Latest version of the Sonos mobile app is still terrible—so bad that the company is considering scrapping the newly redesigned version of the app and rolling back the older version. This news, reported by The Vergecomes with reports that Sonos is also lay off 100 employees. Indeed, these are not ideal times for the luxury speaker company.
Things first went wrong for Sonos when it released new version of the app in May. It was met with almost universal contempt. Users found the new app format difficult to connect to the network, queue up songs, or even change volume. One of the main complaints is that many of the accessibility features in the old app were poorly implemented in the redesign or removed from the platform altogether. Some users said the app nearly unusable for visually impaired Sonos users.
Sonos has at least admit your mistakes since its botched rollout, but the company has yet to fix many of the current issues. CEO Patrick Spence said the issue could company expenses more than $30 million and forced the company to delay two new hardware products.
So the crazy ability to go back to a version of the Sonos app that actually works is there. It’s unclear if Sonos will ever actually allow users to switch to an earlier version of the app, or when such an ability will be available. For now, Sonos users will just have to keep struggling.
Here’s some other news from the world of consumer tech this week.
BMW Uno
Great news for anyone who loves the card game Uno and also owns a BMW: You can now combine both of those interests without worrying about losing your card under the floor mat.
Uno Car Party! will let drivers play Uno in their cars, by combining their phones with the car’s dashboard display. The new feature—which will be available on the BMW X3 and some Mini models starting August 21—is a joint effort between gaming company Mattel and cloud-based gaming service AirConsole. It’s the same partnership that brought the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? quiz game to BMW cabins a few years ago.
Sure it’s fun, but know that you can’t play cards while driving on the road, luckily for the other humans and robots on the road. Save your time for ferry rides.
Browser hell
Go to Hell via Google Chrome, because Lord Diablo To be can be played on web browser now. This ability comes via a fan-made open source project called Diabloweb available on GitHub. The game includes 1997 Lord Diabloalong with its expansion, Hellfire. It only takes a little setup (you’ll need to download the game and run it locally), but soon you’ll be able to fight demons on any browser of your choice.
Sure, it’s not as impressive as running. Doomsday on one pregnancy test or stress of intestinal animalsBut being able to play one of the most popular video games smoothly right on your browser is still pretty awesome.
Bolide
Starlink, the satellite internet division of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, plans to start offering direct-to-cellular access, beaming its connection to mobile phone users through a partnership with mobile carrier T-Mobile. Other mobile carriers like Verizon and AT&T don’t seem to like that development very much.
This week, Starlink competitors filed a petition to deny Starlink’s efforts to roll out cellular service to the US Federal Communications Commission, the agency that governs how satellite internet is distributed in the US (and beyond, once the satellites are up there).
