The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

With this global release, Sonos turned every user into a beta tester. I didn’t sign up for this. Obviously, SW QA was curtailed and compromises made (bad ones). The customer should not have to care about roadmaps. That’s for Wall Street and investors.We just want the product to work (hard stop).

Sonos Leadership (@PatrickSpence @NickMillington)...I’m calling you out. The buck stops with you. Stop drinking your own Kool-Aid and take care of your install base...all of them, legacy and new. If it was necessary to deconstruct and rebuild to surpass the old, then it should have been SW QA’d until it was bulletproof before release. There are internal gates with hard criteria that the sw needs to pass. This has been blatantly violated or ‘explained away’. This is unacceptable.

A reputation that took over a decade to build, decimated. You may be a public company now, but seem to have lost sight of the loyal customers and many talented employees that have contributed to the company’s success. Shame on you.

Afterthought...btw, some truth would be good PR.

This sw release is obviously linked to the launch of the Ace headphones.

Therefore, management chose not to postpone the launch (which would impact the sales projection numbers). Headphones ready...sw not. You consciously chose to deal with the fallout thinking all will be forgiven later. Own it.

In the meantime, roll it back. Give the users back everything they had prior the this disaster of an “upgrade.” This was not appropriately vetted, e.g. in Beta testing. I’ve been a Sonos Beta tester and seen a lot of bugs and/or design flaws worked out prior to inflicting them on the entire Sonos community.
 

This was a completely avoidable own-goal; being followed by a bungled response. Please consult a top tier crisis manager and give them the space to help you get Sonos back on track. This is a critical moment for decisive action to be taken after listening to an objective assessment of the situation and the potential dire consequences for a flagship brand such as SONOS. Scott Galloway of Prof G/NYU has some great advice for crisis management. 
 

Scott Galloway provides several key pieces of advice for managing a crisis in a corporation, especially when dealing with an existential threat:

1. **Communicate Regularly**: Leaders should be visible and maintain open lines of communication. This includes making relevant statements and being accessible to both employees and the public. Regular communication helps to maintain trust and transparency during turbulent times [oai_citation:1,Scott Galloway: The Right Way to React to A Crisis - Elevate](https://elevate.ca/blog/the-right-way-to-react-during-a-crisis/) [oai_citation:2,Scott Galloway: Crisis Management - Elevate](https://elevate.ca/events/scott-galloway-crisis-management/).

2. **Acknowledge the Issue**: It's crucial to plainly and transparently acknowledge the existence of the problem. Avoiding or downplaying the issue can erode trust and credibility. Consumers and employees prefer honesty over denial or minimization of the crisis

(https://elevate.ca/events/scott-galloway-crisis-management/).

3. **Overcorrect**: Take bold and decisive actions to address the crisis, even if they seem excessive. Galloway uses the example of Johnson & Johnson’s response to the cyanide crisis in the 1980s as a model for overcorrecting to ensure safety and trust. The idea is that it's better to do too much than too little in a crisis

4. **Set the Right Tone**: Avoid sugarcoating the situation. People want straightforward, sober analysis and a clear understanding of the challenges and the measures being taken. Treat your audience like adults and provide them with the real picture, along with actionable ways they can contribute to the solution [oai_citation:7,YPO | Scott Galloway Shares Leadership Lessons From the Trenches](https://www.ypo.org/2022/11/leadership-lessons-from-the-trenches/) [oai_citation:8,Scott Galloway: Crisis Management - Elevate](https://elevate.ca/events/scott-galloway-crisis-management/).

5. **Maintain a Vision and Consistency**: Leaders should be visionary storytellers, crafting a narrative that is compelling and consistent. This helps in maintaining focus and motivating stakeholders. Galloway emphasizes the importance of having a consistent and believable story, as seen with leaders like Jeff Bezos of Amazon 

By following these principles, leaders can guide their organizations through crises with greater resilience and integrity, potentially redefining their brand and strengthening their position in the long run.

Very well stated.

Patrick Spence’s comments in the media were extraordinary when he referred to “us”. 
 

This afternoon I sat down and decided to dive into the iOS app to see how difficult it really was to, say, choose a Spotify playlist, and play it on a specific speaker. That task alone was challenging and far removed from intuitive. Then, once I did have something playing, I tried to view the album that the track originated from. Nope, impossible. Function removed. A core feature enjoyed for decades, removed. 
I’ve given up (for now at least) to access my actual music collection (stored on my NAS and working beautifully for nearly 20 years). I read that my local music library will be accessible again mid June. Gee, thanks, Sonos.

I guess they are shifting services towards their servers to control what you are using. Next step: monthly subscription fees, paid premium services etc. And if you want to get rid of ads in your controller app: pay

The new Sonos application is equivalent to the new Coke product introduction years ago. How many Sonos customers are more pleased with the new product?

Buy a coke, pay extra if you want to drink it?

Quoting myself here, but, literally a minute after I posted the above, I got the below notification in the forum and two days later it’s still going on….. I rather think Sonos is over stretching itself resource-wise trying to execute all these overly ambitious growth plans.

What about …

tile view for your own albums

alphabet scroll bar

Grouping rooms often fails

adding new devices nearly always fails on first attempt

Stereo speakers took about 20 goes to get working

library disappears from app

Device update on older port bricks it

Loads of Something went wrong errors with no helpful message like what did go wrong?

siri voice control

adding albums to end of queue

playlist

editing queue

my fingers are sore from typing …

OK, I got fed up last night of my iPhone and iPad having been updated to version 80.x of the poxy new controller app.

I've had automatic hardware updates disabled for years in my controller so, thankfully, my Sonos devices are still at a firmware level where I can use the last versions of the S2 16.x controller.  I had already rolled back an Android phone to version 16 via APK mirror so could use this for setting sleep timers etc and all the other features I used to be able to use and enjoy.

It is possible to roll back iOS devices but the process is quite involved and probably not for the technically faint hearted.  I'm an IT professional and understand the tools that were used to perform the roll back and the relatively lows risks of using them.  This does not involve jailbreaking your phone or anything else that might be risky/ill-advised.

If your Sonos devices have already been updated beyond this version, I think you will likely be out of luck: -

When Apple deliver an app or an app update to your device, it is digitally signed by them and associated with your own Apple ID.  There are numerous copies of the Sonos S2 version 16 IPA installer for iOS floating around on the internet but these have been associated with other users' Apple IDs and, while you can install them using one of the tools mentioned below, you would need to re-verify the app every week by using the username and password of the Apple ID which obtained the copy.  This is an easy way to roll back if the procedure below seems to be beyond your technical abilities.

The full method of recovering a copy of the last S2 version 16 iOS installer is set out in this post - https://github.com/qnblackcat/How-to-Downgrade-apps-on-AppStore-with-iTunes-and-Charles-Proxy

Basically, you use an old version of Apple iTunes that still supports downloading and managing apps inside iTunes (I used 12.6.5 as per the article).  You also use a piece of SSL proxy inspection software (Charles Proxy) to "man in the middle" and decrypt the network traffic between your version of iTunes and Apple and to replay the request for the download of the latest version of the Sonos controller app that is published in the Apple App Store.

The neat bit about the SSL interception/inspection software is the ability to record/edit and replay a request.  The "download latest Sonos app" request is replayed after editing the request to ask Apple to give you your very own signed copy of the S2 version 16 controller app.  It's a pukka copy, provided by Apple and associated to the Apple ID that you are signed into iTunes with.

Once the IPA file has been downloaded to the computer, you can use other tools (I used the demo version of iMazing) to remove the version 80.x Sonos app from my i-devices and install my own signed copy of the 16.x app using the IPA file kindly provided to me by Apple.

As far as I'm aware, this process can only be done on a Windows computer. The basic process is: -

Uninstall any copy of iTunes you have currently installed and install version 12.6.5.3 from the link in the article above.  If you get an error about the library version, just delete/rename the existing library.itl file as per the instructions.
If you have a spare Windows device that's never had iTunes installed, even better as there will be no newer version of an iTunes library already on it so, no risk of losing/corrupting any iTunes library you may have already curated.
Install the Charles Proxy software as per the article above - it's a fully functioning 30 day demo.
Follow the remaining instructions carefully from the article above.
To save research time, the build number of the Apple Sonos version 16.1 app you want Apple to provide you with is 864228318.
When you have successfully downloaded your own signed copy of the Sonos S2 version 16.1 installer, you can use the demo version of iMazing to install it on your devices assuming that they are using the same Apple ID used to pull the old version via iTunes.
As usual, I'm not taking any responsibility for supporting anyone who follows this process nor any consequences that might flow from you doing it.  Again, I repeat, if you are not comfortable with the skills needed to follow this process, you're probably better off waiting for Sonos to fix their app.
Do check out the Sonos guidance at https://en.community.sonos.com/owners-cafe-228997/player-controller-versions-why-update-6894905 to see their self imposed limitations on what you can and can't do with older speaker firmware and controller versions.
If you have already completed Sonos device firmware updates beyond 78.1-52020, I think you'll be out of luck trying to use the S2 version 16.1 app in any event.