End of Software Support - Clarifications

Look guys….you buy an expensive system,  you expect that, if you prefer,  you can keep that original configuration as long as you like in working condition.  I could have kept my old hi fi components and they would have been still working today.  I chose to upgrade because I wanted to,  not because my old system life was being cut short by the manufacturer’s built in design obsolescence.  As far as their offer for support for as “long as possible”  that don’t cut it.  It’s kinda like a cable tv offer that isn’t guaranteed beyond a limited time.  They want to suck you in with a low ball price and then when your knee deep in their crap they hit you over the head with the real cost.

My speculation would be pointless as it is not proof of anything..  Even if I could come up with something that you find has merit, that doesn’t mean that’s the actual reason.  I stand by my point.  The fact that you or anyone else isn’t aware of technical reason is not proof that there isn’t one.  You can chose to believe Sonos or not.

The reason why you didn’t see regulars participating in the conversation early on (at least I wasn’t) as it did not look at all like a reasonable conversation could be had.  The vast majority were just expressing their frustration and not willing to consider any differing view then their own.  As well, the posts were coming in so fast that it was difficult to see any responses to a post you made.

I’m not saying there is a problem with venting your frustration and all that comes with it.  Honestly, I am thinking it’s still a bit early, not so much because reasonable conversation can’t be had, but the volume is still a bit high to follow the conversation constructively.

Here’s the offending paragraph in my opinion.  You keep saying in your response,  

“Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honor that investment for as long as possible. While legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible.

Exactly how long do you suppose that might be?

Ignoring any connotations that ‘hostage’ has in regards to the reason this is happening, yes, I absolutely agree with the above.  I only have one active legacy product, and I can pretty easily work around the problem.  I fully understand that customers that have several legacy products  have a much bigger problem to deal with, and that it can’t be handled cheaply if you want to continue getting regular updates and don’t want to deal with a split system..

 Exactly Danny “customers that have several legacy products  have a much bigger problem to deal with, and that it can’t be handled cheaply if you want to continue getting regular updates and don’t want to deal with a split system.”

This is the core of it

Well i stand by my opinion that it is a “won’t” rather than a “can’t” problem, based on the grounds that it is highly unlikely that it is technically impossible to make, what works today, not work in May.

I can fully accept the “There is no room or processing power to add new features” but that they are unable to keep the features of today, working in the future is plain rubbish. Why would my play 5 suddenly be unable to do what it is doing today, based on a claim of hardware limitations.

The “Same firmware on all devices” is just being lazy.

 Can I ask Danny, would you feel the same if you say had 50% of your units declared legacy and you faced a cost of several thousand $ or would you be rather miffed?

I am not understanding the ‘bricking’ of a speaker. The speaker itself is a mechanical device which, in this case, has a circuitboard controller attached. If this controller is disabled, can it be removed and/or replaced with an open-source (bluetooth LE) controller board?

At the end of the day, we purchased speakers (enduring mechanical devices), and if the (obsolete) integration circuitry and software fails or is unsupported, can these components be separated?

https://www.bluetooth.com/learn-about-bluetooth/bluetooth-technology/le-audio/?utm_campaign=le-audio&utm_source=internal&utm_medium=blog&utm_content=bluetooth-audio-gets-a-big-upgrade-at-ces-2020

I’m not quite sure how you think I feel, as I’ve tried to stay away from that as much as possible.  So perhaps I’ll try and accurately say how I felt, when I first heard the news.  Shock is probably the best description as I did not see it coming, not like this anyway.  I expected that the ZP products would go first, since they are older.  I did not realize that relatively newer products had the same hardware, and was disappointed to find out that they did.    I wouldn’t say I was miffed.  I immediately rejected the idea of staying on a legacy system as it makes little sense for me.  I do not like that I won’t be able to use my Connect:amp anymore. and have debated whether I need that room to be a part of the whole Sonos system.  Is it worth the 400+ dollars to get a Sonos amp?  It is not.  I’ll likely be re-arraigning things and using two Sonos Ones (that I already have) instead.

Now, if I had more units that were legacy, I think I’d be rather pissed off at first. I certainly have been in similar situations with other companies (not the exact scenario, but where I had a large unexpected expense)  I don’t think I would be fully blaming Sonos, just because I’ve had more interaction with them, but if I lacked, not quite sure what I would do.  I think I would probably stay legacy for awhile but plan on moving off in time.  I would not switch to bluesound, denon, or other like services as I don’t trust them more than Sonos.  I would strongly consider going to a more traditional setup using amazon alexa for control, but that has it’s downside of not really intergrating with TV.  I definitely would be re-evaluating how I look at smart speakers and and multiroom audio in general.  I can’t say I’d be done with Sonos, but that option would be on the table.

Even saying the above, it isn’t exactly fair as I tend not to get upset about certain things that other people do.  It’s just my personality. life experience,  and how I tend to approach problems.  That doesn’t mean to say that other people’s emotional reactions are wrong. as I don’t think that way either.  In a very very generic sense, I don’t think emotions are ever wrong, they are what they are.  How we choose to react to them is what matters.

No, that's the problem with this corporate approach Sonos has taken.  No further clarifications, no transparency; it feels like we've been ghosted. Until May?

I have to take the same approach you have.  Honestly, I have more hope that 3rd party workarounds will keep my Sonos devices working than Sonos coming through for their customers.

So like a lot of folks I’ve been thinking about this.  It’s always been an interesting decision every time I’ve added to my system.  Lots of folks, myself included have always contended that the price we were paying for each component was a large premium over what the component should cost.  So I sat down to figure out why I kept paying it.  It was something I did think about each time as this is a big expense for me ever time I added something.  I didn’t want to throw this money away and I’m not someone who tries or has one of everything.  So here is why I believe Sonos was able to command a premium for their devices which I determined justified my purchase.

1. Sonos commanded a premium as a first mover
2. Sonos commanded a premium due to exclusive syncing technology
3. Sonos commanded a premium as an upgradable solution - this one was big and one the sales folks hammered home, and for a period of time was true
4. Sonos commanded a premium because you could grow into the system (i.e. I can’t afford an entire system today, but eventually I’ll build the entire system) this is also lock in so if I already had 1 piece… why not add more.
5. Sonos commanded a premium due to ease of setup
6. Sonos commanded a premium due to interoperability with other services - there were lots of services that they could work with and services wanted to be on their platform to reach their customer base.
7. Sonos commanded a premium due to customer loyalty/trust and by extension other potential customers trust in the influencers that were recommending the product.
8. This all culminated into they could command a premium because of their name… Sonos

The current problem is that the above list has changed a lot since I purchased my first device.  I won’t say they are untrue, just that they are no longer in a position to enjoy the premium that they were able to get do to the above.  So this is feeling a bit like a house of cards. 

1. First mover only matters until you get passed either in functionality or even more of an issue price for functionality
2. Others now have similar syncing technologies
3. Upgrades - this was the big one left which is now gone
4. Build over time is now showing why that’s a bad investment for the customer - lock in is generally bad for the consumer over time as you end up in these rip and replace situations which can be extremely costly
5. Setup is still easy - but not easier than other systems out there
6. Services are now widely available on competing products.
7. Loyalty - they just burned a lot of it by not handling their need to remove high cost support items.
8. I think they still can command a bit of a premium due to their name, but not the amount they used to and depending on how this whole thing ends maybe that’s gone too.

I think they have opened a lot of peoples eyes on the downfall of IoT or smart devices.  With no open standard (and even with) there is a limit to what you can do with hardware.  The problem is that the audio community isn’t used to throwing out their speakers (which are perfectly good).  Quality speakers get fixed, not thrown away.  

So where does this leave Sonos?  They could have rode the loyalty/influencer tide for a while, but needed to do something to compete with Amazon and Google.  They chose retire method, which would allow them to focus elsewhere.  They still want their premium, but I”m not sure what I would currently list as a reason to command a premium.

The future seems to be invest in commodity items like google/amazon streaming devices and feed them into speakers that you can invest in and count on for years.  The wireless speakers will be more difficult to replace but something like a small chromecast/echo device would make it doable, feed the standalone speaker (which a device that can be hidden on the back of the device) and allow you to move to the new platform for a fraction of what it would cost to upgrade my Sonos system to stay current.  I’d also end up with better speakers.  I’m not knocking Sonos speakers, they do a fine job where I have them, but for the same money I can get better ones.

The other option I see for groups like Sonos is to add in upgrade modules.  Let me pull out and replace memory, processor, etc.  This would further increase the price though so not sure this is really doable, but it would separate the durable good (the speaker) from the disposable good (the computer).

Loyal Sonos Customers…

It’s truly this simple… Yesterday Sonos announced  Q12020 Earnings ARE Expected to Decline.  This is no doubt a direct result of the legacy announcement… SONOS already Missed Q3 EPS...Q4 will be announced on Feb 5th and Now Q12020 is already expected to go down…  Three-Quarters of EPS misses in a row will not kill SONOS because Partick and the Board know that Wall Street expects a year-over-year decline in earnings on higher revenues.  The danger here is if higher revenues are not realized this could impact its near-term stock price.  I think most legacy customers have held off purchasing until the solution of the issue is better understood and TRUSTED…  I would expect SONOS to be relatively quiet until the February 5th earnings call... 

I'm my humble opinion the ONLY way to turn this around is to allow Legacy and Modern devices to work seamlessly until the Customer is willing to upgrade or in the rare case the Device actually dies.

Good Luck...

I can’t believe I’m going to give out this information for free, so SONOS management can thank me now.

• All future products should have a removable memory & chip.  It can be on a USB key or something proprietary.
• No user will be irate, maybe disgruntled, when told their unit is out of date and needs to buy a $35 upgrade memory unit
• Charge every user 50¢ / month as a on-going programming charge.  Sure I have (had) 10 units, but $5 per month to know my unit will NEVER go obsolete until I decide to upgrade it, would be very satisfactory over bricking the entire system after five years and watching $3,500 go down the drain.

There’s an automatic spam filter that sometimes catches posts which aren’t spam. I can’t say why for certain that it grabbed your post, maybe because it was mostly just a quote with one word and an extra character. But I’ve retrieved it. The spam filter only checks content of posts, not the user who posted it, so my posts go through the same filter that yours does. If you’re posting behind a VPN, that can sometimes cause the filter to flag things too.

  We do not and will not hire people to join the community without having them clearly identified as Sonos employees. It’s not something my team would stand for. 

@Goodbye Sonos, @DK_Madsen, and @Johnas, I want to nip this very clearly. We do not and will not hire people to join the community without having them clearly identified as Sonos employees. It’s simply behavior my team would stand for or allow on our community

@izziny, we don't expect any immediate impacts from ending software updates. The legacy devices have reached the limit of their memory and processing power, and while we’ll continue to provide what bug fixes and fixes we can, as technology evolves over time and partners evolve their own services and features with it, there will be things that the legacy devices are incapable of supporting. 

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This is a very interesting read even if a couple of points are beyond my comprehension.  I think a fundamental issue in big tech is that these companies are also investment vehicles for wall street.  When the interests of customers (high quality, long lasting products, excellent customer service) and the interests of shareholders (profit, increasing customer base, reduced costs) align, then both groups are happy.  More and more in big tech, wall street seems to have far more influence and often the best interests of the customers fall to the side.  I understand it.  I understand legally that executives have a fiduciary duty to shareholders.  I have no idea how to resolve this issue in publicly traded companies.  I just know that I don't want to have to consider this stuff when deciding whether to purchase an expensive product designed to stream music through my house.

Look...I’m not saying technology doesn’t evolve over time.  But knowing that,  the product should have been designed so that you don’t have to throw the baby (long life hardware  items, speakers, enclosures, etc.) out with the bathwater (outdated software and electronics).  When you guys designed your products you should have foreseen the customer problems that are now consuming your business.  The areas that were most vulnerable to change should have been isolated into a single component that would be subject to change,  and,  only if the customer so desired.  Functionality of the system at any equipment age should not be affected if the customer does not wish to progress to the next technological level.

Update:

It’s been over a week since I emailed to Mr. Spence and he has not responded. So my intentions are as follows:

1. Contact all retail operations (Amazon, Best Buy, Costco, etc) and make sure they know about the disposable products Sonos is selling.
2. Look into the legal ramifications, and taking the appropriate action.  

I’d advise everyone who just received the user experience survey from Sonos to factor recent announcements into their response....

(I’m gonna ruminate.)
While I agree wholeheartedly in principle, this is hindsight. It may well be that Sonos, with this purge of sorts, is underway toward a newer model path that can sustain a new level that at least matches their past support durations, not directly, but in relation to the far shorter period that most consumer electronics companies offer, while simultaneously covering their arse, so to speak, to a certain degree with the 5-years-from-discontinuation support decrees that are newly described (and hopefully from an unspoken “under-promise, over-deliver” framing). Is this all a bit at odds with previous messaging and unfortunate? You bet your speakers it is. But at the time the Sonos system was conceived and engineered initially, these challenges, the breadth of the product/tech landscape and “smart” integrations needed/possible/expected, along with today’s product and update cycles that have accelerated along with all of it --- these concerns just didn’t exist in the way they now do. 

This is all a bummer in many ways. I was remarkably frustrated at the news. It truly changes things. But, taking everything into consideration and really thinking about the future, being more pragmatic with an eyes-now-open to IoT in general, is hugely beneficial for myself and I’d imagine a gigantic number of others, whether invested in Sonos or just hearing/reading about all of this from the sidelines.

What I do not quite understand is the opinion of some that quite literally have been approaching all of this with a certain disparity,  a) understanding the nature of tech and IoT and wanting all future updates and tech integration it offers, while b) at the same time wanting stability and past tech and hardware behaviour to remain unaffected and as-is. That want, we can clearly see, is at odds with itself. This is quite literally a cake-and-eat-it-too stance, wanting legacy and modern, especially when taken without any specific and deep understanding of the proprietary tech and limitations involved in this particular scenario. Plenty of (not quite adequate) analogies can be made; plenty of speculation can be made; plenty of posturing can be made…. But at the end of the day none that really matters. Things are as they are and you get on with it as best you see fit. The sky isn’t falling.

My position has softened. I’m sitting tight until May. I’m auditioning some new gear with generous return policies. I’m trying stuff out. I’m continuing to use Sonos for now. I’m also suspending further investment in Sonos for now, not from a disgruntled bent, but just a pragmatic one. If the future with Sonos is compelling, I’ll pay attention, and if not, I won’t. I (and I expect most) Sonos users entered into the ecosystem for convenience first and foremost, not longevity, or at least a middle-ground between the two. Longevity solutions are still around, tried and true, as they have always been. Sonos is not quite (never was as is evident now) within that world, and figuring out how to best bridge the two worlds is what each person figures out in a way best for them.

We’ve all been a bit naive, and from where I stand that includes Sonos as well. The modern digital world is still rather new… some naivety makes sense. I’m appreciating the lesson here.

2 comments:

1. I understand technology marches forward. The difference whether planned or unplanned, we are dealing with built in obsolescence! If unplanned, Sonos has had plenty of time to “make it right” to slow or stop the bleeding. I’m sorry, 30% trade-in is insulting. We’re not talking about a Kia or Hyundai, we’re talking exotic.
2. My guess is most Sonos users are somewhat cutting edge techies with above average disposable (and I use the term loosely) funds. Many people here have already voiced they have and still use premium electronics! I’m all for moving forward with tech, but do it responsibly. I know there is a way to, as you said, “have your cake and eat it too”.

Very well stated.  However,  isn’t it still appropriate that we judge things in hindsight in order to express our disappointments with the past and be sure that we and those around us aren’t doomed to repeat them in the future?  As you said, technology unknowns at the time are somewhat to blame,  but Sonos does bear responsibility for some foresight if they are to be considered forerunners in the field.  When a product is designed,  there has to be forays into the unknown,  or else there would be no technological advancement ,  would there?  So the company should be judged by their ability to understand what the possible consequences of their actions are,  and how successful they are at predicting them.  That’s what makes them stand or fall by the wayside.  Sonos included.

Boeing for instance, made one helluva misjudgment on the affects that changes they made on their 737 max would have on flight performance.  They can’t pass that off to hindsight just because at the time they couldn’t forsee the consequences of their design decisions.  The key is to find these problems out before you sell the product to your customers.  The reason I use this example is because I spent 35 years in the aircraft design business,  I know what it’s like.

Hello,

we have saved money for a couple of years to be able to place a complete sonos experience throughout our entire house.  We are very happy with your products and had a lot of confidence in your system and company.  Until I heard this news today.  we assessed and tried to justify for ourselves to be able to purchase any new product that you release now or in the future. We were happy taking part in your BETA test and surveys. This with the fullest confidence that we could continue to use your products just like with analog speakers.  (Of course you keep in mind that you may have to replace a 20-year old due to defect) Now that this is not the case, the threshold to buy more Sonos products is so high that we will no longer consider this. I am not IT  specialist but I am convinced that there are possibilities to split the updates into legacy and not legacy updates but to keep linking the whole.  Perhaps the audio quality of the old boxes will then remain lower but the whole can continue to function as 1.
If this option is not offered, you will lose a happy customer so far.
At the moment we do not have legacy products yet, but the feeling that this can be regarded as legacy by you any time, takes away all our confidence.  You mention 5 years as the minimum number of years of support.  We do not gain any confidence from this.

 I hope you benefit from our feedback in your future decisions.

 Kind regards, Pieter & Margriet.

Apologies for the spelling errors.  We are from the Netherlands, therefore our English is not so good.  Pieter & Margriet

Yup. I agree with much of that.

1. I’ve mentioned in days past a couple of times that a further 5-10% added discount for each additional modern unit in a user’s network that stands to be affected by the end-of-support caused by a single connected legacy unit (with some stipulations) would go a long way toward addressing the disparity of impact across different user environments. Unfortunately that’s just a thing that I’ve typed, and not the reality as of now.
2. a) Well, that’s a guess. I personally know of quite a number of people who bought into the Sonos brand for convenience, ease of use and simplicity (if not just aesthetic) who are otherwise definitely not must-have-new-tech types, and definitely not those that participate on community forums for tech related stuff, audio or otherwise (with an exception given to digital photography forums).
   b) Re: cake…. Yes, there certainly is, (that’s part of the lesson as I see it) but highly unlikely from a turn-key solution from a single company/ecosystem.