Update on the Sonos App from Patrick Spence

Interesting view, but I’d be very surprised if the board made the decisions on app go/no-go, the same as I doubt they made a decision on the initial release date of the hardware.

It wasn’t a short project, in the Q3 transcript it was a multi-year effort, there is little sensible reason the board would push to destroy years of investment and work that was meant to be the start of a brighter better future and more money being made.

Regarding Jobs, he was only ever CEO once, when he rejoined Apple in 1997 until standing down due to his health in 2011. The biography by Walter Isaacson is a good read. It’s not just a rainbows and sunshine book and happy things.

Jobs had only ever previously been Chairman of the Board and later took over the Macintosh Division. It was Jobs who hired Sculley to be Apple’s 3rd CEO.

Where it went wrong was Jobs and Sculley had very different views on the direction Apple Inc should take. Jobs was very controlling, so even though he wasn’t CEO, his position as chairman and head of Macintosh meant he still did whatever he wanted.

After the Mac lost the market to the PC, Sculley proposed a restructure to the board that would move Jobs to a division with no real say in Apples future products so he could take Apple in the direction he wanted.

Jobs started planning a coup, to oust Sculley and take over as CEO, but confided in the wrong person, who blabbed. Jobs threatened to leave, Sculley got the votes he needed.

Jobs resigned, along with a number of the board members, and he went off to form Next Inc. and also fund The Graphics Group (before they became Pixar) so they could leave LucasFilm.

To complete: Sculley is a footnote; Jobs came back to Apple and resurrected it. That completes your good short version of the Apple story!

Accurate take, @sigh. I’ve been an executive with publicly traded technology companies, attending (and presenting at) Board of Directors meetings. While the BoD is kept apprised of major product development efforts, they very rarely play a role in managing those efforts. I cannot imagine any BoD overruling the decision of the CEO, unless the CEO was “on the bubble” and about to be dismissed. 

I agree, so disappointing.  I had things set up well and now it’s a mess.  sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  Locks up all the time, can’t adjust music easily, I am so frustrated.  Now it will be months to address.  I have a dozen speakers - not counting the old S1 - Play 5 and Play1s, so I can’t just start over.  These are way too expensive to be so dysfunctional.  I see the headphones are $459 - for what quality?  Not a chance! 

Your update that dropped today is f$#*%? $ GARBAGE! LOST all 15 Sonos pieces of equipment. God, you guys have destroyed a once-great product. 

The solution is -- restore the completely working old app while you fix this so-called update you released last May. 

Why allow all your users to suffer?? We paid you for all these items which we had assumed works and were without any issue whatsoever. 

Otherwise, just resign, Mr Spence. 

Then in some cases it may be a local network issue, it might be that the mDNS discovery of devices by the controller is not working that can sometimes be security software running on the mobile device (ie VPN client as an example) or it can be the implementation of managed switches, WiFi range extenders or EoP adapters or possibly an incompatible router. The devices might even be listed within a different Sonos Household ID .. the answer is if you can ping your devices on the subnet, then perhaps use other methods (temporarily) to play audio on your devices, such as…

• Airplay 2 (useful for grouping speakers too)
• Direct Control (PlexAmp/Spotify/Amazon Apps/iBroadcast/Emby)
• Bluetooth Audio
• UPnP/DLNA
• Alexa Voice Services (useful for grouping speakers too)
• Google Voice Services 
• Sonos Voice Control (useful for grouping speakers too)
• TV Apps (YouTube/Chromecast/Plex)
• Line-In audio
• 3rd Party Apps (Soro/SonoPhone/Orto etc.) (useful for grouping speakers too)

Meanwhile you mentioned in an earlier post that a level-2 Sonos Support Staff member was looking into your case, so just wait for them to get back in touch, or if you prefer, contact Sonos Support and get an update on the issue you reported. Either way you will need to resolve the access before setting up your library share using the steps provided in my earlier post.

It is easy to say they have may have learned their lesson but this is not the first time they had a huge app controversy.  There was a huge issue for Sonos Arc surround sound users where they lost all of their base from the sonos sub.  At the time, it didn’t get a lot of media attention but users were livid and they took several months to finally fix it (refusing to allow users to downgrade their software to earlier version until they came up with a fix).  And of course there was the whole Sonos 2 app issue a few years back.

For me, I never use the Sonos App - only for changing the settings on my arc for night time mode etc or adding speakers to a group which I don’t do very often.  I almost always use spotify connect or airplay for music playback because the user experience is much more seamless.  So I am largely unaffected.

However, I was in the market to replace my old Bose Quiet Comfort headsets with the Sonos Ace - the main benefit is the sound off feature with my Arc.  However, the reviews on that headset are mixed and I hear that the sound pass off feature is glitchy - I am not going to buy a Sonos product on the “promise of a software update to fix glitches”.  The track record on those updates improving your user experience is patchy at best - a far greater chance you go backwards rather than forwards.  I suspect Sonos will come to regret launching the headset because it is premium priced and offers no real benefit over its competition unless you own a sonos soundbar (which is very much a niche market) and really want that feature.  Going into a very crowded segment as a new entrant means adding something that doesn’t exist in the market or you can do it much better - this is not clear outside if you own a Sonos soundbar (not their regular speakers).  

Sonos has a competitive advantage in the modern audio market given its expandability in the ecosystem - so all they need to do there is not screw it up and not make things worse.  But it seems they are doing a good job at doing that.  

Despite the app furore (which has forced them to reforecast their full-year number downwards due to delaying launch of two new products), Sonos last week reported a 6% year-on-year revenue rise, “driven by the success of the Sonos Ace”.

Initial vs. sustained are often different. 

The next quarter will no doubt be the one where if people have stopped investing in extending systems, or have returned products due to the app issues, we’ll see a better picture. 

Also, it appears that word is spreading amongst tech sites, bloggers, reviewers, best buy guides etc. that Sonos is no longer the go-to solution because of the issues, and that is more likely to hit in the run up to Xmas, not to mention the distrust they are building up in the professional installation community where Sonos have hung installers out to dry. 

The next quarter has the potential to be very poor, and not just because they have had to delay new products.