End of Software Support - Clarifications

Wow. Where to start. 
No belief or faith is required if you have an understanding of technology; different devices of different capability working together is the entire essence of computer networking. They don’t need to be running the same software, they just need to speak the same protocol. As one example, the protocol that moves email around the Internet, SMTP, was ratified in 1982. It’s been extended many times to add many capabilities to it but (and this is no exaggeration) you could take an SMTP mail client written in 1982 and it could send an email over today’s internet.
You want a less extreme example - Skype. You can send a real time audio/video stream between two a massive beefy Windows PC and a (comparatively tiny) android phone running completely different software and it works fine.

There’s even precedent for this within the current Sonos portfolio - you can group an airplay capable device with a non airplay device and they work together fine.

So let’s be very clear this is absolutely possible on a technical level. When Sonos implies it isn’t they. are. lying. What they mean is, for business/commercial reasons, they don’t want to facilitate that happening. They’re screwing us for profit. 

There’s also Yamaha MusicCast, but it offers limited options and its future in the market seems questionable with no foothold. Then there’s Play-Fi, which looks promising but still fledgling with no strong partners. B&O looks really cool, but I can’t see the value at those prices.

So let’s be very clear this is absolutely possible on a technical level. When Sonos implies it isn’t they. are. lying. What they mean is, for business/commercial reasons, they don’t want to facilitate that happening. They’re screwing us for profit. 

It's good to know that there are so many people who understand multiroom audio better than its inventors and patent holders.  

Oh of course I forgot. Sonos are being totally dishonest about this. Or is it just that they are stupid.  I forget.

The reaction to my post is entirely what I  expected. 

Well I’m so, so glad you all spoke up and voiced your concerns and that this appears to have had an impact, even if the full extent of that remains to be seen. I too had and still have concerns but until now have not voiced them - I guess that’s indicative of how little confidence I have that my concerns (and everyone else’s) will make a difference.

I bought into Sonos a long, long time ago, when they only had offices in the USA and over here in the UK no one had even heard of them; in fact most people either wasn’t aware that it was even possible to have a multi-room music system, or if they had it was just so, so expensive it was only a pipe dream. I even had to talk my local Hi-Fi dealer into setting up a trading account with Sonos so that I could order thousands of £ of gear to kit out my entire house in one go! This included the beautiful and functional Sonos Controller units, in fact several of them so I could control my system from various places within my house - much to the sheer astonishment and delight of my friends when they first saw it, before exclaiming “Wow! That’s incredible. I’ve absolutely must get one of those. What’s it called again? Sono …?"

Ive lost count of the number of those friends who bought into Sonos, or their friends, and friends of friends … (you get the point). I even forgave Sonos when they made my many Sonos Controllers obsolete, despite having bought a load of lithium batteries to replace the ones that kept wearing out, but what REALLY pissed me off was that I didn’t feel as though I’d had any choice, nor been given enough information or advance notice of that happening (we all lead busy lives right?)

I was also pissed off when, now having to rely on iPhones and iPads to replace my Sonos Controllers  that they suddenly made older versions of iOS incompatible too - sure they can’t keep bringing out newer versions of the Sonos App that support every version of iOS, but why couldn’t I just keep devices running old versions of the App too, why didn’t the system update come with a BIG WARNING that you were about to screw everything up, and yet again why wasn’t there better communication about this change in advance? Mmmm, it was beginning to look like this was the way Sonos went about things from now on - Now that they were a Global, very successful company with millions and millions of customers.

This irritation was further emphasised when I discovered that in fact it WAS ABSOLUTELY POSSIBLE to keep an older, different version of a controller running in tandem with my updated system, contrary to what Sonos told everyone - it was called SonoPad, a third party controller app produced by a one man band for very little cost, and it still works to this day, despite the very many, many system updates since then! So why would Sonos claim this was not possible? If a little third party developer could do it, why couldn’t I just stick with the old controller app on some of my devices and still have everything else work on different versions?

Sadly, it’s the same old story time after time; bright new innovative company comes along with great ideas but needs customers to believe in them in order to grow and survive. Company gets what it wants and becomes so big and successful that, some where along the line, it forgets what and who made it that successful in the first place and how to go about running their business in the way that made it so attractive to all those customers who made it what it is today. Communication, or the lack of adequate, thoughtful and appropriately timed communication both with its customers, and often within their now behemoth sized organisation, is always at the root of this. 

Trust is hard to win, easy to keep, but so very, very difficult to get back when you break it. I do so hope that Sonos learns from this and goes on to be different to every other big company out there. Even giants like Apple haven’t managed this, but at least Sonos is nowhere near that big and so has a fighting chance of leading by example.
 

Fingers crossed (rant over)