Sonos discontinuing updates...

[Captain Morgan]

The issue is not the support life of each individual component in isolation; the issue is that the support life of each individual unit affects the supportability of the entire network of which it is a part.

To draw an analogy: The fact that my ancient XP laptop is no longer supported does not (and should not) affect the support of my modern Windows 10 desktop.

Not a great analogy, any network manager worth his job is not going to want to support xp machines on the same network as W10. It’s an obvious security risk and I’d expect them to do similar to what Sonos have suggested and isolate them from the other devices.

Sonos have (now) said that legacy systems can be segregated from current devices, allowing current devices to maintain updates.

I think that I’ve already said Sonos comms have been poor on this, certainly its impacted their reputation.

That said it’s still unusual for a tech company to support hardware platforms for this length of time imho.

[tertius]

Not a great analogy, any network manager worth his job is not going to want to support xp machines on the same network as W10. It’s an obvious security risk and I’d expect them to do similar to what Sonos have suggested and isolate them from the other devices.

Sonos have (now) said that legacy systems can be segregated from current devices, allowing current devices to maintain updates.

I think that I’ve already said Sonos comms have been poor on this, certainly its impacted their reputation.

That said it’s still unusual for a tech company to support hardware platforms for this length of time imho.

Well not perfect perhaps but still relevant in my opinion - as even in your version of the scenario it’s the user making that decision it isn’t Microsoft imposing it on them.

And yes they have said there will be a solution but provided no details, including what limitations it will impose.

I would certainly agree that their comms has been pretty awful, especially since their CEO said the following to Congress (just last week I believe):

“Our business model is simple — we sell products which people pay for once, and we make them better over time with software updates. We’ve achieved success without trying to monetize the data of our customers. We live by the mantra that if we keep making great products, customers will recognize that, and come back and buy more over time. Nearly 40% of our typical customers buy a Sonos product and enjoy it so much they buy another one. We have been shipping products for 16 years, and an astounding 93% of our products are still in use. Keep in mind these are computers — how many of you are still able to use a computer or mobile phone you had 16 years ago? We’re proud of this, as we’ve always tried to build products that last for a long time. This stands in stark contrast to “disposable” tech, where people are encouraged to buy a new product every few years. We are focused on doing one thing really well — providing great sound experiences for customers."