Some of you might have questions when you have had a week to get to know the new Sonos App interface. Because of that, we want to give you all a chance to ask some of the people who were integral in its creation and design, the questions that have come to mind while you have used the app.
Diane Roberts, Senior Director of Software Development
Kate Wojogbe, Senior Director of User Experience
Tucker Severson, Director of Product Management
It will be hosted on the 14th of May from 11:00 until 14:00 GMT -07.
But instead of me telling you what they do and what their role with the app update has been, here are their own introductions:
Diane
Diane Roberts is the Senior Director of Software Engineering and Product Management at Sonos responsible for the Sonos Apps. Her group of cross-disciplinary teams build Configuration, Control, and Content experiences on a foundation of Core mobile application technologies. She received dual Bachelors’ of Science in Computer Science and Music from WPI. Diane holds 6 granted patents as a co-inventor.
Kate
As Senior Director of User Experience, Kate leads the UX team responsible for Sonos’ home audio hardware, software, and app user experiences. This includes user interfaces on speakers and soundbars, setup for hardware and services, first and third party content experiences, and a variety of methods of control of the Sonos system. Kate graduated from the University of California Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Design.
Tucker
Tucker Severson is the Director of Product Management and leads the PM team responsible for the Sonos Apps. Tucker received his BA from Bates College and his MBA from the University of Vermont.
We will do our best to answer as many of your questions as possible within the 3-hour window, but we can’t promise to answer every question, especially those you know we can’t discuss.
But if we see a question repeated or a reply getting a lot of likes, don’t worry. We will prioritize those to ensure that many people get the answers they seek.
Remember, we can’t talk about things on the roadmap - but if you have questions or feedback about the app redesign, want to know more about our panelists, like their background or favorite band, then the sky is the (cough cough.. NDA) limit!
Thank you, everyone, for participating. We covered as many of the most asked questions as possible. We know tracking the responses wasn't as easy as we had hoped. But we wanted to let the community air frustrations and have their questions answered.
I got a lot of DMs during the AMA, and I will be sure to answer them when I can. Thanks for reaching out!
Keith and I will work on recapping all the questions and feedback we have responded to, and we will update the post here when that is complete. If we didn't get to your question, don't worry. Keith and I are grabbing all the feedback from this thread, even the things we didn't respond to, and ensuring the right people will see the message. This was the first time we created a live AMA in the community, and we learned a lot for future AMAs.
We appreciate all the feedback and questions you gave through this AMA. It helps us understand your most significant feedback and your reasoning. We hear you, and we will ensure the right teams get your feedback. They are listening.
We look forward to seeing your reactions to our future app developments. We hope you all appreciate the work our developers are putting into making the app as fast and easy to use as possible for the general user.
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I have the same questions as many others in this chat. It seems this rushed release was driven by C-Suite executives prepping for a new product launch. This is a prime example of why you shouldn't release unfinished software. It's better to push back a launch and miss a deadline than to release an app that hasn't been properly QA tested. Instead of taking the right approach, you've damaged your relationship with existing customers and shown future potential customers the backlash. This logic makes no sense.
Don’t get mad at the developers, get mad at yourselves, get mad at your leadership. I spent too much money for this lack of quality.
Will Sonos Voice control still be locally processed (as advertised) or will the recorded voices also be transmitted into the internet or the Sonos cloud?
What has been the general mood of the Sonos team/staff since the new app was released? Was the team surprised at the negative reception or was it expected?
p…] Any time we change an experience or delay a feature, we know that some people will have negative sentiments. We also saw in our usability testing that people appreciated the new user interface, adaptability, and faster time to music.
We have been reading your posts and seeing your feedback.
Once the release went live, the mood could be described as “energized.” The activity on the team is high as people share what they’ve built for the next releases. We are excited that we can bring these continuous regular updates. It’s easier and faster now for us to share what we’ve built with you. That started with today’s release and will continue on May 21st with releases to follow.
This seems tone deaf.
You’re right, there’s always going to be some degree of negative reception when making changes — “who moved my cheese?”
The question is whether the improvements are a bigger step forward than the limitations are a step back. Are there going to be more positive responses, or negative ones?
Personally, I’m in the Steve Jobs mindset of, paraphrasing, “design isn’t how a thing looks, it’s how a thing works.” If a product works well, then people can overlook the interface shortcomings; if the product doesn’t work well, then no amount of interface glitziness can make up for that.
It has to have been obvious to people there that the new version broke more than it fixed. This is a radical rewrite of an established product, and it has a laundry list of shortcomings compared to its predecessor, as many posts here, on Reddit, and elsewhere have documented.
My question: does anyone there have veto authority on a bad release? How bad to the bugs need to have been to compel someone sufficiently senior to step back and say that this product, as it currently existed, was not good enough to release to the public with the Sonos name?
Some in this forum have suggested that launching a new S3 app could’ve made sense. This seems like a good idea, because it could have offered users a preview of where Sonos is going, while retaining the ability to stick with the more or less stable S2 app until the user decides to switch over.
Of course, it’s too late to do that now, alas, but surely in hindsight it has to be clear that this would’ve been a better way forward.
At this point, we’re all stuck. Your users are left with a semi-functional system, and your software team is stuck with a huge backlog of bugfixes to rush out the door.
Good luck. You need it.
You ask if anybody has the veto. The responses from Sonos in this AMA demonstrates that everybody just keeps smiling at each other and spend the days congratulating themselves for a job well done. Nobody has the gumption to say “sorry, but isn’t this less functional than before?”
I feel that the team who wrote this app and its management are so far removed from the real world that we are all now lost.
I did hope that this AMA would straighten things out. It has done the opposite. It has demonstrated that Team Sonos is just so far up their own posteriors that they cannot see that the world outside is ditching their Sonos equipment.
I think if they would have come out and apologized right away and then laid out some semblance of a plan to make it right - they could have changed this trajectory quickly. Sonos is on a complete wrong track!!!!! No consideration for customers and clients only for their shareholders probably….very sad
Could you please keep the option for the boost going as many people don't receive a strong wi fi signal and extenders and boosters just interfere with the signal and having paided out for a booster cant afford to buy speakers to act as a receiver and don't want the look off speakers everywhere.
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?
Hi @Absolute40 ,
Regarding the idea of a separate app, the problem with this approach is that the functionality between these apps would diverge over time, leaving a large group of users with an out of date and potentially not fully supported experience.
Regarding responsiveness, I am sorry to hear you are having a bad experience. There are many factors that can contribute to this. We built the app to gather telemetry and data around these error states so we can continue to resolve issues for all users.
There are many advantages to using the cloud, but I’ll highlight one. With our new content services, we are able to provide a richer experience for discovering music to listen to. Our previous app was built on APIs that did not provide enough metadata to make that rich experience.
It’s also important to note that the app is not exclusively cloud-based. We still interact with the speakers on the local network, similar to the old app. We will be continuing to fine tune when we use cloud or local APIs. And we are already working on performance enhancements across the stack.
One thing there, having some fonctionality ( NAS playback) in the event my internet goes down is cool. Please make sure it fallback as gracefully as possible in that case.
Also eine Cloudnutzung. Wie steht es hier mit dem Thema Datenschutz? Was wird wie erhoben, welche Daten fließen ab, was wird analysiert? Ich weiß nicht wie es in den USA ist, aber in Europa ist das ein Thema der Aufsicht. Ich möchte einfach nur eine funktionierdne App, die mir den Dienst zur Verfügung stellt für den ich bezahlt habe. Ich möchte keine Analyse von meinen Daten über diese Funktionen hinaus.
Ich sehe das gerade so als würden sie ein neues Geschäftsmodell installieren und das alte Geschäftsmodel abrupt einstellen. Die Frage ist nur wohin sich die Wertschöpfung verlagert, hin zu meinen privaten Daten?
Sicher ist das eine Entwicklung, aber die Kommunikation und vorallem der Zwang zu einer Alpha oder Betaversion ist nicht zielführend, egal welches Unternehmen das betrifft.
I am very concerned with the lack of security. Specially since 90% of Sonos products have microphones built-in. All these speakers are now exposed to the web https://play.sonos.com. At minimum add 2FA before someone gets any funny ideas.
So, if the Sonos web app, and the devices behind it aren’t secure, we’re looking at a massive vulnerability.
Wondering if Sonos informed their insurers before they exposed all their customers (without warning or consent) to whatever their cybersecurity measurers are.
Given we know what Sonos’s software engineering practices are… (rushes to unplug everything)
It’s probably like your Amazon Alexa where everything is done on device and nothing is shared wi the cloud.
Are u going to add PRESETS? This is a must have feature if u’re switching sources.
Every audio format e.g. PCM 2.0, Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital 5.1. etc has different sensitivity regarding the “Volume level”, sometimes it also affects “Bass” level etc.
So this feature is at least for me a crucial part, because otherwise i have to always manually adjust everything and if i said it just annoys me, that would be an understatement.
SO PLEASE, ADD PRESETS TO YOUR APP, ITS THE YEAR 2024, NOT 1991.
@DianeRobertsApps can you confirm the new app is built using Flutter rather than native apps to make a one-size-fits-all app? What was the reasoning behind this? To save development costs? I’m failing to see the advantage to the user, it’s slower to open and laggy, missing widgets, when installed on a large screen like a tablet it doesn't make good use of the extra screen real estate.
@Absolute40
The app is not exclusively built with Flutter, but does make use of Flutter for certain portions of the setup experience. We’ve actually been using Flutter for those experiences for many years, and ported that forward to the new app.
The majority of the app is in fact native. On iOS that means Swift, using SwiftUI. On Android that means Kotlin, using Jetpack Compose. These are the best in class layout engines offered on their respective platforms, and we’re excited to be able to use these modern technologies.
We are aware that there is work ahead for the tablet experience, and look forward to iterating on that as we go forward.
I’m...not crazy about the fact that you’re using Flutter from an accessibility perspective, however I am aware of at least one accessible Flutter app, although it clearly required a lot of bolting on. It’s called Aira Explorer. I encourage you to give it a look if you want to know what is possible with the toolchain you have chosen. Thank you.
Once again asking here :
Can I please get a ETA for users of Airsonic / Subsonic / Bonob who lost their ability to see their library in Sonos please ?
Or you just silently dropped the opportunity to run your own service at home. Please at least answer us on that topic.
Shame for sonos if they don't get it sorted soon will be alot up for sale cant believe it is not tried and tested before release date some people have invested alot off money in this system.
You’ve made our speakers open to the internet via the new web app without our consent and without two-factor authentication for security. You’ve demoted local library music so much that it’s practically impossible to find our music (no search, poor A-Z scrolling) plus there is no way to update the index of the library.
Is this legitimate? Can you provide more info on how this is happening? Highly concerning.
Go to play.sonos.com, log in. See your speakers. Do it from outside your network, still see your speakers. There is no tfa or mfa options, only password. This is not good security practice.
I just tried this, and my speakers really are accessible from outside my network. That's it Sonos I’m done!!!!!
What are you doing?
Mod Edit: removed the profanity
Dear Sonos Team,
Could you explain the underlying mechanism. I am highly concerned.
Best Regards
FinkenMusic
I want to downgrade to S1. But that isn't possible with the latest version and when trying with 16.1 it says I need the latest version.
At least S1 including its app worked (and isn't accessible via the internet ).
Hopefully downgrading back to S1 is added soon.
I think (and hope) you mean S2. S1 is the old original app now used by owners of legacy products. Because Sonos loves creating legacy products.
No, I really mean S1. That app and OS works fine for me. Plus you can't use the newer (now old 16.1) S2 app. But that doesn't matter as long as everything works (and they don't dare touch the legacy S1 OS, with the upside that it can't work online with the web app).
Better the legacy S1 then to deal with wanting Sonos to upgrade my system against my will (while everything works correctly).
I won't be buying any newer Sonos products anyways.
Please upvote this post: Can you please provide an immediate easy way to rollback the mobile app to the prior version for those who can’t make the current version meet their needs.
Thanks @bkk. Also, @nelliott and others had similar questions.
Rolling back to the previous version of the Sonos app is likely to cause issues. As Sonos continues to advance forward with new updates to the firmware, the old apps will fall out of compatibility quickly. Our priority is to release improvements to the Sonos app rapidly to address your needs.
I think I’ll be upgrading my speakers to the S1 app and when they fail I’ll be moving to a different music system. There is nothing useful for me in the new app and I’ve lost trust in Sonos as a brand.
Could you please keep the option for the boost going as many people don't receive a strong wi fi signal and extenders and boosters just interfere with the signal and having paided out for a booster cant afford to buy speakers to act as a receiver and don't want the look off speakers everywhere.
Hear, hear!! While I recognize you’re moving away from Boost in the newer speaker lines, please don’t kill it for our older, SonosNet products. Taking all that traffic off the main WiFi has been a valuable benefit of Sonos that doesn’t exist elsewhere.
I was hoping I would feel better about Sonos after this AMA, I was wrong I feel worse, much worse.
Sonos now claims that some of the most serious defects will be corrected in the 21 May release, but hopefully the panel can understand that there are a lot of blind people who can’t trust Sonos anymore. Given that Sonos got it so horribly wrong with this current release, why should we expect anything better in the next?
Will Sonos offer an apology to its blind users and accept that it got this wrong, and will Sonos commit to creating a Chief Accessibility Officer as a tangible commitment to ensuring this never happens again?
@jmosen
Thank you for your heartfelt feedback.
We invested our user experience and engineering energy on supporting VoiceOver throughout this project. Unfortunately near the end, we took our eye off the ball and missed a couple of key bugs. Those bug fixes have been shipped in a release today.
That doesn’t mean we’re done. We have more that we want to do and will do to fine-tune the experience. This is the same kind of fine-tuning we are doing for the visual experience. In a visual UI that means adjusting the gutters between items on screen. In a spoken UI it means adding more hints about how to navigate. We look forward to tweaking those and making the experience get continually better.
I understand that we have to rebuild your trust. We will only be able to do that by improving the experience. Any words we say will be incomplete. I am sorry that we missed this.
Our next step involves building a hearty beta community of vision impaired users. Today we have 30 visually impaired users on the beta of the next version of the app. The next version already has several improvements beyond the bug fixes we shipped today.
@DianeRoberts As a tangible commitment to accessibility, will Sonos commit to creating a Chief Accessibility Officer? It's highly concerning that your next step involves using external beta testers instead of updating internal processes and expanding company accessibility resources. Though I appreciate your response, it doesn't go nearly far enough to fully address the damage this release has caused. I'm also not convinced that the team has learned from this incident for the next major update for the app.
Once again asking here :
Can I please get a ETA for users of Airsonic / Subsonic / Bonob who lost their ability to see their library in Sonos please ?
Or you just silently dropped the opportunity to run your own service at home. Please at least answer us on that topic.
Seconding this since my original message in this AMA has not been addressed.
@DianeRobertsApps can you confirm the new app is built using Flutter rather than native apps to make a one-size-fits-all app? What was the reasoning behind this? To save development costs? I’m failing to see the advantage to the user, it’s slower to open and laggy, missing widgets, when installed on a large screen like a tablet it doesn't make good use of the extra screen real estate.
@Absolute40
The app is not exclusively built with Flutter, but does make use of Flutter for certain portions of the setup experience. We’ve actually been using Flutter for those experiences for many years, and ported that forward to the new app.
The majority of the app is in fact native. On iOS that means Swift, using SwiftUI. On Android that means Kotlin, using Jetpack Compose. These are the best in class layout engines offered on their respective platforms, and we’re excited to be able to use these modern technologies.
We are aware that there is work ahead for the tablet experience, and look forward to iterating on that as we go forward.
I’m...not crazy about the fact that you’re using Flutter from an accessibility perspective, however I am aware of at least one accessible Flutter app, although it clearly required a lot of bolting on. It’s called Aira Explorer. I encourage you to give it a look if you want to know what is possible with the toolchain you have chosen. Thank you.
Wait, sorry, I screwed up. Swift native? That means there’s real hope of getting this right on iOS at least, and I’ll let Android users comment too. What parts are Swift and what parts are Flutter? This is crucial for accessibility.
I’ve only observed up till now. There are only three respondents to, what — 400 users here ? While the Sonos replies are too few and too infrequent, they each generate further exponential posts, many just to get in a snarky response. This was never going to work. There have been plenty of pertinent questions posed, but also far too much mud-slinging which was never going to add anything. Maybe next time, a different platform for the Q&A, and hopefully a few more adults in the room.
I think if they would have come out and apologized right away and then laid out some semblance of a plan to make it right - they could have changed this trajectory quickly.
Oh come on, I’m an adult — I don’t need an apology from someone I’ve never met. And an apology would be derided on here as insincere — the staffers here have been put in an absolutely impossible situation, that absolutely anything they say will be copied, pasted and shot to pieces. The release schedule up till mid-June already shows some semblance of a plan to make it right. It’s a bloody app, for god’s sake - it was released too early, it’s buggy and bug fixes are coming. Many in here need to learn how to behave.
My question (as this is an AMA) is this: Do you factor in this loss of trust? Has this been costed? Was there a risk benefit analysis of releasing the app in such an unready state? Or did the the response to this app come as a surprise to you?
@superbob
We did factor in a risk analysis about delaying some features along with the timing of the release. That risk-benefit analysis was carefully done across many decisions about what to prioritize.
One thing I would like to restate from an earlier reply - we never intended to ship without Alarm Settings.
On the morning of the app launch, we discovered a data corruption error around the new Alarms APIs. The corruption could cause alarms to go off in the wrong room at the wrong volume with the wrong content! In order to save your alarms, we made the difficult decision to remotely disable the alarm settings feature and then completely lock it out. It allowed us to make sure your alarms stayed as they were - but at the steep cost of taking away your ability to change them yourself.
The team rallied to make sure we could turn this feature back on safely - and today we are so delighted to say that we have re-enabled alarm settings. To get this feature, you must do a full system update.
We will continue to evaluate the impact of new and returning features, and have committed to a timeline for the short term.
HelloI did the update and there’s still no alarm function back in the app. What do you suggest ???
Mod Edit: removed the profanity
Sonos: removed everything else
Let’s talk about screen equity.
This is from my wall-mounted iPad.
Mine does not look like that - I have full screen.
What has been the general mood of the Sonos team/staff since the new app was released? Was the team surprised at the negative reception or was it expected?
@GuitarSuperstar
p...]
Any time we change an experience or delay a feature, we know that some people will have negative sentiments. We also saw in our usability testing that people appreciated the new user interface, adaptability, and faster time to music.
<...]
some people... This is current Google rating of new Sonos app. I think every more comment is unnecessary
).
