Hi @DianeRobertsApps can you confirm the reasoning behind the decision to “upgrade” S2 app rather than create a new S3 app with the new design and put S2 into maintenance mode as you did with S1 app?

Hi @KateW the UX of the new app is very laggy and unresponsive, frequently displaying error messages, please explain why it was released like this and what you are doing to resolve it.

Hi @DianeRobertsApps are you able to explain why Sonos decided to make the app cloud-based, what are the advantages apart from extra latency making the app seem slow?

me too, i can’t believe there has been no apology for any inconvenience caused just pig headedness, i’m so done with sonos 

@mdpeterman 

A key part of this new app was using the newer Sonos APIs, which means we did indeed rewrite the volume experience entirely.  Until this new update, our app was using an older set of technology based on UPnP and SOAP.

Thank you for sharing the videos. I will make sure the team sees these so that we can continue to iterate and improve in upcoming releases.

Can we please get a response from the sonos team on this?

Imagine your spouse says “I don’t like how dated our kitchen is. The countertop layout is awkward & our appliances are out of date.”

Instead of working with them to remodel the kitchen, you build a brand new house with a modern kitchen, but no air conditioning, no garage, no heat, and no windows. 

You don’t ask your spouse if that is OK, you simple drive them to the new home, tell them that the old one is sold, and that you promise you’ll eventually get air conditioning, heat, a garage, and windows. But look how nice the kitchen is!

I think you know your spouse’s reaction to such a move, and I hope that helps you understand what your customers are feeling. 

Well, I rolled back to the previous version a couple of hours after the upgrade, and I have had no issues at all. 

Are you kidding? Sure an app may never be "finished," but there is a substantial portion of development that can be categorized as "not yet ready to release to users". Then, at some point in the process you reach "ready to release." Why did you choose to release this one when you were clearly not even halfway through that first portion of development?

Seriously, if this is your response, then why didn't you just release a blank page first that has no code? And maybe then the next day you'll release the first initial attempts of some code? And then a few more lines of code in a day or two? Always saying "soon it will be functional, promise! An app is never finished!"..... You're maybe going to say that it should have some functionality before you actually give it to customers? Then you must have some way to assess the appropriate level of functionality for release, right?. The complaint here is that you clearly release this long before you reached that point!

"An app is never finished" ....That is the most insulting answer I could possibly imagine that these developers could put on this forum.

Also known as DGAF

how about solving

• systems where the app cannot see/add the speakers
• sometimes sysem is only emerging after 15 minutes
• Also a niced feature would be volume control. Now the lag can be 20 seconds

These points  make a system unusable

The old app works better than the new one, which frequently lost the speakers on my network unless I restarted the app. No such problem on old version since I rolled back

Does the firmware get updated when we update the app, or is there a separate behind-the-scenes update going on?  if the former, then I assume we will be ok on 16.1 as long as we don’t need the new functionality. if the latter.. can we disable the firmware updates? with a library off over 35k tracks, I want to be able to use it in the way that it currently works, and if that means staying with 16.1 for the future, thats fine with me.. I don’t do much streaming at all, I have. working version (I back-revved to 16.1) and can happily stay there.

Diane,

Are you ‘falling on the sword’ for someone else’s poor decision making?

thank you 

Hello @f8dee28e-f9a0-4157-a141-ce8859 

We did go through multiple phases of assessing the current S2 structure, modified versions of it, and the tabless version that we have today. Our work has engaged existing and new Sonos users throughout, and we have pursued the path that felt the most useful and intuitive to the largest number of users overall. We understand that every user is an individual with unique needs and circumstances. My hope is that your specific needs can be addressed by personalizing your home screen so your Sonos Favorites module shows up front and center on your home screen. Doing so should make this the first thing you see when launching the app. A single tap should take you to the full view of that collection. 

I asked similar also on Page 5. What drove such a lax attitude to exposing your customer’s own hardware and networks to the outside world behind a simple username/password?

From the reddit thread on this: 

From the link below download/install the 16.1 (arm64-v8a) version of the APK file and turn off auto updates.

https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/sonos-inc/sonos-for-android/sonos-for-android-16-1-release/sonos-16-1-android-apk-download/

I do not care in the slightest that it was built from the ground up (and, frankly, it feels like it was built from the ground down to about six feet under).  And no one knows or cares what “cross-faded” means here.  You are obviously a product manager not worthy of that title since you have managed your product into the ground.  You removed many, many features that are basic to the most rudimentary sound systems.  You made us your beta testers.  You say that you are going to incrementally bring functions back in the future.  But that is completely worthless to say since those features already existed in the old app.  Sonos is non-courageous, self-serving, completely blind to customer loyalty and needs, etc., etc., etc.  A total test case on how not to retain customers.

How does one join this beta community as a vision impaired user and how will you prioritize vision impaired users to join? ...Also, thank you for answering Jonathan’s question with some soul, that does not go unnoticed.

At a minimum, we want ACKNOWLEDGEMENT that you know this is bad!  Otherwise are we supposed to be able to trust that you'll ever make it good? You clearly don't know what good is. 

Some acknowledgment that this app is broken would tell us you can be trusted to have some standards in the future. But if you can't even acknowledge that this is bad, then it's clear you have no idea how to make a decent app and I'm really looking into alternatives now.

(If you need a bottom-line reason to be decent and honest: There's plenty of research that shows that merely giving apologies for screwups makes customers a lot less angry at any kind of provider. Even doctors who have made terrible mistakes in the operating room are less likely to be sued for malpractice if they simply apologize and empathize. Failure to acknowledge wrongs harms your business)

P*ss off your customer base so that the app is compatible with your forthcoming headphones (that no one is going to want to buy now)!

There are a number of threads elsewhere on the forum which link to an archive of older versions of the Android app on apkmirror.com

Folks running the Android app on ChromeOS are out of luck, though, unless they want to factory reset their Chromebooks to put them into developer mode (haven’t taken that step yet).

I believe iOS app installation policies also make side loading like this harder to impossible but others with iOS devices will have to speak to that.

Tucker, you don’t have to roll back the App. You just need to place v16.1 back into the App store and download sites with a different name like S2.16.1

That way both Sonos and it’s Customers can have access to prior and new Apps simultaneously.

My sytem sound terrible.  Hard resetting. And adding the subs took all day. 
how can you release this terrible update. It ruined my sytem.  It sound like cheap sytem. 

You will lose allot of customers. This is outrageous!!!
 

Sorry Sonos, as a customer since 2006 with a large(ish) setup. My faith was knocked after S1 to S2 forced upgrade, then we didn’t see anything new from S2. Now my expensive new S2 system you forced me to buy, isn’t working. And the irony, my S1 system in my offices are working fine! How can we ever trust you?

Even if it was a rewrite, why was functionality removed that was present in the prior app?  In what world do you come from where existing functionality is not present in a subsequent release?

I’ve been a SW engineer for 35 years and I’ve never seen such a terrible release in my entire career.

Completely unacceptable

Same here.  I rolled back and will stay rolled back.  The issue is that I will keep being told to upgrade.  I would prefer to not have that constant niggle.  However, I’m the same as you - rolled back and staying at 16.1.