Sonos CR100 :: An ode to the Russian iPod
by Volker Weber
Younglings, this is the CR100 Sonos Controller. Way before the iPhone you needed this to control your Sonos players. It's waterproof and basically indestructible. It has buttons for everything.
This controller has not seen an upgrade in years. It is still on version 4.3. And yet, I can use it with the new PLAY:5 and all the new music services.
Updating the controller was difficult. And my experience with Sonos support was not perfect. At first I was told the controller could not be upgraded beyond version 3.6 it was running. Then I called and spent an hour on the phone with somebody trying to update it using a remote session. We then gave up and agreed that I would send in the controllers so they could fix it in the office. Today I got a call from somebody one tier up. And he fixed it within a quarter of an hour.
Now I am a very happy camper. Old controller, working software. And all the music services, including Apple Music.
Comments
the most wanted item when my kids invite friends to a party and ask them to check which songs they wanna hear ;-) even though my kids got the controller app on their smartphones :-)
This controller was revolutionary at the time. It got me hooked on Sonos. Most people have no idea how clumsy it was to navigate your music library back then. I tried quite a few streaming solutions back in the day and they all more or less sucked. As you demonstrate with this article again Sonos really cares about maintaining the products they release. Sonos is one the (not so many) companies that spends time, effort and money to keep their products up-to-date instead of forcing its customers to buy new stuff every year or so. This is something I do value a lot. Compare that to your car: Once released it never really gets updated again. The car itself might be fine but there is no chance to e.g. get the entertainment system updated (hello CarPlay).
Any idea if an Sonos App is coming for the new Apple TV ?
If you were the product manager, would you really invest money in building yet another controller?
