Sonos’ frantic flailing illustrates the stupidity of smart tech

Because most "smart tech" isn't actually smart, it's regular tech that offshores processing to a networked super-computer.

The Star Trek tricorder, that can do with a handheld device what would take an entire lab, is smart tech. But that requires lots of research and wouldn't lend itself to a subscription-based or planned-obsolescence business model even if we could build it. :P

As a Sonos user, it seems Sonos's key innovation has been its software and ease of use. Multi-room audio was HARD before Sonos- it could easily involve paying thousands of dollars to install low voltage wires over a house, along with installing extra controls in each room. Setting up a decent fidelity streaming audio solution was easier, but nowhere near the "plug it in and it works" capabilities of Sonos.

And that is what is getting them in trouble currently- Sonos is really a software product that is masquerading as a hardware product. People bought it expecting it be like, well, a speaker, but what they really bought was an experience more like buying a copy of Windows.

pwthornton mentioned that Sonos could becoem a SaaS company and start leasing hardware instead. I see that being a hard sell for customers, but going fully the route of being a SaaS subscription service for their coordination and streaming management services seems possible. That being said, I think they are terrified of becoming just and audio source- they currently charge $450 for the Sonos port, which basically just acts as an audio source for an existing stereo system.

Smart tech isn't the issue.

It's the walled garden "trust us it'll be fine & powered by magic" spiel that's the issue.

I'm flexible on the whole open source issue - not my crusade, but I do want some semblance of understanding how it works so that I know a corporate decision isn't going to take the magic blue smoke out of my devices for me.

It should be mandatory by law to open-source APIs at discontinuation.

I go by a simple rule: if I can't run it open-source or at least on my own server, it better be cheap enough for me to throw away. I have plenty of closed source smart outlets but they didn't cost more than ten dollars each. I have an Amazon Echo Dot I got for eighteen dollars on prime day. There's no way I would spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on equipment I don't really control.

I used to be a Sonos fan. I have 7 speakers. Now I am worried when my speakers will become obsolete. I tell everyone I know to stay away and religiously post reviews saying the same thing.

After spending several thousands of dollars, I shouldn’t have to feel worried that my investment will become artificially obsolete. Already I can’t directly play music from my iPhone to my speakers like before, I have to use airplay which is clunky at best.

The conspiracy theorist in me says there's something funky going on here.

Sonos has been in the news for the last few months, but before that I had hardly heard of them. I don't own any of their stuff and I don't have any bone in this. I just noticed that their name keeps popping up on reddit, in the news, and here on HN. Mostly it's for negative reasons.

I feel like this is part of some marketing campaign, but almost all of the news has been negative.

First I remember some articles about Sonos going to war with Amazon over something or another last October.

Then there was the controversy regarding "Recycle Mode" thing that bricks their speakers.

Then Sonos sues Google for patent infringement.

Most recently Sonos announced it would not provide software updates for legacy products, CEO apologizes, bla bla bla.

And then this article.

Sonos was great but the more they've dicked with it over the years, the more cumbersome the interface feels, not helped by the visibility of the all-too-frequent update notifications (occasionally modal). I know some portion of those updates are for features my speakers won't even support, but at the end of the day the system seems like a less "transparent" utility in my house and now like another server that's constantly crying that it needs me to 'think' about it. "Smart tech" is best when it's transparent, not needy.

We need a time synced network based audio protocol that is standard and cheaply implemented. 192.168.1.2, yeah you play rear left channel in the theater. 192.168.1.3 you're the kitchen.

I feel like there's potential for a DIY movement around these "smart" things that is focused around the total package, not just the software, but also the design and aesthetic of the end product. With 3D printers and off the shelf parts, that could be achievable.

Advent speakers were built in an era when society valued well-built products that lasted a long time. Then Moore's law made it cheap to add software to every product. This was seen as good because it meant you could customize, upgrade, and differentiate products simply by changing software. Where things went off the rails was when MBA types realized that software (together with the Internet) could also be used to force the customer to accept a rental model rather than a purchase model for hardware, thus extracting a recurring revenue stream from him/her.

The solution is of course for customers to fight back against this bullshit. But that requires competitors who don't play this game, and that requires VCs who will tolerate a healthy, slowly-growing business rather than one that grows exponentially and flames out. I hope we can return to that world someday.

I'll save everybody the trouble:

Curmudgeon likes his 50 year old speaker more than that new fangled tech stuff. Then rants about tech being in our lives too much. (I could only skim it as so boring and repetitive - already read this story too 1000 times).

Smart tech has issues around support, but it is so damn useful. I thought little of it until I started moving everything to it. It also has a network effect - the more you add the more useful it gets.

When I walk away from my building my the thermostat goes down, door deadbolts, lights go down, music and TV all go off etc. Pry it from my cold dead hands.

I wrote an impassioned plea to them as a user with a pretty major investment in Sonos (say why you like, we love the system) and as a shareholder, expressing my disappointment with recent moves.

This is the response I got from them. Note: I did not accuse them of bricking my devices. Also note: they are promising the gradual degradation of my experience. There is no commitment to support, nor willingness to open source or find other remedies (or even pay them for continued support, which I offered in my letter).

Of last note: we have decided to dump Sonos permanently and will actively avoid doing business with the company again. It’s a fairly tone-deaf response unfortunately.

Curious if others are as unhappy as we are? We are just disappointed.

Anyways, the response:

Thank you for contacting Sonos Customer Care. I understand your frustration with the end of software updates announcement. Please know that we in no way mean to render your system inoperable or brick the devices. The trade-up program you mentioned bricking units is entirely voluntary and a multi-step process to ensure it is not mistakenly activated on the system.

Your devices are not being end-of-lifed by any means; they are simply not receiving new update information beyond a certain version. This is due to the available memory and processing power available in our legacy line of devices. This is specifically what separates them from modern and legacy. The Legacy devices have hit a point where in order to keep allowing new features; we would have to remove old features because there is simply no room left to store the new data for newer technologies or changes in outdated technologies no longer used by our partners. It is similar to having all seats on a plane full and telling someone already boarded that they need to get off. To keep your system functioning as it stands; we need to halt the progression of the software.

Once the change is made, your Sonos system will no longer receive regular updates, so your experience will initially remain the same. However, the functionality of features and services will be impacted as technology evolves over time. The thing to worry about once this takes place is the third party services and partners offered through our platform. Using Spotify as an example; if they change something in the way Sonos accesses their service then your System not receiving new updates will not be able to accommodate this.

However, since this won't be in effect until May of 2020; we are still working on figuring out workarounds and things of that nature for all of our customers who will possibly be affected by this change. Just keep an eye out on alerts from us. Once we do have that information, we will gladly share that with you.

More information here: https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4786 https://support.sonos.com/s/article/4798

Our commitment is to support products with software updates for a minimum of five years after we stop selling them, and we have a track record of supporting for longer.

The Trade-Up eligible devices all have newer counterparts that allow the old connection types while also integrating new features. The best example of this is the Sonos Connect:AMP and AMP devices; the Connect:AMP was not designed with Home Theater in mind where the AMP has an input for a TV source without removing any of the existing connection options that the Connect:AMP had; while also integrating the airplay functionality into the device and system.

Technological limits my fucking ass. Sonos is lying through their teeth and the author believes them. And who cares about updates? I bought sonos because they can play the music collection on my nas, are wireless, and sound great. I could shut off their internet access and they'd still work just fine. As far as what features sonos is adding that would require updates... none. No useful ones anyway. The eq is still two band. It still plays music. Maybe a new service here or there that no one cares about. I'm only talking about speakers of course. Their surveillance devices I have no interest in.

Glad I didn't buy into the Sonos ecosystem a few years back when I was looking for multi-room audio solutions. I've found that it's much more fun and rewarding building systems for each room than rolling out the same generic solution everywhere.

There's a lot to play with in a HiFi that you just don't get exposed to with an off-the-shelf system like Sonos.

Planned obsolescence when technological progress comes in large leaps seems more forgivable, than when the technology improvements are quite small.

Also integrating parts that have widely different reasonable life spans into inseparable, non-repairable, non-upgradeable units is not responsible waste management.

And that’s what’s turning some of us into cranky luddites.

There are a few issues here, and people are overly harsh on Sonos. They have just about the best update support in tech. Some of these devices have been around since 2005. They have been providing longer-term support than Apple has for their iPhones, for instance, which in turn is much better than you get from Android.

Updates cost money, and Niley Patel speculates that Sonos is losing money on older devices with all of the updates they have been providing. But the devices still work, which is a testament to their build quality. Sonos needs to figure out a solution.

There are some solutions:

1) I don't know how separated and abstracted their development process is, but, ideally, they would be able to continue to provide security updates, even if older devices don't get anything beyond that. But how many years should they do? 10? 20?

2) Sonos could sell extended support for devices that people have owned after X amount of years. Even charging $19.99 a year for a household would probably put this back in the black. If people are going to use Sonos products for 10-20 years and often have expensive and complicated setups, they should figure out some long-term support.

3) Sonos could start to become a SaaS company and largely lease their speakers. Microsoft is starting to do this with the Xbox, and it is a way around this issue. As hardware gets too old, Sonos would replace it with newer hardware. There is a reason that more and more software is subscription-based.

3) Sonos could come up with a premium subscription offering that bundles in long-term support. Eero has Eero+, which I find to be a good product, and it's how they get into the black on hardware sales.

I'm working on a longer write up about this for Medium, but this isn't as easy of an issue to solve as many make it out to be. Providing infinite support for networked-based devices will eventually put you out of business. Sonos is the one dealing with this because they have been selling these speakers the longest, and they have people who are able to use their devices for a long time.

One issue I think they are running into is that they used to update products pretty infrequently. They didn't even do small step updates to keep the CPU and networking equipment updated. This is particularly an issue with the 1st gen Play 5 that they sold for about a decade.

People who bought a Play 5 15 years ago should not continue to expect support. People who bought one five years ago should. They have the same exact internals.

That was a mistake, and they should make sure they are upgrading the internals in every device every three years or so. Had Sonos been doing this, they would be talking about far fewer products.

Sonos has devices that range from 32 GBs of ram to 1024 GBs. The delta in their older stuff and their newer stuff in terms of tech is huge. This strategy is on their old CEO, and their new CEO believes Sonos has to update their stuff more often. It's probably going to take a few years for the update cadence to sort itself out, but in the meantime, they are kind of in a quagmire.