Sonos has had an interesting year so far. After the company's first headphones, the excellent Sonos Ace, were widely praised, the company redesigned its app in May, alienating a large portion of its user base.

Despite claims that it takes “courage” to build a new app from scratch, bugs and glitches persisted, forcing Sonos to issue update after update (actually every two weeks) to try to fix the problems. For example, they reintroduced a feature that they had inexplicably removed the first time around. Now, a little more than two months later, the company's CEO has apologized for the fiasco and said that fixing the problem is Sonos' “top priority.

“We know that too many of you experienced significant problems with our new app, which was released on May 7.

“We developed our new app with the knowledge that it would get better over time, with the ability to drive further innovation in the future to create a better experience. After launch, however, we discovered a number of issues that we felt were not being addressed. Fixing these issues delayed our prior plans to quickly incorporate missing features and functionality.”

Spence elaborates on a sort of roadmap for the company. He noted that July through September will see stability improvements, implementation of settings to music libraries, and UI improvements based on feedback; in September, Sonos plans to improve alarm consistency and reliability; in October, playlist and cue editing modes will return, and settings features could be further improved.

He added that Sonos will continue to add bi-weekly software updates and share notes on what has been addressed on its community page. Spence concluded his post by stating, “We know we have work to do to regain your trust, and we are working hard to do so.”

As a Sonos user, it is infuriating to see the company's software issues drag down a great hardware product. I can't count the number of times that the app has crashed, the music playing has paused randomly (or not started at all), and generally has been unresponsive and painful to use.

My colleague Scott Yunker also reports on Sonos' woes, noting that the app on his Android device has become noticeably slower and more frustrating to use. Not to mention the odd decision to omit the ability to edit playlists and future song order.

So, of course, Sonos has a long way to go before it regains the good graces of millions of users. I can't say for sure, but I am convinced that if given the choice, most people would want fewer superfluous features and more robust reliability. After all, Sonos hardware remains one of the best you can buy, and the app's purpose is to support it as best it can. So far, the app is doing a terrible job.