Anika Begay
The latest version Sonos’s mobile app is still terrible—so terrible that the company is considering scrapping the redesigned app and bringing back the old version. This news, reported by The Verge, comes amid reports that Sonos is also laying off 100 employees. It’s not a great time for the stylish speaker company, really.
Things first went south for Sonos when it released a new version of its app in May. It was met with near-universal disdain. Users found that the app’s new format made it difficult to connect to a network, queue up songs, or even change the volume. A major complaint was that many of the accessibility features in the legacy app had been poorly implemented in the redesign or removed from the platform entirely. Some users say the app is nearly unusable for blind Sonos owners.
Sonos has at least acknowledged its mistake since the botched launch, but the company has yet to address many of the underlying issues. CEO Patrick Spence said the fiasco could cost the company more than $30 million and has led to delays in two new hardware products.
Hence the potentially frenetic rollback to a version of the Sonos app that actually worked. It’s unclear whether Sonos will actually allow users to downgrade to the previous version of the app, or when that ability will be available. For now, Sonos users will just have to keep chugging along.
Here’s more news from the world of consumer tech this week.
BMW One
Great news for all Uno card game lovers and BMW owners: now you can combine both interests without worrying about losing your cards under the floor mats.
Uno Car Party! will let passengers play Uno together in the vehicle, using a combination of their phones and the car’s dashboard screens. The new feature, coming to the BMW X3 and select Mini models on August 21, is a joint effort between gaming company Mattel and cloud-based gaming service AirConsole. It’s the same partnership that brought the quiz game Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? to BMW cabins a couple of years ago.
It’s definitely going to be a lot of fun, but be warned that you can’t play cards while driving down the road, thank goodness for all the other humans and robots on the road. Save that for ferry rides.
Browser Hell
Go down to Hell via Google Chrome, because Devil is now playable in a web browser. This capability is provided by an open source fan-made project called Diabloweb, available on GitHub. The game includes the 1997 Devilalong with its expansion, Hellfire. It requires a little setup (you have to download the game and run it locally), but in no time you’ll be able to hack and slash some demons on any browser you choose.
Sure, it’s not as impressive as running. Destiny on a pregnancy test or a strain of intestinal fauna, but being able to seamlessly play one of the most popular video games directly in your browser is still pretty cool.
Starlunk
Starlink, the satellite internet arm of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, plans to start offering direct cell access, which will beam its connectivity to cell phone users in a partnership with mobile carrier T-Mobile. Other mobile carriers like Verizon and AT&T don’t seem to be too keen on the development.
This week, Starlink’s competitors filed petitions with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which regulates how satellite internet is delivered in the U.S. (and beyond, once the satellites are there), to deny Starlink’s efforts to roll out its mobile phone service.
