Update on the Sonos App from Patrick Spence

Huh. Still don't want to load.

This explains why my alarm woke me up with a Sonos chime rather than Radio 2 again...

Not good enough. I spent thousands of pounds on building my Sonos system and I chose it because I could listen to my personal music library.

Telling that there is no thumbs down on this article.

Very poor

Was it just me who received a blank email initially from the CEO and only the second, a day later, that contained the apology? Accidental missing details or not written - just sounds like the new code 😂

 

I just got this. Oh. Just noticed my recently played don't want to load.

 

 

Same for me. This new app is so slow and unresponsive on iOS. If I try to restart a Sonos or other playlist from the ‘recent played’ list it throws an error every time.

There can be no valid apology for releasing an app that is so bad and cannot be rolled back. I understand the need to replatform the app due to outdated technology but if a b2b tech company released a replacement app that had so many fundamental issues they would be sued by their existing customers and lose many of them outright.

Sonos know their existing user base have little choice but to wait because of the huge investment in hardware we have all made. It is so disappointing from a company that was the market leader in multi room technology.

My biggest concern is the prolonged impact on current sales this could have, leading to dire consequences for the company.

Philip's email has been woefully slow and frankly doesn't address the fact that he allowed the release of a half-baked app, which was to enable the sale of his new shiny headphones.

I’d strongly suggest he does the following:

1.  Rollback the app for speakers to function as they did.
2.  Leave the new app for headphones or those that wish to be ‘live’ beta testers.
3.  Rigorously test the new ground up app.
4.  Beta test properly and work on feedback.
5.  Rollout the new all singing all dancing FULLY FUNCTIONING app with the option to update or remain with the one they know works until feedback is favourable and the app is stable.

I did love my speakers but hate my 'Sonos roulette' of will it won't it find my speakers, play the speakers I expect it to, play and not drop out, or indeed play what I want it to play, really takes the enjoyment out of the whole system.

Sonos, you need to do a whole lot better and this should not take 5 months (if that is to be believed) to fix something that was fundamentally not broken and restore functions you knew were not going to work, when you forced us to update.

I look forward to my thoughts being totally ignored but feel better for yet again venting my utter frustration at this travesty of a rollout.

Too little too late as far as I am concerned.

They knowingly released a half finished app just so they could start selling the headphones with very little or even no regard to current users who have loyally supported Sonos for many years. Then they had the gall to say that they were being brave!

Even if they do manage to hit the deadlines it will still be a 5 months wait for people to get their systems back to a state they were in before Sonos decided to ruin it for them.

Fortunately I managed to stop the auto update on one of my Android devices so I am still running the old app but I had to completely uninstall Sonos from my other devices which were infested with this garbage before I realised what was going on. I have to manually select the apps to update on the Android phone so that it doesn’t update the Sonos app.

I've held off from commenting on these forums, as I don't think I was going to say anything that hadn't already been said. But after Patrick Spences recent letter, I'm now angry enough that I'm going to, just to make myself feel better. 

My investment in Sonos gear goes to the tune of £2200. And that's just the gear I currently own, not the previous now obsolete stuff. 

It is NOT ACCEPTABLE for Sonos to downgrade my system while they're spending 3-4 months working out how to 'improve volume responsiveness'! It's an audio system for patrick’s sake, volume is the first thing. You should be ashamed that this has to be on your bugfix list.

What you should have done is, wait until the new app was feature parity with the old one, then release, while maintaining the old app for, say, a year. Most software companies have a plan for introduction and obsolescence, but not Sonos, it seems. 

I was able maintain my system for a while on the old app, but now I can't even do that. It feels like we're being railroaded into this crap new world.

If I wasn't so invested, I'd dump the gear and go. I really hate the new UI. And I work in UI development.

Thank you for listening to me shout into the void.

I wasn’t suggesting that nobody was running the old app. I think the context of my message was self-evident, in that people are demanding an ‘official’ path to downloading the old app.  After all, there wouldn’t be hundreds of messages demanding something that was readily available.  And I don’t doubt that anyone’s messages carry no weight in here, including my own.  That said, there remains no evidence that the old app is coming back — officially.  

This is impressive. Two months to craft a response and another three to deliver a functional product. 
 

The best part of half a year without a functioning system. At least offer the ability to return to a pre May 7 app while you mass beta test the current abomination. At this point I’m not sure if it’s arrogance, stubbornness, or plain stupidity. Either way, my next speaker purchase will not be with Sonos. 

Too little, too late for what happened and no clear explanation of how and why it happened