Phantoms delivered this afternoon

[f1eng]

Speaking as an embedded software developer, I can only say: hear, hear!


Maybe just to pick on one point: I wouldn't necessarily agree entirely with your comment about the simplicity of Sonos's software.  The software is continually updated and increases in scope each time -- for example to support new capabilities and services.  The core software has had the benefit of running on entirely proprietary, purpose-designed hardware which has only changed fairly infrequently, and I'm sure that contributes enormously to its stability.

Where Sonos have taken some flak recently is for the control software running on generic phones and tablets, as distinct from the dedicated controllers.  My impression (without concrete evidence, but in line with industry practice) is that this is written by a different type of developer to those writing the embedded software that runs on the Sonos proprietary hardware.

The point of my reference to Sonos was that on release it worked. It's true that it's been updated since, but the Sonos user experience today is really not much different from how it was when I first used it 10 years ago. In all that time I think Sonos have only messed up once: the 2nd generation touchscreen controllers were very unreliable. Otherwise it's been consistently excellent. 

Is it really the case that designing robust music server software is much more difficult today than it was back then?

I think the key is that the Sonos system was relatively simple and well defined, both in the hardware it used and the file types it worked with.
Writing software which can deal with more different bits of hardware and more file types is much more complex, yes.