The CEO of Sonos threw cold water on hopes that the speaker-maker would replace its much-maligned new application with the previous version. Turns out that would make the problem worse.
Sonos users will instead have to wait for the new app to be improved — a process the company promises it’s working on as quickly as it can.
Sonos S2 app won’t be the company’s savior
Sonos makes high-end speakers and headphones that work with Apple devices. In May, it released a new generation of its application too soon — before it had all the capabilities of its predecessor. In addition to being buggy, the latest version lacks basic features like sleep timers and alarms. It’s problematic enough for Sonos CEO Patrick Spence to issue an apology.
The company even considered re-releasing the previous version, S2. But Spence said during a Reddit AMA that wouldn’t be an improvement:
“In the months since the new mobile app launched we’ve been updating the software that runs on our speakers and in the cloud to the point where today S2 is less reliable & less stable then what you remember. After doing extensive testing we’ve reluctantly concluded that re-releasing S2 would make the problems worse, not better.”
Moving forward
No one wants this problem fixed more than Sonos and its CEO. “I can tell you that every Sonos employee feels the pain of these missteps very deeply & personally,” said Spence during the Reddit AMA.
The pain is financial, too. The company has been forced to postpone the launch of two new audio products while it works to fix its software. The new app will reportedly cost the company $20 million to $30 million.
But Sonos wants to put the app problem behind it. It published a public bi-weekly schedule for fixing the application and adding new features.
“We’ve put the original architect of the Sonos platform back in charge, and pulled together the very best and most experienced engineers from around the company to work on these issues until they are resolved,” said the Sonos CEO.
Via: The Verge
