All Sonos products will continue to work past May

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I wasn’t one of the customers who complained about Sonos’ earlier communication this week. However, I initially had the same reaction as many others who wrote in anger or disappointment in this customer community.

I commend Patrick Spence for his quick reaction, for correcting course, and for the tone of his letter to customers today. I completely understand Sonos’ internal drivers to urge their customers to upgrade their systems. However, as Patrick well said, customer experience and their loyalty is paramount and trumps anything else.

I plan to remain as a loyal Sonos customer and will continue to expand and upgrade my home sound system when it makes sense to do so.

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M

mark690Answer

Lyricist I

I think people are a lot more surprised than they ought to be, this strikes me as being a fairly predictable issue with any ‘connected’ devices in modern times. You used to buy an amp, which might run for decades, but you only got a 12 month warranty - no ongoing service of any kind. Here we are asking a company to continue delivering a service indefinitely, for no fee (save being baked into the cost of the product). It was probably hubris to imagine they could do this in the first place, it’s not a scalable business model. Maybe we will see a shift towards subscriptions for connected devices in future.

Yes, as another poster said, impossible is a very strong term in software… the core technology of value here is the SonosNet bit that syncs all the devices so well, and it is hard to imagine that needs to change much. New products might want to support higher bitrates or codecs or somesuch, but they could also be designed to support the older protocol and continue to work, albeit by downgrading themselves to the lowest common denominator in any given system.

However continuing to support increasing lists of legacy devices in a single codebase does become harder, more error prone, and less fun for the people doing it. Software definitely has a shelf life.

J

jeff in VA

Lyricist I

I’m not sure what is different about today’s message, other than tone. They will still require splitting legacy and newer products into two different systems. That means no whole house system. They will still offer a modest discount on new speakers in exchange for bricking older ones. Today’s email seems like a crisis management response that doesn’t really address the bigger issues. Have they attempted to make older and newer products work together, even if they have a slightly different code base? Or are they simply not going to put the money into trying? At this point I will continue using the 7 Sonos speakers I have, but I will not be buying more, nor will I be recommending Sonos to friends.

S

skyschemer

Enthusiast II

What’s seems different is this:

Secondly, we heard you on the issue of legacy products and modern products not being able to coexist in your home. We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalizing details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.

What I hope this means is that the split system can still function as one system in terms of streaming the same music. In essence, sharing the least common denominator of features. If they do that, then honestly, I will be happy.

If it was just the same plan as before, it wouldn’t require additional engineering.

jgatie

I’m not sure what is different about today’s message, other than tone. They will still require splitting legacy and newer products into two different systems. That means no whole house system. They will still offer a modest discount on new speakers in exchange for bricking older ones. Today’s email seems like a crisis management response that doesn’t really address the bigger issues. Have they attempted to make older and newer products work together, even if they have a slightly different code base? Or are they simply not going to put the money into trying? At this point I will continue using the 7 Sonos speakers I have, but I will not be buying more, nor will I be recommending Sonos to friends.

You do not have to split your system in two. You can use all the units with legacy software, keeping the full functionality you have today. You just won’t receive new features, but you will get bug fixes and security updates. That was the new thing announced by the CEO.

It is technically impossible to make old software coexist with new, so these are the next best choices.

R

Ralpfocus

Prodigy III

Jgatie how do you know “It is technically impossible to make old software coexist with new, so these are the next best choices”

It may be hard or expensive or time consuming (or it may not) but why impossible?

S

skyschemer

Enthusiast II

What I hope this means is that the split system can still function as one system in terms of streaming the same music. In essence, sharing the least common denominator of features. If they do that, then honestly, I will be happy.

...but the more I read it, the more it seems like the same BS, repackaged in a nicer tone. :P

jgatie

Jgatie how do you know “It is technically impossible to make old software coexist with new, so these are the next best choices”

It may be hard or expensive or time consuming (or it may not) but why impossible?

Here’s one reason: Sonos often makes changes in their WiFi communications which makes adding an older unit to a newer system via WiFi impossible. You must connect it via Ethernet to add it, then it must update to the current software. If you allow new units to be on the newest software and old units to stay on the old, this difference in communications makes them incompatible. So you are going to say “So don’t make the changes", well some of those changes are wholly necessary (otherwise, why make them?) and the software cannot bring new functions, security, features, etc. without them. This is just one instance where the differences between old and new software makes running them concurrently impossible.