Update on the Sonos App from Patrick Spence

Give me the old app back and I’ll pretend this never happened. I’ll even beta the “new app” one day a week and provide you updates.

just turn my speakers back on. 
 

Now I’m checking hourly for the old app to pop up like a gd idiot due to that press release

The last app rlease did add that functionality back, so if S1 still supports smb v1 and the app works correctly some people would be able to downgrade.

It still leaves a number of people in limbo because their product can’t be downgraded due to no S1 support for the hardware.

I would be very surprised if the smbv2 minimum setting was more than a config change. The samba team haven’t removed the settings to support v1 yet, just changed the defaults to make v2 minimum.

In theory, a config file update to the firmware is most likely what’s needed, but it’s possible Sonos have compiled a custom kernel with config options disabling it, but still no technical reason the config options couldn’t be undo and a new firmware released adding it back.

It does cause an awkward situation when they come to disable it again in the future, especially when the samba team finally remove it completely from a future version and people will kick up a stink saying you reverted it last time. 

I suspect the reason it happened when it did was someone decided “do it now, while everything is on fire any way” to bundle it into the app upgrade fiasco, rather than having to have more unrest later.

If they are going to do that, my ask would be they create a music focused controller. Having used the new controller I’d call it streaming service focused rather than music focused.

What I care about is the music I want to play, not which streaming service has it. The app, device and services are a means to an end, not what I care about when wanting to choose music to listen to.

I get that, but making that a widely known temporary solution could at least get many that are S1 compatible even in part to be able to use some of their zones as opposed to none at all. So I guess this is a comms opportunity to firefight the present fire. Is that necessary? - depends on a realistic assessment by Sonos as to when everything will be back to normal. And will not be needed if they can quickly roll back to S2 as it was on May 1 2024.

But as one Sonos apologist said once to me here: since I know little of computer architecture, I should not be opening my mouth here. So there is that.

For me, the biggest issue Sonos created with the removal of SMBv1 and HTTP, was the fact that they effectively disabled 2 of their own configurations for making music available via a PC or Mac and left the two wizards enabled to fool users into thinking it’s still an option. I can see plenty of threads on here where people appear to be continually trying this when others say music libraries now work… 

For anyone with a half-decent NAS holding their library losing SMBv1 hasn’t been much, if any, of an issue. 

No longer supporting HTTP from a PC/Mac is the bigger problem as it renders 66% of the Sonos created options to add a ‘folder’ null and void. 

It’s just another example of extreme laziness by Sonos in their code. Surely it’s not that hard to change the add folder code on the desktops to only support a network share…

Obviously the better option would be to update that code to use something considered secure enough. 

I do wonder if the sudden focus on security is simply because as they’ve effectively opened up all our systems to the internet (thanks for asking BTW...) and leaving HTTP/SMBv1 access is correctly not acceptable as it opens up our systems to a load of external threats that weren’t directly accessible before. 

Which begs the question I haven’t seen an answer to. Once Sonos is set up, S1/S2 work in the absence of the net, if local libraries are to be played. Can the new app do this?

Astoundingly irresponsible handling of customer experience for a high end audio market. 
 

Sonos isnt a startup, or a shoddy cooy of a good product. They have lost our trust in auto-updating their products. 
 

8 or 9 months for an update that will give us back what we already had, and possibly new bugs and time spent reimporting playlists or worse.

Perfect time for a competitor to lure us away. 
but then there’s our hardware investment.
 

Sigh

8 or 9 months? Where has this timeframe come from? That would be Jan or Feb. I’ve only read October.

I just tried by disabling the WAN access to both the phone and the speakers, and it does work. Including the newly added local library search. Although the experience is not totally pleasing to the eye since all the other icons in the interface are greyed out, the local library is still functional.

I love the new app!!

Patrick Spence, what have I told you about hijacking people’s accounts? 😉