Sonos considers relaunching its old app
August 19, 2024
Sonos has explored the possibility of rereleasing its previous mobile app for Android and iOS — a clear sign of what an ordeal the company’s hurried redesign has become. The Verge can report that there have been discussions high up within Sonos about bringing back the prior version of the app, known as S2, as the company continues toiling away at improving the performance and addressing bugs with the overhauled design that rolled out in May to a flood of negative feedback. (The new Sonos app currently has a 1.3-star review average on Google Play.)
Nearly a quarter of a century ago Joel Spolsky wrote “Things You Should Never Do, Part I“.
What was the number 1? Rewriting an application’s code from scratch.
A quarter of a century on Sonos seems to be learning this the hard way. And I have all but abandoned an app I’ve used for years Overcast, which just itself underwent a complete rewrite.
In this case it’s due to one showstopping bug–there appears to be no way anymore to download podcast episodes except over wifi. So when I find an episode of a show I listen to all the time not downloaded, I switch Apple’s Podcasts to listen.
The point is in many ways bigger–there are hard won lessons in engineering and design and other fields going back decades we seem to have little institutional memory of.
In the case of Sonos’s new app it might be an existential challenge.
