The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

This is a company with a previous PR disaster behind it which makes this all totally incomprehensible. Following the attempt a few years ago to make customer’s older equipment obsolete overnight and the S1 / S2 divide, this current release of a pile of tosh, seemingly for the sake of imminent upcoming products to the detriment of existing users, makes it abundantly clear to me that Sonos doesn't give a hoot about its customers. I now have an unusable system (used mainly for radio through custom urls and a large personal library, both of which are no longer functional) whilst Sonos again tries to right its wrongs. It is not me that should be waiting for functionality to come back (if indeed it really does). Some real world beta testing should have been undertaken and the app / new products held back until properly working. If Sonos doesn't care about me then please dont expect me to care about upcoming products or anticipate my future custom. This did not “take courage”, it took crass stupidity and incompetence at the risk of brand suicide. For that, the app team should be dismissed / replaced and the ceo stand down to let someone with some customer care skills take the company forward.
 

My comments on the new app for all its worth….

not at all intuitive and hard to find my way around. Basic functionality (eg EQ settings) hidden away

poor layout. Often find myself in a screen i cant get out of, the most common of which is “sorry, something went wrong”

bring back a number for an indication of volume and Roam charge status

the volume slider isnt useable as the volume doesn't increase/ decrease in line with input and moves randomly to super quiet or, worse, super loud - I fear it could ultimately blow a speaker

no search function for personal library. How this could be removed and think it doesn't matter is unbelievable and displays the thinking ability of a 2 year old. I have hundreds of artists / thousands of albums / tens of thousands of tracks. There isn’t even a slider to search by first letter

no ability to insert items into a queue

etc etc as others have commented

Why dont give us option to revert while you are fixing the crap?

Very close to binning the whole lot. Why not run 2 apps in tandem as previously suggested instead of imposing this half cocked barely usable mess you've given us no.

I can’t understand how a market dominator company as Sonos can release such crap. I wonder, do the Sonos executives use their own products? Or do they use more exclusive stuff as Naim and such.

The interface is a nightmare. I can’t chose one of my players, there will be two selected and the playlist (which I added with a Lenovo tablet running the old app) disappears and as most of you know, there is no way to play your own playlists anymore.

Sleep timer is something I use every night. How could they just ignore it?

Search seems to work randomly or not at all.

I wish I made as much money as the Sonos executives, I would by an expensive system which plays real high resolution files and their app is user-friendly.

As a former software CEO who led development of much more complex systems than Sonos, I see all the signs of failed agile development and agile management methodology.

The decision to ship broken software (suspiciously timed to coincide with a quarterly earnings announcement and product launches) shows a senior mgmt team that is disconnected from the software development work. And, the decision to commit to delivery dates for several missing features will likely inflame the existing issues.

The lack of an apology is clearly the result of meddling from Sonos legal, as any admission of mistakes would create exposure for the likely class action lawsuits that may be inbound shortly.

I suspect the old S2 app had mounting technical debt issues and the decision was made to “rip the band aid off” and re architect the solution, with much of the resource investment going towards underlying infrastructure… that most users won’t care about. This could be a good decision long term, but it shows that mismanagement of the platform was happening long before last week.

I’ve “been there” in my career after a failed product reboot of a platform that was “mission critical” for a large user community. I can tell everyone from my own hard-earned experience that the solution is NOT to allow lawyers to craft external messaging, or for execs to run the release roadmap via executive fiat while forcing dev teams to commit to deployment dates of upcoming features in a time of intense user dissatisfaction.

I predict it’s going to be a VERY bumpy ride for all of us who use our Sonos systems.

Hey, Sonos. Just eat the humble pie and let users return to the previous version, temporarily.  Until the new app is ready.  In the mean time,  I'm going back to my old Internet radio, until you sort this nonsense out.

Not giving me access to searching my extensive local music collection - which I predominantly listen to - is totally out of order. This is my primary use of the Sonos hardware and I’m being told I have to wait over a month before there is a possibility that I can do this again.

Just roll back to the previous version of the app to at least enable users to listen to their choice of music in the way they want. Any new version of the app can be released when it works properly with existing functionality.

Despite my investment in the company and their products, the catastrophes of the last few years mean that I will no longer be considering or recommending Sonos in the future.

Can't access the radio stations I was using prior to the upgrade or Amazon Music.

Awful.

Pleaee fix asap

You can, bit of a hassle though.

https://github.com/qnblackcat/How-to-Downgrade-apps-on-AppStore-with-iTunes-and-Charles-Proxy