Sonos’ updated app not living up to expectations, exec calls it ‘courage’

We’ve been here before, folks. A product with questionable reviews is being called courageous to help fight back against online hate.

Sonos relaunched its app this week with the intention of solidifying its tech backbone. While some users, particularly those with big systems, have seen stability improvements, many are mad over existing features that have seemingly been cut from the Sonos platform.

Things like sleep timers, local music libraries, and upcoming song queues have all been nuked in favour of the new design. Other users complained about the lack of accessibility options since many of those have been backpedalled as well.

In a statement to The Verge, Sonos chief product officer Maxine Bouvat-Merlin said, “It takes courage to rebuild a brand’s core product from the ground up, and to do so knowing it may require taking a few steps back to ultimately leap into the future.” Obviously, this isn’t a great statement since ripping features out of an app so your updated version can hit an arbitrary launch date is not really a courageous strategy.

That being said, the company is working on bringing back the accessibility features by June, and if Sonos is to be believed, this new update is laying the groundwork for some exciting new innovations coming in the future, according to The Verge.

To help get more feedback, Sonos is holding an AMA on its own community feedback forums on May 14th.

Header image credit: Sonos

Source: The Verge