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Sonos: users must accept new privacy policy or devices may “cease to function”

zdnet.com

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Re: Sonos: users must accept new privacy policy or devices may “cease to function”

#211

Post by jwr »

swiley wrote: post #203
pedrocr wrote: post #133

Anyone have another suggestion for a pair of wifi speakers that can be assigned to Left/Right to get stereo and can be network streamed to and have another device on the network with a line-in? I was about to buy 2 Play1's and a Connect to do a stereo install in a room where I don't want to run speaker cable. I had researched wackier home-built solutions and was going to give up and go for the Sonos. Now I'm once aga…

You can get multiple different Linux SBCs for under $10. Grab one, put ffmpeg on it, be happy. I would be shocked if the commercial offerings were significantly better than most open source stuff (except for iphone interoperability...)

It seems that you either: a) haven't used a Sonos system, and/or b) have a lot of free time and don't mind resetting/rebooting your equipment when glitches happen, and/or c) don't care about multi-room synchronized playback. I won't even mention the audio quality, which on an Raspberry Pi for example, is horrible.

Sonos Just Works — some people (like me) care about that deeply. I have better things to do with my life than fiddle with audio systems. If your hobby is building these kinds of systems, then of course it makes perfect sense to roll your own. But if it isn't, I wouldn't waste my time.

Re: Sonos: users must accept new privacy policy or devices may “cease to function”

#212

Post by FussyZeus »

jwr wrote: post #209

While I don't like this new development, I will drop in one data point: I bought my first Sonos devices more than 11 years ago, and over this time they all received software updates with increasing functionality. Think about it: my first Sonos players were bought in the pre-iPhone times. A lot has changed in the tech world since then. This is something other manufacturers could learn from. It seems these days most pr…

My parents have a couple of Sonos devices in their home. The support is amazing. But this "Accept the new policy or we brick your shit remotely" thing needs a HARD and FAST response, this cannot be a "Well eventually the market will-" NO, FUCK THAT. If we allow manufacturers to do this sort of shit, that's the final nail in the coffin for IoT. It's already a dumpster fire in terms of software.

Re: Sonos: users must accept new privacy policy or devices may “cease to function”

#213

Post by CaptSpify »

tjohns wrote: post #165
CaptSpify wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you typically find them? I've had very little luck with that

For one... Philips Hue. The lights connect to a Zigbee base station, which has a local API for controlling the system. (The base station does connect to a WAN server for remote control, but you could always block that at your firewall. The system works entirely fine in local mode.)

The last time that I looked, the Hue/Zigbee/whatever protocols were still fighting over each other to become the standard. Has that settled down?

Re: Sonos: users must accept new privacy policy or devices may “cease to function”

#214

Post by PascLeRasc »

cabalamat wrote: post #152
Sir_Substance wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They implicitly agree under duress, because their time is worth far too much to even read 10 pages of fine print for every product they use. I'm not being flippant; it bloody well is. You don't need to read 10 pages of fine print for every product, because it's functionally the same fine print for every product. If you don't like this, don't ever buy smart devices because they /all/ reserve the right to do this kind…

All my speakers are low-tech analog only devices. There really is little benefit to making most of these devices "smart".

I'm the same way and I love my 80's Marantz amp/Boston Acoustics floorstanders setup. But I still keep a cheap Chromecast audio and a $10 Bluetooth receiver around for parties, it's just so much easier especially when people forget their headphone dongles these days.

Re: Sonos: users must accept new privacy policy or devices may “cease to function”

#215

Post by Silhouette »

givinguflac wrote: post #179
Silhouette wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reporting here implies that devices for customers who don't accept the new terms may "cease to function". Does the mechanism for how that happens matter? The bottom line is that either the product continues to provide whatever functionality it was purchased for, or it's now broken. Typically under consumer protection laws in places like Europe, a product that ceases to work properly unreasonably quickly after it…

You're being alarmist; no one is bricking anything. If you refuse to update and Spotify changes endpoints in five years that's not bricking your device.

I think perhaps you're reading more into my comment than was actually there. I didn't say anything about bricking a device.

The principle here is whether the customer is getting what they reasonably believed they were paying for, or whether some part of that benefit is being lost prematurely because of the actions (or inactions) of the device manufacturer/vendor.

To continue with your own example, whether it matters that Spotify changes an endpoint probably depends on how the product was originally presented. If it was advertised as offering access to a variety of specific services and some or all of those services become unavailable earlier than the customer might reasonably have expected, then clearly part of the value that the customer was paying for has been lost.

Re: Sonos: users must accept new privacy policy or devices may “cease to function”

#216

Post by znewman »

pantsofhonking wrote: post #104

Wow talk about blowing something out of proportion. The new software comes with new terms. If you don't accept the new terms you keep the existing software. Over time, it is possible that current software sill stop working with e.g. some future Pandora API, and you'll have a choice of either updating your software or foregoing that feature. I have a Sonos in every room of my house and I've owned them since the very f…

Found the Sonos employee. They've been extremely good about updating their software? I had to join the beta program and wait a year to get Spotify integration to work even after they advertised it as a feature. If you think they're the gold standard you've never seen their support forums..

Re: Sonos: users must accept new privacy policy or devices may “cease to function”

#217

Post by justin66 »

itsmenow wrote: post #199
justin66 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few of them look familiar, but I don't use that stuff. My advice was given with someone with a digital music collection in mind. Spotify, for example, was available on the Squeezebox Touch (and not the earlier Squeezebox Classic) but I don't know how tricky it would be to make it work with Squeezelite.

There is a new plugin called "spotty" (see here: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?107615-Announce... ) that lets you stream spotify to any client.

Thanks, I know someone who can use this. I also saw a year or two ago some guy was selling some product or service or something aimed at supporting the older hardware with newer streaming services. I just don't generally use the streaming stuff.

Re: Sonos: users must accept new privacy policy or devices may “cease to function”

#218

Post by slewis »

cm2187 wrote: post #102

To be honest I had a pretty average experience with Sonos so far. It is connected with cat6 ethernet, professional switches, with no other connectivity problems on that network (and I tested all cables). I have 3 systems (pay1, play 5 and the sonos amp), and they keep losing track of each others, I have to regroup them regularly. They also struggle with long music tracks (i.e. 1h podcasts off a synology shared drive)…

The devices don't persist groups across reboot, so if they power-cycle (which can happen if they update), you have to regroup everything.

Re: Sonos: users must accept new privacy policy or devices may “cease to function”

#219

Post by invisible »

I'd be interested how those complaining about this "problem" would handle the business decision of how to update your terms when adding software that relies on third party offerings. If they add support for Some Music service, do they make it an awful experience where you have to agree to the terms for each vendor?

In earnest, what is a better approach here?

Re: Sonos: users must accept new privacy policy or devices may “cease to function”

#220

Post by dawnerd »

znewman wrote: post #216
pantsofhonking wrote: post #104

Wow talk about blowing something out of proportion. The new software comes with new terms. If you don't accept the new terms you keep the existing software. Over time, it is possible that current software sill stop working with e.g. some future Pandora API, and you'll have a choice of either updating your software or foregoing that feature. I have a Sonos in every room of my house and I've owned them since the very f…

Found the Sonos employee. They've been extremely good about updating their software? I had to join the beta program and wait a year to get Spotify integration to work even after they advertised it as a feature. If you think they're the gold standard you've never seen their support forums..

I had a problem with their mac app years ago and ended up having a call on Christmas night with one of their engineers trying to track down what the bug was.

That said last I saw their software was just as buggy as its always been. Not worth the price IMO.

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