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After almost 30 years in the computer industry, I went back to school and did an EMBA in the early 2000s. The Challenger disaster was indeed a case study, vividly backed with video of interviews of people involved in the decision to launch. There were several lessons to take away about creating organizations in which information flows and decisions are based on real information and not wishful thinking and desires.

The story coming out of Sonos sounds like a replay.
Fact: if one uses logistic regression to predict O-ring damage as a function of air temperature at time of the Challenger launch, using historical data available to the managers then, there was a 99.96% chance of O-ring damage (the odds were >2500:1 of there being damage). Of course O-ring damage had been observed on previous launches without catastrophic failure, but still the mismanagement was monumental. The hubris of the managerial class never ceases to amaze me.
 
Not sure which device you’re using, but Trueplay doesn’t work with iPhone 16 yet, just in case.
Thanks! iPhone 12 mini. I’ve done Trueplay previously at my last apartment, so not sure what’s going on here, perhaps just a new app issue. I’ll find out when they get back to me in a week 🙃
 
This is something we’ve been seeing more and more lately, companies pinching Pennies to leave dollars on the table. Laying off employees to save a little money and releasing a disastrous product thinking they can fix it two years later and customers won’t care
Don't you mean ". . . . companies pinching Pennies" while paying out millions to upper management?
 
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A couple of months ago I bought a pair of ERA 300's, and a Mini Sub for music play in a high ceiling room.. The app was a mess and impossible to play Atmos from Apple Music through the app (The only way possible for true Atmos). I almost returned the whole set up- then they promised to fix the app. So I used Airplay and settled for "loseless" . It's still wonky , but IF they would just allow Atmos play through Airplay 2- I could live with it. The sound is great... when it works.

I thought the Atmos + Airplay was an Apple limitation that they fix with iOS 18, need to look into this since I also have the Era 300 ⁉️
 
Sonos expects to miss its annual revenue target by $200 million after the app debacle. In August, it laid off some employees, and it told others that yearly bonuses and merit-based pay raises have been canceled.

Of course. Whenever management screws up, they go on making their inflated salaries while the rank and file (who warned of this impending disaster) have to pay the price.

A series of major management and execs shakeups should be happening, but I won't hold my breath.
 
They should have taken a page from Apple's playbook and worked another angle -- add features that could run on devices 2-7 years old but make them exclusive to the newest model. By exploiting their customers like Apple, they will get some backlash, but at least the older devices will continue to work. Apple usually knows how to screw their customers just right to benefit themselves. Many customers will even relish in the punishment and turn around to help Apple rebuke dissenters. Sonos screwed their customers the wrong way and ended up screwing themselves.

Loving your view, and post! Fully agree!
 
I just looked up Sonos' CEO Patrick Spence on LinkedIn and saw that prior to his 12 years at Sonos, he was in a leadership role at Blackberry for 14+ years. I remember how Blackberry handled modernization of their product and it didn't turn out well. Just sayin'.
 
Project management not listening to developers and getting a ruined app because of it? Tale as old as time. Get MBA holders out of engineering please, they're worthless.
You can take the "engineering" out of that sentence and it still holds true. Get MBA holders out please; they're worthless.
 
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I thought the Atmos + Airplay was an Apple limitation that they fix with iOS 18, need to look into this since I also have the Era 300 ⁉️
I just tried Airplay on an brand new iPhone 16 Pro on iOS 18, the dolby Atmos songs still get reduced to High Res Lossless. Great sound , but i got the ERA 300's for Atmos! When I tried it on the updated (yesterday) Sonos app- still can't play Apple playlist, taps arent registered, songs won't play..
 
I have been a beta tester for several years. Sonos as a product is impressive and quite good. The current beta iOS app remains absolute crap and simply DOES NOT WORK.

I am still having to unplug and/or reset individual speakers almost daily.

Apparently, this new app was mostly the doing of the CEO. His “apology” is about as hollow as they come. He should be the one forced to walk the plank. Not engineers who spoke up.

I sure won’t be buying any new Sonos products anytime soon.
 
When executives fail to listen to the experts (the employees), then the company is destined to fail. It happens all the time. You would think businesses would learn. I seriously want to create a class on how to destroy a business and teach it to company executives. Companies all seem to make the same mistakes and don’t learn from other companies failures.
You can’t learn from your mistakes if you’ve never made one. MBA school of management.
 
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I just looked up Sonos' CEO Patrick Spence on LinkedIn and saw that prior to his 12 years at Sonos, he was in a leadership role at Blackberry for 14+ years. I remember how Blackberry handled modernization of their product and it didn't turn out well. Just sayin'.
There's a story that when the people in charge at Apple Blackberry saw Steve Jobs do that famous first live iPhone demo, they were convinced that there must be a hidden cable running off stage (up Steve's sleeve, I suppose), because they couldn't believe that all that could run directly on the iPhone. Blackberry never really recovered - they just kept up with "well, but we are the leader, of course", and watched it all slip away, when they should have started pursuing the same aggressive course of development five years earlier.

Reminiscent of Microsoft's Ballmer saying words to the effect of "smartphones are hard, Apple's not going to just walk in and get any notable part of the market". I think someone from Palm (remember them?) expressed similar thoughts.

(Edit: typed wrong company name.)
 
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SONOS doesn't have a solid or big enough software team and also doesn't have the resources.
A proof of this is that the macOS app is still Intel only after more than three years since the introduction of M Macs.
For SONOS there will be only one way to sustain software development: subscription
It's impossible for a company to sell a 300-500 dollars product and maintain it for 8 to 10 years for free.
And the incomes from the higher priced products are also not enough in this equation.
It's always necessary to take in account that SONOS is a relatively small company with a small number of niche products offering.
SONOS is not Pioneer or SONY.
How is it impossible? I work with software and we have millions of clients ”out there”. All clients talk to the backends on average 10 times per day. They also download around 20 smallish files every day.

These clients cost well under 1$ per client per year including hosting for about a hundred servers processing the data.

The Sonos App is distributed via app stores and most processing happens on customer devices / environment. Old speakers are well known and require little effort untill someone requires to rewrite everything.

Basically, in a normal case there is very little extra cost supporting the speakers for a long time. Also with speakers people are accustomed to them working for a long time, and there is not huge progress in 5 years.

Even for Apple, supporting old hardware would not cause significant costs. They stop supporting them after 5 years to sell you something new, not because extending support would be costly. With computers progress is faster so they get away with it.
 
It’s a shame how Sonos have fallen from grace, before Apple launched the OG HomePod I had a few Sonos ones, a Five and a soundbar. The Sonos App even back then was a little so-so, but the speakers were great. Apple launched the OG HomePod and I now have two OG HomePods and 5 minis in the house as they all worked seamlessly with Siri to play music. The Sonos units went on E-bay and I never looked back.
 
This is something we’ve been seeing more and more lately, companies pinching Pennies to leave dollars on the table. Laying off employees to save a little money and releasing a disastrous product thinking they can fix it two years later and customers won’t care
Short term thinking. Rhymes with Wall Street.
 
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I use 2 homepods connected to an appletv. I am/was interested in a sonos setup with a sub but that was more expensive. I find it weird that there is no option with Sonos or any of these wireless setups to do a true L/C/R. I think I prefer having the homepods as a discrete L/R with separation as opposed to a sound bar virtualizing LR.

Pretty stupid you can’t at least run a true discrete 5.1 when you (sonos) literally sell the hardware to do that.
I tested 2 HomePods vs an arc soundbar and sub. The Sonos system absolutely blows away the HomePods and I sold them. The HomePods are terrible at virtualizing a center channel. Sonos soundbars don’t need a separate L/R because it has those speakers already built into the soundbar. The Sonos system was not designed to be a discrete system. Otherwise you would just build a traditional home theater system. I have both and I would say the Sonos system holds its own and the sound processing for Dolby atmos is quite impressive.
 
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I just tried Airplay on a brand new iPhone 16 Pro on iOS 18, the dolby Atmos songs still get reduced to High Res Lossless. Great sound , but i got the ERA 300's for Atmos! When I tried it on the updated (yesterday) Sonos app- still can't play Apple playlist, taps arent registered, songs won't play..
Use an Apple TV to get Atmos. Era 300s on their own cannot do atmos. You’ll also need a soundbar with HDMI. I know it’s probably not what you want but it works.
 
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Doesn't surprise me at all that Senior Leadership and Execs ruined it. They're almost always the ones with the most influence to make a decision whilst being furthest away from their own customers. It ruins almost all companies once they reach a certain scale, and usually comes hand in hand with investors which are just the most useless bunch of companies ever.
 
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I tested 2 HomePods vs an arc soundbar and sub. The Sonos system absolutely blows away the HomePods and I sold them. The HomePods are terrible at virtualizing a center channel. Sonos soundbars don’t need a separate L/R because it has those speakers already built into the soundbar. The Sonos system was not designed to be a discrete system. Otherwise you would just build a traditional home theater system. I have both and I would say the Sonos system holds its own and the sound processing for Dolby atmos is quite impressive.

This is partly why Apple has been so incredibly annoying and disappointing with the music hardware. The team seems to keep producing great individual products, but whatever is happening internally within Apple it is getting held back from software and ecosystem experiences that are just missing.

It should be an Apple 'magic' experience right now that I can just add a Homepod mini to a system as centre channel. Add another two as rears. The music follows my phone or watch around the house if I ask Siri to do it with different homepods/minis and more.
 
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legit do not think a headline has ever made me jump the way this one did, lmfao…how is it that I have zero Sonos devices in my home and even I know what a trainwreck this situation has been? such a shame, genuinely hope this app gets un-f**ked for all Sonos customers ASAP
The brand damage is astounding. I cannot believe that they can’t see how they’re still on fire, and even if they fix all of the bugs they’re still left with a really poorly designed app.

It’s the “new outlook” of the streaming audio apps.
 
I have never used the app a ton and my main floor and basement entertainment center setups with sonos continue to work fine. Those who use the app to do whole-home audio configurations must be the ones who got railroaded by the update.

I imagine the reason they haven't gotten things fixed quicker is that so much of their customer base fits my use case these days. HDMI eARC still works and the audio doesn't seem worse off than before...many people may not notice. Unfortunately those who bought into their whole product offer and functionality are the evangelist free advertising that creates more folks like me...
 
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