would ever stave off the complaints due to unfamiliarity. You only have to look at 5.0 to see that. The reason 5.0 got "better" is not due to "refinement" because quite frankly, the tweaks were about 10% of what people were asking for. It got better because people got used to it.

To be honest its so long ago I dont recall my initial thoughts. I do agree regarding unfamiliarity which can take some time to overcome but there are some pretty annoying things about the new version that are even familiarity wont fix:
- the layout of 'my sonos' with different (over)sized icons and number rows per section ('stations' vs the others) where the first items you scroll horizontally then you want more you hit 'show all' then it flips 90 degrees to a vertical list. why so inconsistent ? Better to just allow users to create whatever sections they want, put them as a submenu under 'my sonos' button and go direct to the list view. Even better - put this as a top level menu under 'Browse'
- the colour scheme is awful in low light. light grey on white - ugh !
- the oversized icons on the rooms list meaning extra scrolling
- the loss of the quick access to settings from rooms list
- the loss of showing the next track
- the splitting of Favorites and Playlists from Browse (why?)
- the loss of the hazy background album art (served no purpose but looked nice!)
- no menu bar on 'Now Playing'
...

To be honest its so long ago I dont recall my initial thoughts.
...
I do. You hated it with the fiery heat of 1000 suns. Your 7 year old couldn't figure it out any more and your wife had taken to using the line-in. You repeatedly pleaded with Sonos to let you revert to the previous version. You posted review trends from the App Store and called for campaigns against the new app at Engadget, CNET, The Register, Gizmodo, TechRadar... You were constantly stating you are looking at the competition. Here's just a sample:

- if they want to update the look of the app then indeed Ill get over it. However - hiding things away that I used to have in plain sight (ipad in landscape mode) - I will not get over this. Why should I click more than I used to ? I dont bother listening to music so much lately as I know it used to be good and now its just painful. Thats hardly an improvement is it ?

In other words, the same things people are screaming about here. Honest question: Still feel the same way about the old app? And don't say they fixed the things you hated, because you explicitly listed 8 things which if not fixed you will "never be happy" and they fixed only one (scrubber bar and time elapsed).

Look, I'm not picking on you. You just happen to be one of the most vocal about this stuff so you are a good example of the phenomenon at work here. It IS familiarity and muscle memory. A UI is a UI, sure some are better than others, but the trends nowadays have more to do with fashion and slight usability tweaks than anything else. Some hate change (as you apparently do) and they complain a lot. Some love change, so they complain very little. Some, like me, feel it is all just getting used to it and could give a care because I just want to play music.

PS - And by the way, the thread I took nick's post from was FORTY-FIVE pages long. The ones on 8.0 barely tip 5 pages. You guys are friggin pikers. 😃

Wow - jgatie - think I’m gonna have to get some police protection outside my house the way you are going on and clearly a little obsessive spending hours going back over 3 year old posts.

I don’t hate change at all or I’d never do, buy, see or experience anything new in my life. I do however hate changes that are not improvements. Did you even read my earlier comments above with my view about the app ?

You also seem to suggest I do nothing but trawl these forums complaining but you obviously omitted to mention all the posts where I am trying to help others out in addition to spending a considerable amount of time testing for Sonos and providing what I hope is valuable feedback in alpha and beta phases to improve the product for everyone’s benefit

It IS familiarity and muscle memory.

Not it's not, it's about a redesign that significantly less efficient and user friendly than the previous one, which - let's be clear about it - wasn't all that great either. Don't think a single controller in the history of sonos every was. But at least they were relatively reasonable to use.

People that use now playing as their default screen for example - and their appear to be quite some of us - need to click a lot more than before, while often jumping from top of the screen to the bottom and vice versa.

Take the case of switching to another room. In the past that ment clicking on the little dropdown of the current source and selecting another source. Eh voila, you are good to go. Want to change the configuration while you're at it. you can do that too.

In the new model I suddenly have to click the little arrow at the top, then select 'rooms' at the bottom, and from there start scrolling to the speakers of interest, to achieve the exact same thing. That's not an improvement.

Regardless of people knowing how to do it or even getting used to it, it's stil a lot less efficient than simply using that dropdown on the now playing screen. And turn and twist it like you want, that sucks.

And in regards to that scrolling. How is fitting only 2,5 instead of 5 speakers in a single screen an improvement? We don't need to see what's playing first before we can select the right speakers. That can done afterwards. Instead we now need to scroll to do sowhere previously we didn't.

The white design sits in the same boat. Not only does it pose issues in with dimmed lighting, it's also less clear which items are most important or belong together. On that same speakers screen for example. I currently have a bigger block at the top telling me 'no music'. Underneath it, it says kitchen, but that those 2 things go together is hardly visible.

Again, that sucks and it a typical example of form over function. And that for a rather questionable form at best.

That you fail to acknowledge all this as well as several other elements, and instead constantly blame people for pointing this out, is pretty sad.

Wow - jgatie - think I’m gonna have to get some police protection outside my house the way you are going on and clearly a little obsessive spending hours going back over 3 year old posts.

I don’t hate change at all or I’d never do, buy, see or experience anything new in my life. I do however hate changes that are not improvements. Did you even read my earlier comments above with my view about the app ?

You also seem to suggest I do nothing but trawl these forums complaining but you obviously omitted to mention all the posts where I am trying to help others out in addition to spending a considerable amount of time testing for Sonos and providing what I hope is valuable feedback in alpha and beta phases to improve the product for everyone’s benefit

I never said you didn't help people. That is not the point. And don't try to deflect your own blatant hypocrises by accusing me of stalking you, you posted it, so own it. Besides, it didn't take me hours, it took me minutes, this is the age of Google, if not the age of decent InSided search. So why don't you stop attacking the messenger because I was able to bring up your old posts that you had conveniently forgotten, and how about you state why the 5.0 release that your wife refused to use and you launched a campaign against is now so great, despite Sonos fixing only 1 of 8 items you found completely unacceptable? If those 7 changes were not improvements on the app before 5.0, and Sonos never fixed them, why is 5.0 now so intuitive and easy?