Sonos deprecation over reaction
I read an article like this one and thought it was just a blip on the radar. But then I started seeing increasingly more of them.
It was complaining about how unreliable smart home systems are, and using Sonos as the source of it's frustration.
But, here is the problem; the Sonos announcement is a non-issue.
You see, the article I first read (not the one linked -- that one I just Googled as an example) worded the whole thing as a cash grab to force users to upgrade. So I went in expecting the problem to be that Sonos was bricking these old devices. But, that wasn't the case. They are simply not getting further updates.
For the record, these are 10+ year old devices. Many hardware vendors (like say, smartphones) can stop getting updates the day they ship, or within a few years. ANYTHING getting updates for 10+ years is pretty remarkable in this day and age.
From my perspective, as long as the devices will continue to work in perpetuity Sonos doesn't even need an explanation.
I'm not sure I buy their explanation anyway. The argument is that it is older hardware and cannot support newer upgrades. While there is certainly some of this which happens over time... if it is going to become a problem it would typically happen much faster than 10 years. Basically, for this argument to make any sense, Sonos would need to have been gradually increasing things like RAM and processing power in an iterative fashion over the past 10 years without actually making use of it.
Otherwise, one would expect if this was the true limitations that the deprecation would have hit much newer devices as well. Usually, manufacturers plan this sort of work out only a few years in advance.
The level of foresight and patience required for this to have gone on like this for 10 years is borderline non-existent in the industry.
For instance it is unlikely that 10 year old products are so drastically different from say, 9 year old ones, that the 9 year old ones could be supported but the 10 year old ones couldn't.
That is where my comment about iterative improvements comes in. Either Sonos made hardware improvements 9 years ago and sat on them for almost a full decade, or they improved in an iterative fashion over the preceding 10 years. Or they are full of shit. My money is on the latter.
But, that isn't the point. The point is that this really doesn't affect anyone in such a way. It isn't a legit reason to seek another provider.
Then I read an article today about an open source project aiming to resolve this. And I laughed.
EXCEEDINGLY FEW are the open source projects that remain in active development for 10+ years. Heck, many private businesses will come and go in that time.
And the problems Sonos claims to be facing are unavoidable. Hardware has its limits, and quality products always push the limits of hardware. In short, while this open source initiative could make it possible to push updates out indefinitely, if the updates won't physically fit in memory you're out of luck and if the hardware isn't powerful enough to run it, you may regret it anyway.
But, statistically speaking... it unlikely this new initiative will even last as long as Sonos support did for these speakers. Making all of their claims likely quite irrelevant.
If I were a consumer I would certainly would take issue with Sonos bricking devices. But, frankly, after 10 years I would be hard pressed to remain angry long.
All of this DOES make for some important questions though. While leaving devices in an operational state may seem like the best option. Is it really? Perhaps the biggest issue with smart devices is security and privacy. While it totally makes sense for Sonos to stop supporting products it stopped profiting from years ago, without that support, the devices may now be left vulnerable if new exploits are detected.
As their product catalogue grows, maintaining legacy support becomes increasingly more costly.
I don't expect it to happen, but I think that the best that a company like Sonos could do would be to change their base Platform every X years, and once a new platform has taken hold, release the old source publicly, or at least, enough of the source to patch security vulnerabilities. Changing Platforms regularly would protect newer proprietary logic from being open sourced.
Thus allowing the open source community to maintain support further. They could even maintain the repos and push community driven patches out through their delivery networks with less investment.
Without security patches though, it is almost unethical for them not to brick the devices or force the users to agree to some online waiver to allow continued usage.
I think this is where companies like Google and Amazon got it right. Most of the brains live in the cloud. The devices themselves do receive patches, but the hardware requirements are much lower and less varied. Though, there are reasons to hate cloud based services as well. When they shut down, you have no option but to be bricked.
It was complaining about how unreliable smart home systems are, and using Sonos as the source of it's frustration.
But, here is the problem; the Sonos announcement is a non-issue.
You see, the article I first read (not the one linked -- that one I just Googled as an example) worded the whole thing as a cash grab to force users to upgrade. So I went in expecting the problem to be that Sonos was bricking these old devices. But, that wasn't the case. They are simply not getting further updates.
For the record, these are 10+ year old devices. Many hardware vendors (like say, smartphones) can stop getting updates the day they ship, or within a few years. ANYTHING getting updates for 10+ years is pretty remarkable in this day and age.
From my perspective, as long as the devices will continue to work in perpetuity Sonos doesn't even need an explanation.
I'm not sure I buy their explanation anyway. The argument is that it is older hardware and cannot support newer upgrades. While there is certainly some of this which happens over time... if it is going to become a problem it would typically happen much faster than 10 years. Basically, for this argument to make any sense, Sonos would need to have been gradually increasing things like RAM and processing power in an iterative fashion over the past 10 years without actually making use of it.
Otherwise, one would expect if this was the true limitations that the deprecation would have hit much newer devices as well. Usually, manufacturers plan this sort of work out only a few years in advance.
The level of foresight and patience required for this to have gone on like this for 10 years is borderline non-existent in the industry.
For instance it is unlikely that 10 year old products are so drastically different from say, 9 year old ones, that the 9 year old ones could be supported but the 10 year old ones couldn't.
That is where my comment about iterative improvements comes in. Either Sonos made hardware improvements 9 years ago and sat on them for almost a full decade, or they improved in an iterative fashion over the preceding 10 years. Or they are full of shit. My money is on the latter.
But, that isn't the point. The point is that this really doesn't affect anyone in such a way. It isn't a legit reason to seek another provider.
Then I read an article today about an open source project aiming to resolve this. And I laughed.
EXCEEDINGLY FEW are the open source projects that remain in active development for 10+ years. Heck, many private businesses will come and go in that time.
And the problems Sonos claims to be facing are unavoidable. Hardware has its limits, and quality products always push the limits of hardware. In short, while this open source initiative could make it possible to push updates out indefinitely, if the updates won't physically fit in memory you're out of luck and if the hardware isn't powerful enough to run it, you may regret it anyway.
But, statistically speaking... it unlikely this new initiative will even last as long as Sonos support did for these speakers. Making all of their claims likely quite irrelevant.
If I were a consumer I would certainly would take issue with Sonos bricking devices. But, frankly, after 10 years I would be hard pressed to remain angry long.
All of this DOES make for some important questions though. While leaving devices in an operational state may seem like the best option. Is it really? Perhaps the biggest issue with smart devices is security and privacy. While it totally makes sense for Sonos to stop supporting products it stopped profiting from years ago, without that support, the devices may now be left vulnerable if new exploits are detected.
As their product catalogue grows, maintaining legacy support becomes increasingly more costly.
I don't expect it to happen, but I think that the best that a company like Sonos could do would be to change their base Platform every X years, and once a new platform has taken hold, release the old source publicly, or at least, enough of the source to patch security vulnerabilities. Changing Platforms regularly would protect newer proprietary logic from being open sourced.
Thus allowing the open source community to maintain support further. They could even maintain the repos and push community driven patches out through their delivery networks with less investment.
Without security patches though, it is almost unethical for them not to brick the devices or force the users to agree to some online waiver to allow continued usage.
I think this is where companies like Google and Amazon got it right. Most of the brains live in the cloud. The devices themselves do receive patches, but the hardware requirements are much lower and less varied. Though, there are reasons to hate cloud based services as well. When they shut down, you have no option but to be bricked.
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