All Sonos products will continue to work past May

Personally, I disagree with this, although I know that opinions differ.

I think it’s more accurately described as: technical solutions are feasible to allow legacy and modern products to continue to interoperate, but Sonos decided that the (non-trivial) R&D investments required to implement them are not where they should be spending their R&D money.

Well I have no inside knowledge, but being in the software engineering business, the last thing one wants to do is downgrade the customer experience.  I’m sure they thought of everything, the writing on the wall has been clear for years and yes, it was probably met with many meetings full of PR people not believing what they hear from the engineers.  If I had a nickel for how many times I’ve heard “Just make it work” in my job, I could replace my two P:5G1’s.

As to future support, the thing about knowing this is coming, is you can build for future proof-ness.  Also, RAM and SD memory is far cheaper now than in 2005.  You can get a 256 MB card for the price of a 16 back then, and the Play:5 Gen 2 has 8 times the RAM/storage as the legacy devices.  So if the application and data fit in 32 MB now, it’s going to be some time before it hits 256 on the P:5G2.  Now is this enough to outrace the inevitable code bloat?  Well, since Sonos engineers are pretty good at squeezing blood out of a stone, they can probably keep squeezing, even if the stone is 8 times bigger.  

As discussed before, all technical limitations involve financial decisions.  You simply cannot separate the two.  Example: The perfect solution to today’s problem would be to replace every legacy product out there with the equivalent modern product for free. It can be easily done, and it’s feasible. 

Then tell me, what’s keeping them from doing it?

No big deal, but you’ve been suggesting that it’s not technically possible, I’ve been suggesting that it is technically possible, entirely within software, but requiring a system architecture change. That’s the only difference in our positions.

My “technically impossible” statement comes with the fact I wear a project lead hat.  As such, financial impact is always figured into my analysis.  Sadly, I long ago passed the day where I could dream big as an engineer.  

Besides, it is just as disingenuous (though ingratiating to the mob with the torches and pitchforks) to say “It’s technically possible, Sonos just decided not to do it”, leaving off the financials, as it is to say “Sonos could replace every legacy product out there with the equivalent modern product for free, they just decided not to do it.”*

*Though the few times I perused the main threads, I saw this sentiment posted a lot.  There’s no quelling the mob once they get going.  And this mob is something special.  We actually passed the “Holocaust comparison” barrier at mid-day on announcement day, which is a new record. 

I get it. I ran large global software product R&D organisations for many years, as well as having done lots of software development myself. I routinely made decisions of this nature. However there is a difference between technically impossible and too expensive (I didn’t ‘leave off the financials’), and it’s better if we’re honest about that. Just my opinion.

Disagree.  Emphasizing the fact that it can be done to an irrational mob only puts them in a more irrational state.  Technical feasibility cannot be separated from costs, any more than giving everyone a free replacement can be separated from costs.  It’s bad enough they are suggesting Sonos bankrupt themselves by giving away free stuff when they know the costs, why give them hope when they can’t possibly know the costs, only that is is “feasible”?  You and I can have that discussion, because we know.  The mob?  They only want a cudgel to beat on Sonos, I’ll not have my knowledge hand them one.

And by the way, thanks to @David_366 for a rational discussion without all the furor.  It's back and forth like this that makes me think this place is not just a mob.  Good talk!

I think they did not want the announcement to effect the Christmas retail season.  I’m sure that will come off as greedy to some, but sales of new product is their only income.    Other companies could give a year notice and not risk it effecting sales quite as much since the old products are new products are not nearly as tied together.   For example, if Google announces they are dropping support for an android version, it won’t make people pause in their purchase of a Google Mini.

As far as people being surprised, how and why this is happened is different then almost any other product out there.  Some compare it to an analog amp or dumb speaker, while some compare it a phone or tablet...and there are similarities in both, yet significant differences.

I see two possible explanations for May.  One being that it’s a significant distance from the retail shopping season.  Even if there are delays, I’m sure they want this long forgotten (if possible) by the time people start thinking about Christmas.

The other (and I speculate) is that it is timed around product releases or other good news to report.  Two years ago, Sonos announced the Beam around April/May and it came out in July, if I recall correctly.  If there is a new product coming out for the summer, I can see where that may appear to soften the blow so to speak for some people.  Not all for sure, but something.    This could also be part of the reason they can’t give full details of the change over in May.  A product release or other functional tied into this somehow might be something that don’t want to talk about right now.  Again, speculating.  Just a WAG.

You’re right; I am not following you at all here. You said this (emphasis mine):

You take it home and try to add it to the system, and it sits there and blinks at you.  This is because there were some changes to the wireless protocols that are preventing it from connecting.  The standard response when someone ask for help with this scenario is to connect it via Ethernet, add it to the system, let it update to the new software, then disconnect it and it will run wirelessly.

That sounds like there’s a workaround that works. So I don’t know what point you are trying to make. Since we’re obviously not communicating effectively here, and continually trying to explain it over and over again is frustrating, let’s drop it.

I only need as many streams as I have legacy components, and odds are pretty good I don’t even need that many since the average user is probably not playing a different audio stream on every speaker at the same time.

This is a hypothetical product intended to serve as a bridge for legacy users to in order to improve interop between old and new. Putting a lower limit on simultaneous streams across the bridge seems like a reasonable restriction to me. Is it a seamless UX? No. But it’s a better UX than having two zones that are walled off from one another, and less distasteful than buying a new product with new features I can’t access/use as long as a legacy device is talking to it.

Might such a device be expensive? Maybe. But what’s expensive to an end user is going to be relative to how many components they have that are being EOL’d. I’d pay a $1000 for such a bridge device since I am facing a $2000 upgrade path today (and I have two first-gen Play:3 devices whose days appear to be numbered, so that cost is going to go up in the near future).

It’d also mean a lot less e-waste. Reuse and extended use is always better than recycle.

This is why I take issue with you describing any solutions as “impossible”. It might be infeasible, it might be cost-prohibitive, but it’s not impossible. But Sonos is not having that conversation. They are giving us the options of all or none and expecting people to accept it. Quite clearly, they are not.