Sonos iOS update is shockingly bad - first impressions

Hi Andrew. That is a calm and well argued contribution, which is something of a rarity at the moment. The system does more stuff now than when the CR200 was the only controller. And I prefer logical to 'intuitive', which often means 'what I am used to'. And I believe something that needs a little effort can justify it in the end.

These are grey areas not black and white and I respect your views.

Not just IOS, Android app is terrible too...with 9 zones and 5 users, music is going on and off in all the wrong rooms now....never had this problem before. This is not just a matter of getting used to it, there is a fundamental issue with the logic in the selection process. Way too much menu switching and swiping to play a tune now....Almsot think Amazon has developed this to force that terrible Alexa on us all!

Couldn’t agree more.

At the end of the day if you hand the new software or the old software to a newcomer I can’t imagine anyone defending the new software as being so dense as to suggest they would find the new easier to use or figure out

It’s not being aggressive. No one has to have died (lol) to point out bad software

Just an incidental point. Several of the posts I have seen complaining about My Sonos seem to suggest the poster is unaware of the Edit button. Just thought it might be helpful to mention.

I am not suggesting that solves all the issues with My Sonos.

Wow. Just spotted that edit button. So OK, I have a "favourites" list that contains a couple of albums, a couple of playlists, and nearly 30 artists. By default, this is listed on "My Sonos" as:
1. All favourite albums
2. First eight (alphabetically) others (AKA "artists")
3. All favourite playlists
4. All Sonos playlists (note: these are not my favourites, they're just "playlists I created for various reasons but probably don't use much")

With some use of the editing button, I can go and "edit" my favourite artists, either by "renaming" (no idea what that does) or "deleting" (which removes the artist completely from my favourites list and bumps the next favourite artist alphabetically onto the "My Sonos" screen). Still looking for that "let me pick my favourite eight favourites" button.

Look, I get that people like their playlists, people probably have a different or "more evenly distributed" album/artist/playlist breakdown of favourites, but I'm struggling to see what the "My Sonos" screen gives me, other than learning to hit "My Sonos->Other-see-all" to get to my favourites list (vs "browse->music library->artists"). Oh well, we learned the difference between "play all" (replace stopped queue and play) and "play-all->play now (first action on the play-all button menu or app equivalent)" which obviously does "insert into queue and play album followed by most of yesterday's listening". We can learn how to navigate this new app. BUT WE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO learn an app, it should be intuitive.

I am not sure what your point is about the behaviour of the queue, which hasn't changed at all in the new app

Strange comment about what My Sonos gives you over browse ->music library->artists. It gives you your favourite artists instead of all of them. That is the point of favourites.

I am not sure what your point is about the behaviour of the queue, which hasn't changed at all in the new app

Strange comment about what My Sonos gives you over browse ->music library->artists. It gives you your favourite artists instead of all of them. That is the point of favourites.

OK, the uninituitive behaviour of the queue versus the many "play" buttons is old news (year-old "won't fix" bugs and assorted UI failures). Agreed, that is a separate topic.

My problem with "favourites" isn't the "favourites", which are awesome and I use all the time. I simply don't understand why:
1. "My Sonos" lists only the first 8 alphabetically in each favourites category, then you need to use the "see all" to list 28 of your 32 favourites
2. The "My Sonos->Edit" option doesn't edit "My Sonos" (a dashboard of favourites and playlists) but instead allows you to delete favourites, thus promoting other favourites onto the My Sonos dashboard
3. There's the renaming of favourites, which I guess lets you hide your mate's Slayer collection behind a link that says "One Direction", so OK that's useful

Look, I get that it's hard to describe what Sonos actually does without sounding like a crazy person. And I know that "favourites" is a feature that didn't exist when I bought my Sonos, and I can work around the navigation issues. But I don't think I've seen a single change in two years that has actually improved the user experience.

Despite your scorn for renaming, I have started using it to re-order and classify my favourites. I think this could prove very useful.

Hi Andrew. That is a calm and well argued contribution, which is something of a rarity at the moment. The system does more stuff now than when the CR200 was the only controller. And I prefer logical to 'intuitive', which often means 'what I am used to'. And I believe something that needs a little effort can justify it in the end.


Hi, thanks John B for reading my mad ramblings and being measured in your response!

If I could just comment on a couple of things, I would be interested in your views...!

Your right to a degree that the system does more than when the CR200 was launched. But the ‘more’ is mostly more online sources, more configuration (trueplay) and options in setting up, etc. The true core — the essence of what Sonos is — is ‘play this music in that room’. I personally (and I’m getting on so my memory does fail me) can’t think of new functionality that has been added to day to day playing of music. That part should be fundamentally simple. It’s core, it’s basic — and that (some) people are complaining that this part is not fluidly simple would suggest its gone bad.

The other thing I’d like to comment on is the distinction between what is logical and what is intuitive. I’m not sure there is any difference here. For instance you may click on a button that is unlabelled because it’s location / shape /context suggests what it should logically do. If it’s logical, it’s intuitive. My own personal opinion is that modern design (unlabelled buttons, the ‘hamburger’ button, the ‘three dot’ symbol) are bad design and counter intuitive, but this seems to be the way interfaces are going, so I guess I’m in the minority here. But again the visuals are always down to preference. But call it logical or call it intuitive - the design should be both!!

Right, off for bacon sandwich.

Andrew

Despite your scorn for renaming, I have started using it to re-order and classify my favourites. I think this could prove very useful.

Serious question: what advantages are there in renaming shortcuts to favourite things, other than hacking the alphabetical order to manipulate what gets shown on the "My Sonos" dashboard? Albums, artists (sorry, "others") and playlists already have names, what's the value in editing an item's "My Sonos dashboard" name, unless you want to name a playlist "AAA My awesome playlist please list this one first", or have a playlist named something different when navigating to it via "Playlists" versus "My Sonos" browsing?

Beware of the ones and twos of people on this site that seem to be out of touch with the majority of people that have taken the time to give their views on the horrible update.

It seems there are a “couple” Sonos apologists...