When Sonos said in late January that some of its earliest speaker models were going to lose full software support starting this spring, the backlash in the Sonos community was swift. Sonos customers on Twitter and Facebook fired off angry missives about the company “bricking” their older devices, compelling chief executive Patrick Spence to send an email to customers apologizing for the confusion and clarifying some of the company’s plans around aging speakers.
Then, in early March, Sonos said users could effectively trade-in or “recycle” their old Sonos speakers without actually having to send in the old hardware; they could keep it running as is.
Now, Sonos is revealing even more details about how it plans to continue to support existing speakers while it paves the way for new hardware products in the coming months. Unfortunately, Sonos’ future workaround involves two distinct operating systems—as well as two different Sonos mobile apps.
Antoine Leblond, Sonos’ vice president of software, said in an interview that the company believes this is the right approach.
“The options we have are either stop supporting [the legacy speakers], or fork off the system in some way like this, where we can keep the newer products that have more capacity and more horsepower. Then, for the ones that don’t, we can at least maintain the experience,” Leblond says.
Starting in June, Sonos will roll out a new operating system for its speakers and a new consumer-facing app. The OS will be called Sonos S2, while the new app will become the most up-to-date version of the Sonos app. A se