Sonos CEO John MacFarlene Steps Down From the Company He Helped Found (techcrunch.com) 23
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: After nearly a decade and a half as the chief executive officer of the hardware company he cofounded, John MacFarlane has announced his resignation as the head of Sonos. The move had reportedly been planned for some time, with the executive citing a number of personal reasons. That decision was delayed, however, due in part to increased and unexpected competition by Amazon's line of Echo speakers, which cut into Sonos' bottom line. "The pivot that Sonos started at this time last year to best address these changes is complete, now it's about acceleration and leading," MacFarlane wrote in an open letter published on the Sonos site. "I can look ahead and see the role of Sonos, with the right experiences, partners, and focus, with a healthy future. In short, the future of the home music experience, and the opportunity for Sonos has never been better." The role of CEO will be filled by Patrick Spence, who is currently serving as the company's President, after four years as COO and stints at RIM (BlackBerry) and IBM Canada. MacFarlane will be staying on at the Santa Barbara-based streaming hardware company in a consulting role, but will also be resigning his job on its board of directors, telling The New York Times, "I don't want to be that founder who's always second-guessing."
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Hang on, yes you do. The PlayBar is one of the finest sounding devices for home, even if it is overpriced.
How about focus on setting a static IP? (Score:2)
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And when I complain about such things, the usual reaction I get from people is something like... Haha! Why the heck are you even doing VLANs at home? I don't have any problems. Your use case doesn't matter, why should anyone waste time on it?
Seriously, I'm sick and tired of people saying such things. I do have multiple VLANs on my network, and you know what? For everything *except* SONOS, it actually works just fine. All I needed to do was run a few services on my router to make sure things connected (e.g.
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FWIW though, IGMP-Proxy can be your friend if you let it...
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That's your issue?
Our biggest issue is that everyone wires up all the units, and when they cause network loops because they don't have STP enabled, they call us for help.
And, their soundbar's are generations behind the competition at the moment (hell, everyone from Sony to Yamaha has Atmos ones these days).
I'm going to be so happy when MusicCast takes over. And it comes free built into their receivers, so less fudging around.
I Love my sonos, but... (Score:1)
Ok, you want to be a leader? How about coming out with a well thought out product every decade or so?
Oh, great a $700 soundbar. That should appeal to people that want premium home theaters, except, oh wait, it's 3-channels! Want the full 5.1? That's $1800 that I can get from Vizio for $200 with equal quality sound. Sorry dudes, but for $1800 I want me some Atmos/DTS:X action. The Sub sounds OK, but $700 for "OK" is a bit steep.
Oh yeah, have you seen their absurd marketing? They are having parties in
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I love Sonos too, but their current line up is several years old. Have speaker and wireless technologies not moved on at all?
Not to mention the state of the app. Despite the open letter from their CEO over a year ago accepting that they might have missed the boat on streaming technologies and need to catch up there is still no AirPlay support. No Chromecast audio either. No bluetooth. If you're going to pay
Re: I Love my sonos, but... (Score:1)
Speakers haven't changed much in decades, and 802.11g/n is fine for stereo audio.
Audio gear doesn't age nearly as fast as computers, or even cars.
Adapt existing Speakers (Score:3)
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I spent many years trying out various incarnations of streaming to my speakers (admittedly gave up before Chromecasts arrived) and Sonos is, for me, the answer.
- BlueTooth is just a pain for me, too many glitches; Sonos makes its own connection to the streaming source so its independent of your device
- The fact that I can start a stream on my Android phone in one or several areas of the house, then my wife can use her iPhone to change the volumes or add an remove zones, is really great
- It's easy to use, an
Who, what? (Score:3)
What does Sonos do and why should I give a shit about this John MacFarlane fellow? A little context goes a long ways, Slashdot editors.
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I dunno, but I really liked his work on Family Guy and The Amazing Spiderman. He's really versatile!
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Comments about your geek card aside... ;-)
Sonos is a brand of network attached music players. Most of their products are essentially 'wifi speakers', which not only connect to your local wifi (or wired lan), but also communicate with each other when necessary to create stereo pairs or groups which all play the same thing exactly in-sync. They claim to be able to play just about all the audio on the planet, although Amazon Music seems to be a constant problem, as does SoundCloud. That said though, they reall