Volume control using IOS app on iphone and ipad

PS - Previous discussion about the app itself if interested:

Do you have any evidence the policy has changed?  

Which brings to bear a question similar to what @Airgetlam asks above.  If Apple’s policy is to allow reassigning the functionality of the hard buttons, why in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks would Sonos stop using the hard buttons for volume control?  Also, why would Sonos have used the well acknowledged hack to usurp a rule which doesn’t exist? 

No sane company hacks something which is actually allowed by the rules.  Similarly, no sane company removes functionality when it has no reason to do so.  Sure there are those who can think up silly reasons like “They hate their customers!” or “Sonos are big meanies!” or “They don’t want to support it anymore!” when it probably took more man hours to take it out of the code than it does to support it in the first place, but in reality, there are no logical reasons except that the decision was forced upon them by Apple. 

Fair enough, but if that is indeed the case, then they should be making an urgent effort to improve the app UX. Which they don’t appear to be doing. The focus seems to be on selling the hardware and keeping customers in their ecosystem. I get it from a profit perspective, but it sucks for their longtime customers. 

UX is a very subjective thing.  I don’t seem to have the problems other claim to have.  Then again, I’m pretty skeptical when it comes to UX “science”.  It seems more the flavor of the day than anything to do with actual performance or efficiency.

I won’t get into all the gory details of why I hate it so much (you can read the thread I posted for that). But I think it goes beyond a subjective opinion when very basic things like album release dates are missing. Maybe most people don’t care about such things, but music fans definitely do. 

I’m absolutely fine with the mobile Sonos App. I like its layout and have got so used to it, that I don’t even need to think about it - I don’t personally like the old Windows Desktop interface and so rarely use that, but these things will always be subjective. No-one can ever please all the people, all of the time.

I'd bet money that if an anonymous customer survey were conducted, the majority of people using the Sonos app wouldn't like it. Most people on the support boards here seem to be fine with it, but if you look elsewhere there are many complaints. Taking a brief look in the apple app store reviews, the overall star score is likely inflated because many people write negative 5 star reviews. I guess to make sure their reviews aren’t deleted (which mine was when I attempted to review). 

Here’s another thread about it:

For the family and myself (friends too) it’s just a ‘remote control’ App for playing/controlling music on our speakers - I mostly concentrate more on the music than the App.

As I said, I use it without even thinking about it, as I’ve got so used to it and know where everything is… I know the App inside out and back to front and I’m fine with the UX - it’s as easy to use as any TV remote, I find. I have no issue searching/playing/contolling anything. “It does what it says on the tin”. 

I find it really simple to use, but perhaps that’s because I’ve used the App since in was first launched (and I used the old App/interface for a long time too) and there’s no doubt I will likely use any new Sonos App, if they do ever launch one, as has been hinted at on this and many other websites.

My complaints are not about the “remote control” aspect of the app, which is simple enough. And works consistently for me (though others have issues). I would love to see it working better as a music discovery service as well, which it really doesn’t excel at since there’s little to no info about artists / albums / etc. But the Sonos business decision seems to be that they have built an API for third-party services to use, and that’s the end of the discussion. 

Sonos could make a really great App, ignoring both the Apple and Google store rules, and let customers install it directly from the Sonos site after opening up their phone’s locks.

Of course every App that I know of that has tried this has died soon after they got booted from the stores.