charlesn

The Sonos fiasco would be somewhat more forgivable if this were a case of, "Despite our best efforts, this happened." Hey, every company makes mistakes, right? But this was no mistake. This was no oversight. There was no shortage of Sonos employees warning, shouting even, that the new app wasn't ready, that the disaster which has come to pass WOULD happen, and they went ahead and released it to their user base anyway. And here we are, a half-year later, with nothing but a string of broken promises and a still not-fully-fixed app to show for it. Spare me the faux earnest apology/hostage video with a fake promise of no bonus, which only reinforces the idea that you believe Sonos customers are idiots who won't see through this. 

If you're going to be a company that charges a very premium price for your products compared to the competition, and if the performance of those products depends on a properly working app, you simply DO NOT SHIP an alpha-level app to your user base and call it a finished product. All of these "new" commitments in the apology video are what your customers assumed you were committed to right along--this is why we pay premium prices for Sonos products. The idea that you now need to appoint a "Quality Ombudsmen" to insure that you don't ship shite to your customers again only speaks to your lack of confidence in a quality mindset being a core corporate value for everyone who works at Sonos. Also note that you ignored your employees who said the app wasn't ready, so why should we believe that slapping a quality title on an employee will make a difference?

I think this upcoming holiday season will determine if Sonos has a future as a company or not. I'm by no means writing them off, but if they can't get a bulletproof app finished within the next month, that's a huge problem. And if the holidays aren't solid for them, I could see the stock price falling off enough where some other company will buy them out.

Special note to new iPhone 16 Pro/Pro Max owners: these phones have all new mics, for which Sonos TruePlay does not yet have a mic profile--and who knows how long it will take Sonos to get around to that?! A proper mic profile is really essential to TruePlay operating properly. 

SxyGayjust said:

charlesn said:

• So... the bad is pretty bad. At least I think so. Using Camera Control for shutter release isn't a haptic press, it's actually pressing down on the physical button which requires more force than you would expect. Definitely more force than using the volume button for shutter release. The problem is that phone cameras are very light weight, so when I pressed with enough force to release the shutter, I inevitably pushed the right side of the phone down a bit, too, which causes camera shake and your image to be slightly askew. I had to really focus my concentration on not allowing the phone to move, which isn't where I want my concentration to be when capturing an image. You can adjust the force for haptic presses, but not for the physical button that releases the shutter. My workaround was to use my left thumb, which was positioned under the phone and resting on the volume button anyway--as mentioned, shutter release with the volume button is a light press that doesn't move the camera. The other workaround is to just use the screen. But as it stands, I find Camera Control unusable for shutter release. 

 You've got to be doing something wrong if the phone is actually moving when pressing the Camera Control button. I have a SupCase on mine which covers the Camera Control, and even with that, it does not take must effort to depress activate the shutter or start a video, certainly not enough to cause camera shake.

After decades in photography, I know my way around a shutter button. PetaPixel did an in-depth, 25 minute review of the 16 Pro/Pro Max camera system from a camera professional's perspective and had the same critique of excessive pressure needed for shutter release, causing the same issues. But hey, if it works for you, have at it. 

Some quick thoughts after experimenting with Camera Control for a couple of hours this morning:

The Good:

• Very intuitive: just plunging in with no guide, it took me all of 2 minutes to figure out how to access, scroll through and select the various functions. 
• Not fussy or fidgety! This was a surprise after reading reports to the contrary. YMMV, of course, but using the default pressure setting, I had no problem with the single or double light presses, or the slider at the top of the button. 
• Love having a screen cleared of the usual control icons so I can focus on just the image I'm trying to capture.
• Good to have another way to immediately access the camera app. 
• Fantastic that third party camera apps like Halide and ProCamera are already supporting Camera Control. New interfaces like this from Apple have often died out from a dearth of third party support. (I'm looking at you 3D Touch and Touch Bar.) Seems like this one will be different. 

The Not-So-Good

• Why can't I decide which camera functions get assigned to Camera Control? I often toggle between 4:3 and 1:1 Aspect Ratios, so I'd love to have that at my fingertip for switching, but no-can-do. At least for now, you're stuck with the ones Apple has assigned to it, and there are a couple I will never use, so a partial waste of this feature for me. Likewise, why can't Apple give us three app choices to be called up by the Action Button, based on whether it's a single, double or triple press? I know I can use Short Cuts, but this functionality belongs in the Action Button settings and shouldn't be a kludge using Short Cuts. 

The Bad

• So... the bad is pretty bad. At least I think so. Using Camera Control for shutter release isn't a haptic press, it's actually pressing down on the physical button which requires more force than you would expect. Definitely more force than using the volume button for shutter release. The problem is that phone cameras are very light weight, so when I pressed with enough force to release the shutter, I inevitably pushed the right side of the phone down a bit, too, which causes camera shake and your image to be slightly askew. I had to really focus my concentration on not allowing the phone to move, which isn't where I want my concentration to be when capturing an image. You can adjust the force for haptic presses, but not for the physical button that releases the shutter. My workaround was to use my left thumb, which was positioned under the phone and resting on the volume button anyway--as mentioned, shutter release with the volume button is a light press that doesn't move the camera. The other workaround is to just use the screen. But as it stands, I find Camera Control unusable for shutter release. 

masteric said:

Surprising since my son and I both have Apple Watches from the Apple Store. We have Visible (owned by Verizon) and zero issue activating our Apple Watches on Visible. Just added my son's Apple Watch 10 to his Visible account on Saturday. Zero issues. 

Although owned by Verizon, Visible is run as a separate company, and it seems clear to me so far that the Visible exec team did their homework in looking at what Verizon does wrong--in particular, pricing and customer service--and has addressed those issues. There is also a wealth of information and functionality on the Visible app and website that I find far superior to Verizon's offering. 

melgross said:

anonymouse said:

Are we really certain that Apple didn't covertly engineer this coup? 

Yeah. He was under a lot of pressure. It had nothing to do g to do with Apple.

I've been following the Kiani story for a while and his ouster was a long time coming. First, he spent over $100 million of Masimo money fighting Apple in court, an absolute fortune for which he has little to show: for Watches sold in the US since approx January, Apple has had to put a software lockout on the pulse oximetry feature. Masimo got nothing else for its $100 million spend, while the loss of pulse oximetry has likely had little if any effect on Apple Watch sales. Plus, Masimo's remaining patents expire in 2028 if they don't get invalidated before hand. 

BUT.... this was nothing compared to Kiani biggest blunder, which was spendiing $1 billion to acquire several consumer audio companies under their corporate umbrella name, Sound United. THAT'S what really got him pushed out. Now if you're wondering why the hell a medical equipment company like Masimo would spend a billion to get into consumer audio, you have the same question that drove the Politan hedge fund, which owns 9% of Masimo, to launch a board fight to get Kiani pushed out. Apparently Kiani thought consumer audio was the way to open up retail channels like Best Buy to Masimo. Never made sense to me and I guess not to the Masimo board either.