Sonos Admits Its Recent App Update Was a Colossal Mistake Leave a comment

When organising my Sonos residence theater system, I had a persistent drawback. I used to be making an attempt so as to add a Sonos wi-fi subwoofer to my community, however in response to Sonos’ cell app, the Sub was nowhere to be discovered. The app would throw a “Couldn’t join” message, or—even weirder—present me that I used to be making an attempt to attach a grey field labeled “product” with a serial quantity that had nothing to do with something.

“I believed the sensible residence was imagined to make your life simpler,” my husband commented mildly, as he watched me manufacturing facility reset the Sub just a few instances, flip my telephone on and off once more, toggle Bluetooth, swap telephones, and eventually bang my head towards a wall and cry earlier than calling Sonos tech help.

As everyone knows, I’m removed from the one one who has issues with Sonos’s new app; the corporate pushed out a radical redesign in Might that broke various key options—reminiscent of the power to change the volume on a few of its speaker techniques—and angered numerous longtime Sonos followers.

In the present day, greater than two months after the contentious redesign, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence lastly acknowledged the final buyer disappointment in an extended observe posted to the corporate’s Instagram account. “Since launch we now have had various points,” he wrote in a hilarious tone of wry British understatement. Spence apologized for the frustration the replace triggered, and famous that fixing the damaged app continues to be Sonos’ “primary precedence.”

The publish refers clients to the detailed record of Sonos software updates which have already been launched, and lays out a roadmap for additional enhancements to the hobbled app. Listed here are among the issues that Sonos guarantees to repair within the upcoming months:

• Implementing Music Library configuration, browse, search, and play (in July and August)
• Enhancing quantity responsiveness (in August)
• Enhancing alarm consistency and reliability (in September)
• Restoring edit mode for playlists (in September and October)

That is a brief record, and perhaps it is too brief. The variety of enhancements the corporate must make is—no level in beating across the bush right here—preposterous. I’m having hassle pondering of an app replace fiasco massive sufficient to match it to this one, as a result of in my time as a client tech reporter and editor, I can not consider one other software program replace that took away customers’ means to regulate the amount.

Greater than that, I can’t consider one other replace that took away customers’ means to regulate the amount after which didn’t instantly repair that. For months! I reached out to Sonos asking why Spence’s timeline for fixes is so extended. The corporate has not but responded.

It’s price nothing right here that Sonos’s {hardware} stays the gold customary within the premium client audio world. My colleague Parker Corridor refers back to the Period 100 as the brand new sensible speaker customary; the Ace wi-fi headphones earned an 8/10 and a WIRED Recommends badge. After I lastly obtained my Sonos residence theater system up, my jaw dropped on the richness and depth of the jungle noises in Land of Bad. (Bomb go increase!)

And but, this sense of annoyed disappointment is oddly acquainted. My household was once a totally Sonos family, with Play audio system extending all through our residence and out to my husband’s workshop. I ditched the Play system in 2020 as a result of I may not cope with the corporate’s choice to separate its controller software program into two separate Sonos apps, one for brand new audio system, and one for legacy audio system. Why do I must do some psychological math to recollect which app controls which speaker each time I need to change the music?

But right here I’m once more, held hostage by {hardware}, stranded by software program, unable to edit my Sonos playlists till September. Possibly I am simply one other silly stunning dreamer. Not less than my Roku TV nonetheless works.