Updates to the Sonos App Store and Intra-User Optimum Interoperability Measurement System (Extended Version)
We’re sorry that you have had problems with our new app, and I’m going to personally apologize for disappointing you. There isn’t an employee at Sonos who isn’t pained by having let you down, and I assure you that fixing the app for all of our customers and partners has been and continues to be our number one priority.
We developed the new app to create a better experience, with the ability to drive more innovation in the future, and with the knowledge that it would get better over time. A number of issues has been found since launch. Fixing these issues has delayed our prior plan to quickly incorporate missing features and functionality.
Since May 7, there have been new software updates released about every two weeks, each making significant and meaningful improvements to the software. Specific information about what has been released to date can be found in the release notes for the software.
We intend to release updates on a bi-weekly basis. We will give detailed notes on what we have addressed and what we are working on next in our community.
Sonos Home Theaters: Where Are I? Where Am I? Why Do I Need a Subwoofer? How I Got My Home Theater System Setup in 2020, and How I Wanna Be?
Yet here I am again, held hostage by hardware, stranded by software, unable to edit my Sonos playlists until September. Maybe I’m just another foolish beautiful dreamer. At least my Roku TV still works.
It’s oddly familiar that this feeling of disappointment is the same one. My family used to be a fully Sonos household, with Play speakers extending throughout our home and out to my husband’s workshop. I ditched the Play system in 2020 because I could no longer deal with the company’s decision to split its controller software into two separate Sonos apps, one for new speakers and one for legacy speakers. Why do I need to do some mental math to remember which app controls which speaker every time I want to change the music?
It’s worth nothing here that Sonos’ hardware remains the gold standard in the premium consumer audio world. My colleague Parker Hall refers to the Era 100 as the new smart speaker standard; the Ace wireless headphones earned an 8/10 and a WIRED Recommends badge. When I finally got my Sonos home theater system up, my jaw dropped at the richness and depth of the jungle noises in Land of Bad. (Bomb go boom!)
More than that, I can’t think of another update that took away users’ ability to control the volume and then did not immediately fix that. For a while! I asked why there is a lengthy timetable for fixes. The company has not responded yet.
My husband sighed as he watched me factory reset the Sub a few times, turn it on and off again, hit my head against a wall and cry before calling, because he thought the smart home was supposed to make his life easier.
I had a persistent problem when setting up my home theater system. I was trying to add a Sonos wireless subwoofer to my network, but according to Sonos’ mobile app, the Sub was nowhere to be found. I was shown that I was trying to connect a gray box labeled “product” with aserial number that had nothing to do with anything when I tried to use the app.
