At risk of bouncing the rubble even further, we need to talk about where things stand going into September in regards to the state of Sonos.
For a brief bit of context, Sonos in May updated its app and the underlying system software that controls its family of wireless speakers in preparation for the next generation of products — including the Sonos Ace headphones that arrived just weeks later. That update went poorly, and otherwise working (and not-inexpensive) Sonos systems were left in various stages of disarray.
It was pretty apparent pretty quickly that something had gone very wrong, though it’s important to remember that everyone’s Sonos setup is going to be different, from the hardware itself, to the music services in use, to the network conditions that tie it all together. (That it ever worked at all as well as it did still seems a little magical.) And we will continue to note that Sonos was relatively quick to acknowledge the issues in the Sonos subreddit. But that’s not the same thing as a public acknowledgement, which didn’t come until about two months later when CEO Patrick Spence issued a public apology just ahead of a further explanation during the company’s earnings call in August.
All the while, Sonos has been updating its app and its platform and fixing issues every couple weeks. That’s a good thing.
Sonos needs to stop talking about fixing things and just get them fixed.
But as I spent the Sunday morning of my Labor Day Weekend sipping coffee and working on the New York Times Sunday Crossword, two things happened. First, I got an email from Sonos warning that it was my last chance to save 20% on hardware that, given the current state of the software, will only serve to frustrate me. And then I remembered that I’d ignored the “news” that Sonos had released a public Trello board so that we can all see what’s being worked on.
While I applaud the transparency, it’s smoke and mirrors. Not everything needs to be done out in the open. Sonos for weeks and months had been keeping folks abreast of the rebuilding road map in the Sonos subreddit, and more officially on its own website. A public Trello board really is superfluous, and perhaps at best a low-key advertisement for Trello. (I’ve used Trello plenty of times. It’s great.) It’s also now one more public-facing place that someone at Sonos has to keep synced with the internal documentation. (Sorry, intern!)
At this point I don’t really care what Sonos has to say about the fixes. I don’t care about road maps and timelines and Trello boards. I don’t actually expect to be delighted, as Spence said customers one day will be again.
I care about the right speaker group actually activating when I select it. I care about volume controls not taking 10 or 15 seconds to work, if it all. I care about search not sucking.
I care about what Sonos does. I care about it fixing things. Anything else is a distraction.
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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