After hinting that the release of their old app might fix their current app problems Sonos has done another about turn with CEO Patrick Spence claiming that this solution was not going to work.
“Everything has been on the table,” Spence wrote in a blog recently “After doing extensive testing we’ve reluctantly concluded that re-releasing S2 would make the problems worse, not better.”
Earlier this month, The Verge reported that Sonos was considering bringing back the original version of its app, and Sonos was reportedly hopeful that allowing customers to revert to the old app would provide an interim solution as the company works to improve the new app.
Sono’s customers who are angry that their Sonos sound system has been nobbled claim that they suspected the solution was not going to work.
Spence claimed that they came to the conclusion “after doing extensive testing” a statement that many of their customers found was “A bit rich” as it appears that their latest app which has turned into a debacle lacked “extensive testing”.
The CEO who is now fighting to keep his job, after his “push for speed” backfired.
The software update, which Spence has said was needed for future products, was pushed just before the announcement and launch of the Sonos Ace headphones with what appears to be no testing of the impact on their speaker range.
On the question of Sonos shifting from local playback to cloud-based services he recently wrote “When we launched Sonos the dominant use case was local music libraries/servers running on your local network,” Spence wrote. “Since then, we’ve seen the number of customers using cloud-based music services explode.”
On the possibility of adding two-factor authentication and other security features: “We redesigned the new software to incorporate a modern identity provider to better protect your system,”.
“We’re absolutely thinking about how we evolve the security from here” he said.
On the Sonos app not being integrated with the iOS lock screen and Dynamic Island management claimed “Honestly, we love the idea of using the Dynamic Island. All of these avenues for control on iOS require a sort of collaboration with Apple to make this a reality. For example, we haven’t been able to convince them that Sonos control on the Lock Screen would be good for iPhone users.”
It appears that everything has been on the table in terms of finding the fastest path to fixing the problem with Sono’s systems with the Company now facing the real possibility that their current customers simply throw the towel in and move to a new open standard system.
In the months since the new mobile app was launched, we’ve been updating the software that runs on Sono’s speakers and in the cloud to the point where today S2 is less reliable & less stable than in the past.
Sonos released a redesigned version of its app back in May, and it has turned out to be a disaster after customers quickly found that the new app lacked several key features and was riddled with bugs.
Sonos issued an apology in July and shared an outline of future update plans that will see missing features returned in September and October.
In August, Sonos said that it would delay two upcoming product launches planned for 2024 to focus on improving the app.
In today’s Reddit post, Spence said that the “original architect of the Sonos platform” has been put back in charge, and that the company has also “pulled together the very best and most experienced engineers” that it has to work on the app until it is fixed.
