Malcolm Owen
Sonos users will have to continue using the current and hugely disliked iOS app, with the company's CEO making it clear that it's not possible to roll back to the older app any longer.
Since its app update in May, Sonos has received frequent complaints about the revision, with users upset by a number of missing features and functionality. While the company CEO has already apologized for the disruption caused by the new app, there's apparently no way back for the app at all.
In an "Office Hours" Q&A session on Reddit on Monday, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence, continued the apology tour with assurances about the app. However, those assurances would not include rolling back the app to a previous state.
Spence admits that he had been hopeful of a release of the old app, referred to as S2, but it turns out that it's not possible. The problem is that it has gone too far adjusting other software elements to ever go back.
"The trick of course is that Sonos is not just a mobile app, but software that runs on your speakers and in the cloud too," Spence writes. "In the months since the new mobile app launched we've been updating the software that runs on our speakers and in the cloud to the point where today S2 is less reliable & less stable then what you remember."
After "extensive testing," Spence says that the re-release of S2 would "make the problems worse, not better."
Spence adds that, as a "silver lining," Sonos is now focused on getting the new software working properly for consumers.
As promised in a previous apology, changes are on the way, including making the set-up process of new products more reliable. The company is also keen to reduce the number of "something went wrong" errors that users encounter.
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17 Comments
This is fatal-blow level error IMO for a company - you do one thing, and you bork it so severely, They could not have tested the app extensively, OR AT ALL, given the number of problems. How poorly run can a company be that this gets anywhere near the App Store for release?
I still cannot add song to a Sonos Playlist, and still get something wrong errors accessing recently played content from their Home Screen, and Apple Music content played from the Sonos app is way too loud, and the lowest volume levels cut out completely.
This is ongoing for months now.
So no more Sonos for me. Ever
Was always curious about Sonos, but complaints about their software has been vocal for over a decade so I stayed away. AirPlay does what I need it to and don't see myself moving away from it.
I love Sonos as a system. I currently use a Beam 2, a pair of ones as the surround, and the Sub Mini, plus a pair of Era100's in the master. Once set up it's stable, sounds wonderful, and the components unobtrusive. But getting to that point seems to be getting harder and harder.
Sonos has made so many missteps in recent years that it's tarnishing the image.
A friend of mine was a high level programmer for Chase bank. We were discussing programming disasters. He told me of one major problem. They were updating a database for a major database center in the bank. They went through a number of testing procedures. First, a handful of computers. Then a department and so on. When they were satisfied, on a weekend, when things were slow, they rolled it out to the entire company. The entire system immediately crashed.
weve all had experiences where new software causes unexpected problems. It seem that here, a major mistake they made was to continue updating other software for devices while this problem existed, making it impossible le to revert to the previous system while the tracked the problems down and, hopefully, eliminated them. Chase was able to revert until they found and fixed the problem. That’s usually a standard thing for Marge companies. As we know, if you update your OS, Apple gives several weeks to over a months for you to revert if there’s a problem.