The Sonos updated app was supposed to improve everything. It did the opposite, and now its CEO is apologising.
It’s been a week since the Crowdstrike fault and failure took out millions of computers, affecting supermarket checkout payment systems, delaying flights, and forcing eight million computers into a state where a fix meant dabbling in deletions to make the unsteady nervous. That was bad.
But it’s been two months since Sonos launched its reinvented app to control its ecosystem of speakers, and for owners of those products, it’s been no picnic either. The drama isn’t the same, clearly, but frustration is evident in both situations.
For Sonos customers, there have been bugs. Lots of them. Speakers that don’t work, music services that don’t load, features previously there that have gone missing, and an experience that leaves a lot to be desired.
Every week brings the hope that Sonos will fix things and return the experience to what it once was, but you only need to glance at Reddit to see the anger from customers struggling with what the company has delivered on.
Now, as we push into the back half of the year, Sonos’ CEO Patrick Spence has offered an apology of sorts with a letter to the community detailing the problems, and offering a timeline of fixes.
“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. However, since launch we have found a number of issues. Fixing these issues has delayed our prior plan to quickly incorporate missing features and functionality,” wrote Spence on the Sonos blog.
According to the letter, bug fixes are a key part of what the Sonos team is working on, which definitely fits in line with what we’ve been hearing from support teams.
Sonos is also promising improvements, including music library improvements in July and August, improved system stability and volume responsiveness between August and September, and the restoration of edit mode for playlists and song queues between September and October.
In short, Sonos will be fixing things, but it may take some time. That unfortunately means sub-par music playback control out of kilter with what Sonos used to deliver in the old app until later this year.
It is at least a timeline, that’s for sure. As to whether burned customers will stick around to see that timeline through is anyone’s guess. Given the cost of Sonos equipment and the overall investments owners have made, we’d say most will just put up with it and vent frustrations online, but knowing the timeline of updates could certainly change that for many moving forward.
