@FluidEscence Can't you just download the previous version off a mirror and install the--oh, wait.
Sorry, I'm very fed up with tech today.
That was good feedback you gave; I hope it helps. It sort of just cements my refusal to jump on the smart speaker bandwagon though, TBH.
@FluidEscence OK, I’d like to help if I can. Based on the description, since I’ve not seen it yet, it sounds like basically it’s a horrible web-type environment so it’s a universal app. Is that what’s happened? If you have time, can you tell me specific things you can’t do now that you could do before?
@FluidEscence Right, so there seem to be two changes, there’s a new web interface, which based on your description is completely inaccessible, and then there’s the new app. So how is that new app, I presume you use iOS? If I can get some specific examples of what that new app has broken, I can push it hard, but since I haven’t seen it myself yet I’m going on other people’s experiences.
@podcast OK ...... Well..... Here you go then. For starters, it is really, really clunky and inefficient. The area where you can see your system, there are 3 or 4 swipes to get between each individual speaker, 5 depending on if it has a battery or not. There's a button in the main nav bar that says system, but that button goes nowhere, from what I can determine. Neeeext....... swiping through lists is basically impossible. They don't properly scroll, and will randomly just jump you to the top of the screen. By randomly, I mean quite often. Next... You can't explore the screen by dragging your finger around it. At all. This just simply does not work. It acts as if the screen is blank. There's no way to navigate the different subsections of the main screen, because of this and just because it's just all in one huge linear sweep. There's so, so much more, but I guess these would be my worst issues. Fixing all of these, which I seriously doubt is going to happen, would make it a little, tiny bit better.
@FluidEscence Oy! OK thanks. That’s horrible. They tell me they know it needs work and are committed to improving it, but frankly, if it’s in that state then I don’t think they should release it.
@podcast Sonos is such a big company, I think if they actually released this without doing some work to improve the low-hanging fruit, the people who have heavily invested in their ecosystem should see what kind of consumer protection laws exist in their country/state. I know people who have spent thousands of dollars on their speaker systems and if those suddenly become expensive paperweights, I'm sure something can be done about that, particularly if everyone comes together and does it. But I hope they just reverse course on this. @FluidEscence How did you become a tester? I don't own any Sonos things myself but I know people who do. If it would help to have more of them, I can try to poke a couple of them.
@FluidEscence@podcast But you didn't know about the new app until you started hearing about it, correct? So did you write to them about it? They didn't just invite you out of the blue.
@simon@podcast no no. I've been on for ages at this point. I only got over my dread of app redesigns enough to try their app yesterday, and I regret everything.
@FluidEscence@podcast can't remember if the reset process takes app versions into account. But you'd have to turn off automatic updates which can already be a pretty big inconvenience for some.
It is absurd that there's no way to hold an app version back if there's a bad update.
@FluidEscence Hey, have you contacted them yet? You could make a screen recording of trying to navigate the app; that should do nicely. You don't have to tell them everything that's wrong with it; this is blatant lack of accessibility testing and they just need to get someone to do that, at this point. They clearly know how.
@simon Simon I really, really just don't have the energy. Especially from what I've been seeing people have been told, that it's accessible as is. Now I can't confirm or deny that, but seeing that just makes me want to try even less. The spoons are very very low.
@FluidEscence Well, you seem to be one of the only beta testers. I'd encourage you to at least reach out and say "This is extremely broken, VoiceOver users cannot use it in any capacity and blind people are about to be locked out of their Sonos speakers. There are so many bugs that it would take me significant time to report them all, and someone with knowledge of VoiceOver needs to test this app in-house." you could slightly edit one of your posts about it and just paste it to them. I don't think you'd have been invited to test the beta if there was no interest in actually doing anything about it. You're in the fortunate but unfortunate position of being one of the only people who can do that.
I seriously regret ever even buying any sonos products now. I should've known this would happen, it happens with everything else so it was just a matter of time.
@FluidEscence Oh great you’re really worrying me. I was a part of their closed beta once upon a time when they were implementing airplay, but left when they started asking for a lot of private information about me and the whole household. Then again I doubt it would have changed much… Ugh.
@pitermach maybe it won't be as bad for some people, maybe some people will just suck it up and deal with it, but considering how far downhill IMO it's gone since the old app, I don't even want my sonos system anymore and am seriously just considering selling all of it and getting a home pod or something.
@FluidEscence Can you give specifics? Like what concerned me from the press notes for instance is the whole swiping up from the lower part of the screen to access room controls thing for example but have they messed up any button labels? I guess I’m kind of lucky my setup for now consists of just a play:5 and a playbar for the livingroom TV, the latter being used by sighted family quite extensively sometimes using the multiroom feature to beam the TV audio to upstairs, but it’s also why a homepod just wouldn’t work for me because I depend quite heavily on the line-in on the play:5 and the airplay, it also has much better bass response because it’s just bigger.
@pitermach Well, it looks like I'm going to have to settle. It may work fine for some people, but for instance, now, there are like, 4 controls for one thing instead of just one in a lot of places, scrolling through lists of things is basically impossible now, dragging your finger aaround the screen does nothing so you have to fucking swipe like a barbarian, idk there's just so, so much shit now man.
@FluidEscence That really does sound concerning. Perhaps the web controller will redeem some of this, it would be nice to have something that doesn’t suck on Mac but I somehow bet it will be missing basic features like keyboard shortcuts. Also the fact they’re replacing a desktop app which could talk to your speakers over the local network with a thing that needs a server has drawbacks, I’ve had a few instances when I had to control my speakers with the internet being down and I’m worried this new app might have issues doing this.
So, yeah. Now you know why I always say that accessibility is finite, and why app redesigns fill me with so much dread. It's because of shit like this.
@FluidEscence The most accessible speakers are the ones that were least popular: the HomePods. Google and Amazon apps are still mostly okay, but Apple's Home app is still 100. If I were still using smart speakers, I'd be using HomePods. Siri wasn't Alexa, but most of what Alexa did ended up being gimmicks, and the Shortcuts app made it possible to add lots of custom functionality to the HomePods that Alexa can't ever do.
@FluidEscence HomePod will identify voices, and work from their Apple ID. The power is Shortcuts. You can trigger a shortcut from the HomePod, and it runs on your phone. At first, I thought that was cheap, but I realized that means the HomePod can access anything apps are logged in to on your phone, as long as it supports Shortcuts. Example: Alexa doesn't work with my security system, but I have an app, and it works with shortcuts, so HomePod will.
@bryansmart@FluidEscence The power of home pods is that you cannot connect them to your Windows laptop at all. full stop. I'd rather have Alexa. She at least speaks std bluetooth after an unacceptable cloud registration. The most accessible speakers are those you can pair with bluetooth by holding a button. Want to add extra features, EG airplay, with an extra app, cool. Just let me pair out of the box with bluetooth.
@FluidEscence@bryansmart Love that Storm Box Blast the AT guys are selling. I don't personallly have one but only for financial reasons. Multi room playback is the real issue with BT and that's why most people are messing with Sonos I'd guess.
@ground024@FluidEscence BT doesn't just lack multi-room. No pairing multiple speakers to make stereo or surround, either. There's countless BT-only mono speakers. A smart speaker should do more. Add to that Window's audio support is still ancient. This is the kind of stuff we can do with Mac as a computer, instead of a Windows PC. https://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/
@bryansmart@FluidEscence That looks nice and appears you can even use bt speaker as output for airfoil. If you config multiple BT outputs in air foil are they in sync?
@ground024@FluidEscence The catch is only Macs and iOS devices can transmit to your speakers. Windows PCs can be used as speakers, but can't transmit to the other speakers.
@ground024@FluidEscence Yes. It normally figures it out, but there's a slider for each device to set a manual offset. It works with audio apps like Loopback, too. So you can do the basic thing of sending all system sound to your speaker groups, having it hijack audio from specific apps, or make a virtual audio device that, when you change apps to output to that virtual device, they automatically send to a speaker group.
@FluidEscence Another thing people said is HomePod doesn't natively support Audible, or blah blah media. But you can make it. Can make a shortcut to resume your book, play a particular URL stream, etc, then have the next command in the shortcut set the HomePod as the audio destination. Boom!
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