As background, the trouble started when they abandoned their native app for a Flutter rewrite. Flutter is not wholly to blame of course, but it's the reason the app feels weird and unreliable, and that in turn makes the hardware — and the company — feel weird and unreliable.
The first order of business should be to return to native app development, or at least adopt a platform (like React Native) that uses native controls.
I think your downvoter is harsh - Flutter is not suited to an app where so many of the interactions, especially around Wifi/Bluetooth and persistent media playback notifications and handling, necessitate native integrations anyway, to the point it's not clear how much Flutter is saving you.
That said, their major problem appears to be the attempted change in network architecture to force cloud dependency. Had they done everything else but left this alone, so things like volume controls actually remain responsive and NAS media servers work properly, I suspect this would have gone almost smoothly, but it is true that the UI just feels off. It seems a common problem on mobile these days that people introduce portable abstractions in the wrong parts of their applications. (While then complaining about how hard good UX is in Flutter or RN).
I was one of the loud people on reddit to try and get them to re-release the old app, and I stand by that. They should just roll it back, but the amount of gaslighting and abuse this idea received early on was simply unbelievable. It took a good 3 months of nonsense before most of the community accepted they were being screwed.
CharlesW|1 year ago
The first order of business should be to return to native app development, or at least adopt a platform (like React Native) that uses native controls.
fidotron|1 year ago
That said, their major problem appears to be the attempted change in network architecture to force cloud dependency. Had they done everything else but left this alone, so things like volume controls actually remain responsive and NAS media servers work properly, I suspect this would have gone almost smoothly, but it is true that the UI just feels off. It seems a common problem on mobile these days that people introduce portable abstractions in the wrong parts of their applications. (While then complaining about how hard good UX is in Flutter or RN).
I was one of the loud people on reddit to try and get them to re-release the old app, and I stand by that. They should just roll it back, but the amount of gaslighting and abuse this idea received early on was simply unbelievable. It took a good 3 months of nonsense before most of the community accepted they were being screwed.