7 ms·

The future of Sonos?

by mhb 7y ago

VLM 7y ago
The future of all non-FOSS electronic equipment. And all things that use electronics, like cars.
- dangus 7y ago
  While I agree with your general sentiment, this is also a huge overstatement, especially when it comes to cars.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Cars aren't currently like that, but if the manufacturers could build in adware, prevent resale, and trigger obsolescence, do you think they wouldn't?
    - angrygoat 7y ago
      You only have to look at John Deere to see what manufacturers will do without sufficient regulation in favour of consumer rights. https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-repair/ https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-repa...
      - randallsquared 7y ago
        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.
      - allovernow 7y ago
        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.
        silon42 7y ago
        There should also be a room for third party to do a complete replacement of electronics, for a tractor this seems quite viable.
        F_J_H 7y ago
        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'... [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american-food-giants-swallow-the-family-farms-iowa https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american... *edit: typos
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        rebuilder 7y ago
        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.
        vangelis 7y ago
        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.
    - jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
      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.
      - F_J_H 7y ago
        What would be the motivation for Tesla to "snitch" on their customers and kill sales?
        rebuilder 7y ago
        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.
        F_J_H 7y ago
        Then all car manufacturers would have to as well. (Tesla is not the only car that "phones home", others do as well, and increasingly so.) So, to avoid this type surveillance, you would need to forego driving, which is completely your choice. However, this is not merely a "Tesla" problem.
        rebuilder 7y ago
        Sure, fully agree. I didn't mean to imply it was just Tesla's issue, it's an issue with "Smart tech" in general, which was the topic at hand.
        vangelis 7y ago
        Cops asking politely! If you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to hide, etc.
      - revscat 7y ago
        How did you know that it was phoning home from a test drive?
  - alasdair_ 7y ago
    If Tesla goes belly up, a LOT of their features (like keyless driving, remote start, summon, ota updates etc. etc.) will all stop working.
    - F_J_H 7y ago
      Although perhaps to a lesser extent, (but probably not for long as they adopt these features), the same goes for other car manufacturers. Tesla or not, if the company from which you purchased your car goes away, you're gonna have a bad time.
- elviejo 7y ago
  "...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.
- intopieces 7y ago
  What is the guarantee that FOSS electronic equipment will survive any longer? Just because someone could support it doesn’t mean someone will, right?
  - dasil003 7y ago
    As with all of life there is no guarantee. 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.
  - namewasmypw 7y ago
    Yes it does, because that person is you. You can carry on and maintain your own code in a way that isn't possible with proprietary code.
  - tomc1985 7y ago
    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
givinguflac 7y ago
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
- acdha 7y ago
  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.
  - sitharus 7y ago
    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.
    - drewmol 7y ago
      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!
- Nullabillity 7y ago
  > airplay Yes, because Apple is a company known for their commitment to longevity and compatibility. > tv/line in Many of their devices don't have any line in ports.
- taylorconor 7y ago
  All streaming integrations in Sonos (like Spotify) communicate with the Sonos backend rather than the device directly. So that would fall apart too.
Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago
Sonos devices can play local music as long as you have a Wi-Fi LAN. They don't need an internet connection, except maybe for setup.
- jtbayly 7y ago
  “except maybe for setup”? Surely you see the problem, right?
- fjni 7y ago
  Reset your sonos, then get it to just play music without setting up a sonos account.
Guest0918231 7y ago
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.
- intopieces 7y ago
  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.
- CoolGuySteve 7y ago
  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.
braythwayt 7y ago
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.
- ljm 7y ago
  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).
  - wh1t3n01s3 7y ago
    The HomePod has it’s own ios fw that is updated via OTA like all the other apple ios devices

The future of Sonos?

by mhb 7y ago

The future of Sonos?

VLM 7y ago

The future of all non-FOSS electronic equipment. And all things that use electronics, like cars.

dangus 7y ago
While I agree with your general sentiment, this is also a huge overstatement, especially when it comes to cars.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Cars aren't currently like that, but if the manufacturers could build in adware, prevent resale, and trigger obsolescence, do you think they wouldn't?
  - angrygoat 7y ago
    You only have to look at John Deere to see what manufacturers will do without sufficient regulation in favour of consumer rights. https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-repair/ https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-repa...
    - randallsquared 7y ago
      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.
    - allovernow 7y ago
      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.
      - silon42 7y ago
        There should also be a room for third party to do a complete replacement of electronics, for a tractor this seems quite viable.
      - F_J_H 7y ago
        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'... [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american-food-giants-swallow-the-family-farms-iowa https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american... *edit: typos
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - rebuilder 7y ago
        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.
      - vangelis 7y ago
        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.
  - jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
    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.
    - F_J_H 7y ago
      What would be the motivation for Tesla to "snitch" on their customers and kill sales?
      - rebuilder 7y ago
        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.
        F_J_H 7y ago
        Then all car manufacturers would have to as well. (Tesla is not the only car that "phones home", others do as well, and increasingly so.) So, to avoid this type surveillance, you would need to forego driving, which is completely your choice. However, this is not merely a "Tesla" problem.
        rebuilder 7y ago
        Sure, fully agree. I didn't mean to imply it was just Tesla's issue, it's an issue with "Smart tech" in general, which was the topic at hand.
      - vangelis 7y ago
        Cops asking politely! If you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to hide, etc.
    - revscat 7y ago
      How did you know that it was phoning home from a test drive?
- alasdair_ 7y ago
  If Tesla goes belly up, a LOT of their features (like keyless driving, remote start, summon, ota updates etc. etc.) will all stop working.
  - F_J_H 7y ago
    Although perhaps to a lesser extent, (but probably not for long as they adopt these features), the same goes for other car manufacturers. Tesla or not, if the company from which you purchased your car goes away, you're gonna have a bad time.
elviejo 7y ago
"...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.
intopieces 7y ago
What is the guarantee that FOSS electronic equipment will survive any longer? Just because someone could support it doesn’t mean someone will, right?
- dasil003 7y ago
  As with all of life there is no guarantee. 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.
- namewasmypw 7y ago
  Yes it does, because that person is you. You can carry on and maintain your own code in a way that isn't possible with proprietary code.
- tomc1985 7y ago
  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

givinguflac 7y ago

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

acdha 7y ago
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.
- sitharus 7y ago
  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.
  - drewmol 7y ago
    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!
Nullabillity 7y ago
> airplay Yes, because Apple is a company known for their commitment to longevity and compatibility. > tv/line in Many of their devices don't have any line in ports.
taylorconor 7y ago
All streaming integrations in Sonos (like Spotify) communicate with the Sonos backend rather than the device directly. So that would fall apart too.

Al-Khwarizmi 7y ago

Sonos devices can play local music as long as you have a Wi-Fi LAN. They don't need an internet connection, except maybe for setup.

jtbayly 7y ago
“except maybe for setup”? Surely you see the problem, right?
fjni 7y ago
Reset your sonos, then get it to just play music without setting up a sonos account.

Guest0918231 7y ago

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.

intopieces 7y ago
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.
CoolGuySteve 7y ago
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.

braythwayt 7y ago

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.

ljm 7y ago
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).
- wh1t3n01s3 7y ago
  The HomePod has it’s own ios fw that is updated via OTA like all the other apple ios devices