Hey if Sonos can just up and screw their UI then I can just up and decide to never use them for future speakers. Time to check the resale value of this garbage in case they can't fix the UI accessibility like yesterday.
@talon Yeah I would probably be selling my Sonos shit if I had any. They claim they are going to put in some fixes by the 21st so maybe it's worth hanging around for a couple of weeks, but I am overall very disappointed with how they handled this. They could have just not released the app update until it was ready for everyone. Is it too much to hope that some big company will do that someday? Probably.
@simon I don't want to be overly pessimistic, but there is some suggestion that they may be using a cross-platform UI toolkit like React Native. That makes accessibility many times harder if true, and requires a level of dedication Sonos haven't shown thus far.
I'm not hugely affected, given that I do most things via AirPlay and voice. The resale market for Sonos equipment in my area is also non-existent, so I don't have much choice but to hold onto my stuff. Nevertheless, I'm not hopeful. @talon
@x0 It's possible. But it's hard work, and none of the options (including React Native) are going to give you perfect, native-feeling accessibility out of the box. There will always be something off, and it's just a question of how much it ends up mattering to the user. Teams that opt for these toolkits also tend to lose some of the guardrails that native UI provides. @simon @talon
@nick I'm not claiming it's impossible to create a positive outcome with certain cross-platform UI toolkits, only that it's a lot harder. When dealing with a mainstream company who wants to replace platform-specific expertise with interchangeable genericness, that is a problem... for us.
https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/react-electron-llms-labour-arbitrage/
@nick #Sonos has replaced its app not because they truly think the app is better. But because they can replace specialised Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS teams with one generic team who know how to use cross-platform tools.
It goes beyond that, though. Look at the ideas behind the new home screen, which essentially can be described as: "put what you want on it". Is that primarily a user-facing improvement? No.
Rather, it's a reason to not rely on designers who can carefully think through information architecture, viewport sizes, user flows, and the best ways to present information. Make it the user's problem so that they can fire the people whose responsibility it used to be, or move them to another team where they won't be able to do their best work and will eventually quit and not be replaced.
This update goes way beyond #accessibility. It's a fundamental shift in how they do business, and it will be shit for everyone. That, more than the lack of #VoiceOver support, is what will probably cause me to move away from their ecosystem.