I rented an AirBnB filled with a few thousand dollars worth of Sonos speakers. Some issues...
1. I was traveling with an older Android phone (Android 4.4.4). I couldn't install the latest version of the app. I tried installing an older version, but it simply said I needed to upgrade. So, I couldn't play any music from the phone. I checked online and a number of people were complaining they used their older phones and tablets in the house as simply a Sonos remote, and they now had to upgrade all of those devices after support was dropped.
2. I installed the Windows app on my laptop to play music. This worked, but then I noticed the subwoofer wasn't plugged in (likely so people didn't annoy the neighbors). I thought I would briefly test it out to get an idea if Sonos would be a good future purchase for myself. Well, I plugged it in and I needed to do a setup process from the app. Well, apparently that can't be done from the Windows app, and I couldn't install the app on my phone, so the subwoofer just sat there as decoration.
3. My partner came home and she had a newer phone, so I had her install the Sonos app so we could setup the subwoofer. She installed it, I went to the app to configure the subwoofer, and it said it couldn't be done unless I updated the speakers to a newer software version. Well, this wasn't my apartment and the owner lived there when it wasn't rented, so I figured it wasn't my place to update their speakers.
In the end, I never got a chance to test out that subwoofer, and I lost interest in Sonos because I felt like for the investment, the rug could be pulled out from under me at any time. I hooked up some of my 15 year "dumb" Klipsch speakers in my new apartment instead. Didn't need a new mobile phone to set them up, didn't need software updates, just plugged them into the wall. It sure felt easy. I can't help but feel like we lost our way a bit in recent years.
"Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused"
Fuck this kind of masquerading profit hunger as environmental responsibility.
Just buy some wired, maybe simple Bluetooth speakers for cheaper (eg. Sennheiser, Audio-Technika or JBL) and enjoy their fine sound.
"Recycle mode" is intended for devices that people are trading up to newer devices. In return for enabling it, you get a 30% discount on any newer hardware, the idea being that you either ship the item back to them, or take it to an e-waste recycler.
Nobody is forced to do this. You're more than welcome to sell/give/etc your speakers to someone else.
The thing is that e waste recyclers generally try to re sell working electronics and have come out hard against Sonos's recycle mode.
There's a reason why the saying is "reduce, reuse, recycle" in that order.
They also don't verify that you recycled it, practically it only makes sure that the otherwise working speaker is removed from the market so that Sonos isn't competing with itself. I'd imagine that a lot of these just end up in the garbage.
Sorry for the late reply, I agree with the others.
If this truly was an environmental initiative, Sonos would rather take a proof of receipt of you giving your previous speaker to an e-waste recycler or even giving away to some place like Goodwill where it'll get reused.
They could just make sure that you were nice and gave away your device for free and/or charity purposes, instead of bricking it forever.
Controlling your home solely from your phone is overrated. I installed a smart home system and one of the first things I did was buy a cheap tablet that could control everything. I always have my phone on me for work but I don't want to pull it out everytime I need to do something. And when the in-laws are over they need to be able to do stuff. So does my 5 year old that obviously doesn't have a smart phone.
I have a Denon receiver. It has some nice connected features, like Spotify Connect and Airplay, but it’s also a completely functional dumb receiver that will work with equipment, input and output, from decades past and future.
I buy my own speakers and plug them into it. It also supports some Denon wireless speaker standard that lets it hook up to other Denon receivers and/or any speakers with the special adapters attached. But the crucial thing is that at the end of the day, all that fancy pants crap can stop working and you still have a bunch of bog standard speakers and receivers that can be hooked up any other way.
Now I’ll concede that maybe I’m ignorant or misinformed or a grumpy stubborn old man, but I’m not sure why anyone technically competent would buy a Sonos or Bose system with their crazy lock-in. It wasn’t so long ago that Sonos made you use Spotify through their awful reimplemented UI. It seems they have relented on that front and now allow use of Spotify Connect, but why would you want to be at someone else’s whim like that? Bose uses non-standard wiring and electrical specs to make sure that you can’t use their speakers with standard receivers. You either have to trash the speakers or keep buying Bose receivers when you want new features (4K, 8k, Atmos, HDR, etc.) Even when money is no object, I feel like a sucker when I buy artificially locked-in products like that. Maybe others don’t feel the same way?
For the not-so-tech-savvy, I concede that home audio gear is still a little difficult to set up. The common practice of making your own banana plugs is ridiculous and pre-made audio cables should be the norm instead. The receiver UIs leave a lot to be desired, even when they are ultimately good enough once configured. Shopping for speakers is like choosing fad diets: you have to sift through outrageous amounts of bullshit to find any useful advice.
I’d like to understand some more of the sociology and economics of why Denon and Yamaha and such can’t get their act together to produce something as user friendly as Sonos but that degrades nicely into standard A/V equipment when desired. If anyone with industry insight sees this comment, please fill me in.
I plugged a $15 Bluetooth receiver into my 11 year old stereo receiver and it works pretty well. The 30-pin iPod connector built into it is not seeing much use these days however.
I've got this tiny device that plugs into those 30-pin connectors to make them Bluetooth, really nice solution to utilise redundant tech (originally bought it for a 2015 Maserati that couldn't play music through its Bluetooth sigh talk about shitty consumer experiences).
But yeah, I'm a massive believer in keeping things un-integrated. Need a feature, but a component and plug it in
>I was traveling with an older Android phone (Android 4.4.4). I couldn't install the latest version of the app. I tried installing an older version, but it simply said I needed to upgrade. So, I couldn't play any music from the phone. I checked online and a number of people were complaining they used their older phones and tablets in the house as simply a Sonos remote, and they now had to upgrade all of those devices after support was dropped.
Reminds me of a similar frustration with OS X. In December 2017 I was trying to use bluetooth headphones with a MacBook that was still on Mavericks or Yosemite (10.9 or 10.10, latest version at the time 10.13), so yeah, a little behind the times.
But when I tried to connect, it said I had to upgrade the OS to use bluetooth with those headphones. What? I'd connected to my phone with it with no problems, and the protocols for the connection are like 10 years old, and almost certainly existed in that version of the OS.
I have a system from Sonos. Their app to set-up the wireless speakers adaptive sound feature didn’t (at the time - not sure now) work with the latest iPhone. I dug an iPhone SE out of a drawer to set it up.
The semi-future is that some of the Sonos gear supports Airplay 2 (and possibly some Google format, but I wouldn’t know.)
I only ever use them with Airplay 2, and they are firewalled off from the Internet. I also don’t have the Sonos app installed on any of my devices, so it can’t brick my speakers and insist on my signing a new TOS to get an update I didn’t ask for to provide features I didn’t ask for.
I fell right out of love with Sonos the first time they pulled the “your devices will have limited functionality until you agree to our update TOS” stunt, especially because that TOS seemed to be all about agreeing to even more data collection.
Then they stated shipping speakers with microphones, and it was clear which direction they had chosen as a company. They aren’t a hardware company. They’re now a surveillance capitalism company that uses hardware to collect data.
I bought an Apple HomePod, foolishly thinking it'd have some hardware inputs as well. Obviously that's not the Apple thing to do these days. But it has Airplay 2, so I figured there'd still be a way to interface with it easily. My macbook worked fine, but there was a 2 second delay for every input unless you used Siri.
Funnily enough, my Windows computer streams to the HomePod in real time, so now it's a pretty overpowered gaming speaker. But at least that's all it does; there's no bespoke Apple software that has to be installed and updated. And it's fairly dumb in terms of what you can manage with it (none of this stuff like yelling your shopping list at it.) Before I found that particular software, I was about ready to return the thing and switch to a Sonos... until I remembered what they were doing with legacy devices.
It would be nice to know if there's a way to build anything custom for it at some point though, since it's just a massive speaker with iOS inside it.
If you ask me, there should be regulations about providing a reasonable fallback when selling physical products that depend on some internet service to work. If the service is shut down, the device should be made functional without it (or with a custom thing you can host yourself).
Well, when I first set my speakers up, they used the Sonos app and my phone’s microphone for setup.
I don’t believe the speakers I own have microphones (although there is probably some way to hack the speaker into detecting sound, after all... It has a coil, a magnet, and a diaphragm that moves...)
And I’m now extremely wary about buying devices with cameras and microphones, especially for my home.
"...only FOSS survives"
But yeah on of the many learnings of the long now foundation is that for things (wind Mills, businesses, etc.) To survive over a thousand years they need a community to maintain them.
Netscape died and yet we still have Firefox.
Editor have come and gone and Emacs is still here, and I'm sure it will be here in 10 years.
Not to worry: once there is sufficient regulation in a given product category, said regulations may eventually mandate that products refuse to work without server connections and kill switches. You know, for consumer safety. Or to combat wrong information. Or whatever it is that decade.
I acknowledge that this is a huge problem, but I can't help but feel like this is a massive opportunity for a competitor to charge a premium for a saner, more consumer friendly business model. So it might take a couple years but I'm not convinced yet that regulation is necessary - especially considering said regulation in the long run can have unintended side effects and chances are because of lobbying and regulatory capture it won't actually benefit the consumer much, if at all. Legislation is much more difficult to overturn than shitty market forces if consumers are savy and willing to vote with their wallets.
There was a good point raised about this very idea on an earlier thread, which resonated with me based on other things I've read.
Basically, small and medium sized family farms, (i.e. the hearty, resourceful folk who want to fix their own damn tractors, thank you very much (e.g. my father and grandfather)), are disappearing.[0] They are being replaced by large, corporate "factory" farms, who have little interest in doing repairs on tractors that go beyond basic maintenance. Rather than building a staff of what are becoming increasingly sophisticated (i.e. expensive) technicians, along with the necessary facilities that meet all safety regulations, etc., a simple "tractor service" is preferred.
So, the customer base of the "consumer friendly business model" may not be large enough to support such an endeavor. The times, they are a-changin'...
I don't see any reason to be optimistic about consumers guiding the market. It seems like everything points to cheap, ad-filled crud winning out over premium "ethical" alternatives all the time. Apple might be a counter example, but I think many would debate that.
I think the problem is you get crushed by the incumbents before you have a chance to take off. John Deere has lots of infrastructure (manufacturing, service) already in place. In a different market, see Google trying to break into the ISP space.
They had plenty of expertise but an extremely hard time securing utility pole right of way, IIRC, to the point of being sued my incumbents to stop them providing service.
I test drove a Tesla. That thing is constantly calling home and it's only a matter of time before it starts snitching on drivers who break the speed limit, run red lights, or park incorrectly.
There's a story someone wrote in a comment or otherwise posted here about Tesla telemetry identifying an employee who crossed one of the SF bay area bridges at 130mph
Legislation requiring them to do so. If they have the capability, eventually law enforcement will start asking for the data. If Tesla don't provide the data, you get a lot of headlines about how police are unable to solve hit-and-run cases etc. because they're not getting data that's just there for the taking. Cue legislation.
The difference is that with FOSS anyone in the world with the skills and the disposition can help maintain a thing. With closed systems you are always at the mercy of a single bean counter somewhere.
And why do these things need support? If you build them with open standards and protocols they will continue to work until they break, no support required
Even if Sonos went belly up you’d still have airplay and tv/line in, along with direct control from stuff like Spotify (until Spotify inevitably change their protocols). But I don’t see airplay ever quitting until the hardware does
Does AirPlay not require software updates or certificates? There are a lot of things which are fairly robust but still fail when things like certificates or NTP servers disappear.
No, my first generation airport express from 2009 still works as an AirPlay device from the latest iOS. Sure you can’t configure it from latest macOS, but airplay still works. I can’t recall when the last software update was, but I haven’t done any updates for at least 3 years - it’s unplugged most of the time.
To Apple's credit, they have released fairly recent firmware for all their airport devices, even adding Airplay 2 support to (either 2nd or 3rd gen?) Airport Express' that had the hardware to support it, despite the devices not being mfged anymore (for many years) and the entire product line discontinued. Fwiw, I just used a 1st gen Airport (>$20) as a wifi to ethernet bridge to get a GoldenTee machine online for a client. They also work great as a wireless airplay receiver for older stereo equipment using the 3.5mm output from the Airport!
