eevBLAB #44 - Sonos Deliberately Bricking Products!

hi let's talk about the forced obsolescence of products in this case our today's newfangled Internet connected devices now the company we're going to talk about is Sano so you may have heard of them they're like are they number one I don't know I don't have one of these things but like audio streaming at home audio streaming device where you have you know the speaker and the streaming device it connects to your network and you can stream all your songs and play your you know use it as a remote speaker whatever it is and it runs via an app on your phone and all that newfangled stuff right well solos have come under a lot of flack in the last week they've just released that they're ending support for the CR 100 which if you haven't seen it is one of their original Waialae car wireless controllers for it so they dedicated controller so that you can actually see the songs playing on there and you know like actually control thing you don't need your newfangled smart phone to do it and there's lots of reasons why smart phones are inconvenient you may not always have it or it might be charging it might be out of charge you might you know you're gonna swipe to get into it past your security and all that sort of stuff just you want to adjust the volume or or change song you know it can be really annoying that's why these sorts of dedicated controllers for products really nothing beats a proper dedicated controller for the task everyone's pushing you know things to smartphones these days and it's it's maddening it's really annoying stop it dedicated controllers are pretty much always the way to go the best way to go anyway they announced that they are ending support in as of April it will simply cease to function it's not that it'll just gradually fade out there you go it will no longer connect it'll be dead like that they'll just shut off support for it and that's the problem that we see over and over in the industry with all these internet connected things that rely on the the manufacturer or a door service or whatever Internet of Things device you know the service shuts down boom they drive they discontinue support for it boom it just vanishes or in this case they can deliberately the manufacturer can say right we're not going to support that anymore well the Robbins is gracefully letting the I just not do any updates for it or whatever they can actually shut it off and that's what they plan to do here the hardware will become unless somebody can hack it to make it work again the hardware will simply cease to function and you just got to throw it out absolutely ridiculous they're using two excuses for this one is that it's an important part of your experience bla bla bla they actually change to the Sun the smartphone app in 2009 so that's a long time ago but people still loved this dedicated controller can no longer support many of the services and functions that are core to the sonís experience okay you know I'll give him that fair enough if it's old hardware and it can't still can't I can't see how from an engineering point of view it can't do it so that may be a complete load of I'm not sure but okay let's just you know grant them that it's ageing hardware and it can't continue to support the experience of Sonos anymore okay fair enough that might be a reason to no longer update it but to actually shut it off completely that's just ridiculous and we've seen this time and time again in the market of companies actually just shutting off support for products it's but anyway they might have a technical reason there they just don't elaborate on that but more importantly and they're saying this is the most important reason is that they're protecting you oh yes safety first is powered from an internal lithium ion battery and sure enough here we go you can actually buy our replacement batteries it's an it's not generally not supposed to be user replaceable but you know it's not just a cover so that slides off but I think you probably have to like take the screws off and but it looks like it's got a connector on there so you just you know cook that up people so it doesn't look hard to actually change the battery in it but you know people do it all the time and sure enough it has the potential to overheat when left charging for this reason we can no longer continue to support the co 100 even in a limited way so they're doing this for your safety it's like you can say that's right because batteries typically will let just lose capacity with time capacity jeez it doesn't work as much I'll go buy a new one and this is the same as practically every product on the market so for them to use this as an excuse to actually do this that's a bit rich yeah it's pretty much anyway so they're saying yeah disconnect it and responsibly recycle and drop them at your a locally waste center and all that because we're a good company and that's what we recommend to save the planet saving the planet would have been continuing to support the old hardware unbelievable but but they've deliberately bricked it as I've only April were no longer connect to the solar system would like to show your appreciation for your loyalty a hundred bucks off buying more solar stuff wah-wah-wah-wah jeez this is just gonna piss people off and they go to give you 100 not an Amazon gift voucher you can buy a competing product no for your next saunas they deliberately brick it give you $100 off they're already making that up in the margin anyway on the price of the new product that they got to flog you unbelievable it's like your actual saunas device itself will still continue to work but they're basically forcing people into using a smartphone app now I although I'm completely against this I will play devil's advocate here and say that the where is it these this Co 100 that they're discontinuing I believe it is like 13 years old I actually searched for stuff going you know people talking about replacing their CI 100 battery back in 2006 actually there's another one 2005 here so it's it's really quite old I mean it's more than 10 years old and in the tech world especially the connected tech world that's a long time so you know you can say well how long should they actually support this thing but still you know just discontinuing it completely so that it shuts off that's just that's just not on the proverbial brown stuff has hit the fan and you know people are just up in arms about this thing and you know except that they've given you a look best answer I assume that's an employee Ryan is Ryan s an employee anyway except that you can either accept the upgrade it will no longer connect blah blah blah strong recommendation due to the age of the battery you will continue to receive the latest features bug fixes blah blah all that sort of stuff granted I can't see why they can just let it gracefully you know things just stopped working overtime if they don't want to support it anymore that's one thing but hard disconnecting it and breaking it and just making people tossing in the B and that's another thing entirely ignore but you can't ignore future upgrades we do not recommend this option if you go this route you're acknowledging the risk of the aging lithium-ion battery jeez I think we're willing to accept it additionally up in diagramming not receiving in new feature security patches unsupported might not use connectivity might lose connectivity their music services Google Play Music isn't that like the whole idea is like playing music so that is ridiculous but yeah I'll give them that it is an old bit of hardware so it raises an interesting question how long should companies support old hardware like this in this case more than a decade hold dedicated controller leave your thoughts down in the comments I'm just playing a bit of devil's advocate there but yeah this is just a dick move it really is just shutting shutting the thing off and going screw you you're CEO we know you love UCI 102 but screw you you're gonna have to throw it in the bin thank you very much here's a hundred dollar gift voucher go and buy our latest one yeah it's honest what a bunch of dicks I was actually in the market for one of these for I I actually I tweeted this about a month ago or something I was looking for Wireless like a Spotify device that plays that can just display Spotify but has a dedicated controller like it's a speaker it just hooks up to Wi-Fi it has the speakers and it has the control panel built-in I swear I could not find one the Twitterverse couldn't really find one they said I use a son of ass honest or use it with connected to a an old iPhone or iPad or something like that and no no it's I like these dedicated controls from an engineering and functional point of view nothing beats these dedicated things so anyway thumbs down to Sano's for their dick move let us know what you think in the comments down below catch you next time you

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 93,880

Keywords: eevblog, video, sonos, sonos cr100, cr100 controller, bricking, deliberately bricking, discontinuing, discontinue

Id: Ac1zZo7wLo8

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

They said they would be doing this. Call them and they will give you a $100 credit towards a new sonos device. I got the email over a month ago.

[u/AlterSack1973]

I now feel pity for the guy who bought my old one 2 months ago..

[u/dbkon]

1) You can choose not to update it.

2) You can buy a cheap tablet as a dedicated "controller". Saying sonos should make what amounts to a custom tablet is silly.

3) Take the $100 credit and buy a new Sonos and use it with a smartphone, laptop or tablet like 99% people will.

This does not seem unreasonable. I've been following Dave for many years, sad to see this kind of fud video from him.

[u/lunk]

It's a really good point about Internet-Service devices, but this guys "Get off my lawn", "Dedicated controllers are the only way to go" schtick is just too much.

[u/tjkirch]

I wish everything I bought would be supported for 10 years after it was last made......

[u/wheedwhackerjones]

Pretty sure the cr100 thing was released when they first started as a company. As you can imagine, technology evolves and necessary adjustments are inevitable.

My company did something similar to an original product. It just didn't work with newer features and caused major instability.

I always find it funny when people think companies make these decisions just to "annoy their customers." I mean... Nevermind.

[u/ax255]

Technology becomes outdated, the downside to something as cool as Sonos.

[u/PlagueD0k]

How hilarious fanboys are. "Thank you Sonos, this giant dick in my arse feels great!"

[u/cutememe]

Wow. I truly hope there's a big class action lawsuit because of this.

As an owner of 2 Sonos play1 speakers I guarantee you I will never buy another device from them again.