There are all sorts of things you can fault Sonos for its Summer Software Meltdown. That it happened at all in the first place. That it was slow to publicly acknowledge the major issues plaguing customers after a May update went awry. But give CEO Patrick Spence a little credit for appearing in a Reddit Q&A on August 20, in the August Office Hours thread hosted by Sonos Community Manager (and aptly handled) KeithFromSonos. “You’ve been asking, I’ve been asking, and he’s been asking,” KeithFromSonos wrote. “Time to face the music.”
“I should have been here sooner,” Spence said in response to a chippy post early in the thread, and before the Q&A part went live. “I’m here now and you can expect to see me around here again.”
That’s a good thing — and I have zero problem saying that while also having recently said that Sonos needs a new CEO once all this is said and done. Spence in his CEO capacity first acknowledged the major software issues in a blog post in late July, nearly two months after the botched software update was pushed. That was followed up by more details from Spence in the company’s August 7 earnings call, in which he took the blame and said his “push for speed” backfired. The software update, which Spence has said was needed for future products, was pushed just before the announcement and launch of the Sonos Ace headphones. Spence also announced on the earnings call that two new products — ready for release no later than the end of October — would be delayed indefinitely until the software was fixed.
Some highlights from the thread, with some additional thoughts on our end:
One final bit from Spence is worth including here, from that last post about Keith: “Part of the hard truth of the last few months is that you’re having experiences with our products that are hard to reproduce in our labs. The feedback you’ve been providing here is helping to make our products better. To be clear, this isn’t your job, but I’m incredibly grateful that you’re providing your feedback — it shows how much you care.”
All that is true. But it also doesn’t change how all those Reddit users and Sonos customers got here in the first place.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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