>From a business standpoint, this looks like a smart move for exactly one reason: offloading costs & risks to Apple. The Sonos controller is dated, big, clunky, and inferior to the Squeezebox Controller in pretty much every respect. Rather than do the hard work of making better hardware, they're leveraging Apple's design, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, etc. Smart, though it makes me wonder if Sonos is running out of ideas.
>From a UI standpoint, who cares? There was only one part of the demo video that looked interesting, the concept of proportionately related volume control for a group of synchronized players. Beyond that, I saw nothing significant that isn't already in SqueezeCenter+SqueezePlay 7.2. It looks like early Controller firmware -- text-heavy, lots of "missed opportunities". And it's an English-only app right now -- they didn't even localize it? Is this just a market test, to see if they can bail on making Rev 2 hardware and just use iPod Touch devices? If it goes well, they'll start to flesh out the UI on this app? Oh, and as cool as the iPod Touch/iPhone interface is (and I mean Apple's basic UI, not the new Sonos app), it looks like a two-handed UI. Probably better than the clunky old Sonos controller, but, unlike the Squeezebox Controller, not usable with one hand. I'd definitely install the Sonos app if I had an iPod Touch and Sonos gear (just as I'd try iPeng), but even with this new software, Sonos doesn't have a controller option that really competes with the Squeezebox Controller. -- peterw http://www.tux.org/~peterw/ free plugins: http://www.tux.org/~peterw/#slim AllQuiet BlankSaver ContextMenu FuzzyTime KitchenTimer PlayLog PowerCenter/BottleRocket SaverSwitcher SettingsManager SleepFade StatusFirst SyncOptions VolumeLock ------------------------------------------------------------------------ peterw's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2107 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=54336 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
