What Roon could have done to save themselves some hassle with unsupported OS users

@jamie I’m not “upset”, I’m “angry”. Incompetence at Roon has wasted my time because communications were gushing about new functionality (very clever no doubt) but incorrect ("“When you log in to Roon, you’ll be prompted to update your Roon Core to the new Roon 2.0. Please don’t forget to update your Roon Remote on iOS and Android devices before accepting the update on your Core”). If this had said “may be prompted,” I’d be happy because I’d have been advised to check.

As noted, heads should roll - but they probably will anyway when those of us who have lost confidence decide not to renew, cash runs out and Amazon buys the IP to bundle it into their ecosystem.

@Paul_Jessop, please note that I am a community member like you, and not a Roon employee.

Pinned posts are shown first for any category, so visit #roon, and pinned posts are the first you’ll see (unless you chose to remove this feature.)

not a Roon employee

Noted. Not clear from the header whether you are moderator “from” the community or a moderator of the community.

But you miss the point. I know what a pinned post it. My uncertainty was why a paying customer of a well engineered product is expected to know to visit a support forum when doing a routine task.

There is no such instruction in the notification email and it’s unreasonable to expect customers to be telepathic.

All Roon needed to do was check the hardware and offer an update to 2.0 if the hardware supported it, 1.8 legacy if it did not.

Asking people to manually download 1.8 legacy and overwrite 1.8 was always going to cause worries & problems.

Ha, Ha, I’ve been there. I swear there are gremlins at work sometimes.

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@bebop57, I don’t share any of your or any others enthusiasm for the upgrade. @Paul_Jessop I’m also very angry. My 2014 Mac Mini was working perfectly until this afternoon when I realised the new version of Roon was incompatible. Looks to me like the entire world of commercial enterprise is focused on profit and has ignored the user. I have a perfectly well working system with all the features I need and now I find I need to go out and spend a thousand or so $ to upgrade my hardware so that I can run a new version of software. Poor documentation aside, I also read a warning that support will end for the legacy version. Where’s the benefit in that for me? I’ve been particularly miffed by this never ending cycle of upgrades to software that then requires us to spend a fortune on new devices. It happened to my iPhone recently when I discovered that existing software will not work on an older iOS which could not be upgraded because my perfectly functioning phone is about 7 years old. I can understand the revenue and profit motive after all that’s how the world works but how will throwing away good hardware benefit me let alone the environment? Not everyone needs all the bells and whistles of new devices and software. I just wish the likes of Roon, Apple, etc will remember NOT all of their existing customers need these new features or have the financial resources to keep upgrading every 3 to 5 years. Apps should be designed to support older hardware minus any new features and frankly that should be relatively easy to do in software.

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Roon staff have the Roon badge. All moderators are volunteering.

I take responsibility for my computer network and connected devices. This means I choose to take updates and upgrades, whether on my iPhone, Linux server, or Roon core.

Nonetheless, I understand your frustration, but maybe it’s time to move on. You’ve made your point, and everyone can learn lessons from this, which incidentally, is a huge undertaking that inevitably cannot please everyone.

As, I think, I said earlier, if you or anyone else need assistance, shout out—opening a new support thread is the best way.

More ‘victim blaming’ again, with the ‘I know and do this, therefore so should you - it’s your own fault’ type of response.

People repeat the point because no one from Roon is willing to show any acceptance of it - just a denial. Roon could have done this better with a one paragraph heads-up in a pre launch email. It’s that simple and it would have saved a lot of problems and circular arguments.

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Yep… or even better than that… just update those with unsupported hardware either automatically, or… with a button push… to 1.8 Legacy, and just let them know to download the new 1.8 Legacy app to their remotes…

Though many users ‘should’ know and do many things, the real world facts are that they don’t. That’s a basic anticipation of any type of change or update launch to anything. Any organisation needs to anticipate and head off such things to avoid problems for their own staff, resources and reputation, plus help the ‘idiots’ who should know better, but have nonetheless paid their subscriptions and, effectively, keep the company running by their continued loyalty.

I’ll “move on” when someone from Roon admits this was a monumental screw up, which could have been mitigated by someone in communications moving their mental gear shift to “drive”. As noted, writing “you’ll be prompted to upgrade” is plain incorrect.

Again the sanctimonious “I take responsibility” mantra is trotted out in a further piece of outrageous and scurrilous victim blaming. The fault here was in the email which gave clear advice that was wrong. If we were at fault for believing what we were told, that is something Roon management needs to say unequivocally so we can see what they really think of their customers.

And telling me I ought to know the meaning of rank badges associated with the prefects here is another example of the same presumption of telepathy. I’m supposed to know to check the support forum. I’m supposed to know what badges people wear. I’m supposed to know that “moderator” is an unpaid position. I’m supposed to know that a perfectly functional system is out of spec for the upgrade I’m told will work. The list goes on.

@Martin as a volunteer you get a bit of a pass and I welcome volunteering of all sorts, but you should consider your position because defending the indefensible isn’t a great look when a future employer Googles you.

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Testing Testing 1 2

Yep… thought so… Updates to this thread are no longer elevating it up the list for “Latest” posts, or in the “Roon Software” category.

It’s being slowly buried from view.

Adios folks… We’re going down! :upside_down_face:

My older iPad Air will almost certainly be deprecated. Hopefully I do not have automatic updates enabled–since I always get a notification when Roon wants to update. I’ll find out. been listening to a lot of Vinyl lately.

That I’m afraid is simply incorrect, it shows for me as new posts and in the “latest” section.
Not sure but maybe you muted the thread?

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" When your house is on fire and the firetrucks are outside, does someone need to text you that your house is on fire."

What a terrible analogy!

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Hmm… strange… No… it’s not muted, but it’s stopped turning up in “Latest”.

Add images

Just to expand on Martin’s comment. All roon employees have a colored Roon logo as their icon.

In iOS, you can change the settings here:

@Stephen_Ng, thanks for sharing those perspectives. I certainly agree with the roots of the sentiment expressed. As I noted, I’ve been using Roon since year two, yet it’s only since 1.8 that stability has reached a level I had longtime hoped for. So no, I was not particularly enthusiastic about 2.0, the deprecations involved and how the rollout has affected many of us. On the other hand, I can support the enthusiasm others have for 2.0, ARC ect. Seems like great stuff, just not anything I need. I just want to keep enjoying the user experiences I’ve been having without the kinds of disruptions discussed here.

But this thread’s topic is not about the merits, or lack thereof, of 2.0. It’s about those managing its rollout, and more particularly, mitigating the impact on those like ourselves whose hardware would require us to install the 1.8 Legacy components. And maybe to a lesser extent, the thread also brings up the issue you’ve raised about policies a company like Roon has toward maintaining support for older hardware.

The cases described in this and other recent threads illustrate that for many of us running Roon in Apple’s ecosystem, we found our Roon installations bricked at 2.0’s launch. Worse, we were sort of left to ourselves to sift through bread crumbs here and elsewhere to get back up and running. So the question this thread asked was how might this aspect of the rollout been handled differently?

But instead of accepting any responsibility for these occurrences, and welcoming a forward looking discussion about how things might be better in the future, at least one Roon staff member adopted a defensive tone, effectively blaming customers for not being on top of things. There’s been no interest in accepting the possibly Roon missed the mark here.

Funny, back in the day, I always felt uplifted at how Danny and other Roon principals seemed to respond humbly when users raised such issues. So I agree, there’s no reason to “let it go”. By and large, the thread’s topic has yet to even be accepted by Roon, much less generating a discussion on how things might move forward. What is stop one, admit there is a problem? To that end, maybe Roon could assure us “Legacy” Mac users we will be supported through at least the end of 2023 as a result of these inconveniences.

I share in your frustration about your 2014 Mac Mini being among the hardware on the Roon 2.0 chopping block. Mine’s a 2011, so the hit on me when the 1.8 Legacy window closes will be lighter. Nonetheless, this is the game we choose to take part in. For Roon to keep moving forward in its market, as well as maintain parity with the frameworks, servers and what not upstream in its world, some of us unfortunately get left behind downstream for trying in our own small ways to consume with a little lighter footprint on the planet and our bank accounts. Two years ago I got interested in testing Dirac Live, but found it had deprecated my Mac Mini two years prior. And when looking into new Mac Minis yesterday, i learned that while Roon 2.0 supports my iPhone 6, I can’t stream Airplay 2 to a 2021 M1 Mac Mini unless I’ve got an iPhone 7. So Roon is hardly the worst of the bunch in this regard, and possibly better than most. Maybe a thread on this would be interesting now that this depreciation topic is more real for more people. Does Roon want to say, “Hey, rest assured your hardware will be supported for a long time.” Or, like you point out, will the eight year lifespan for supporting cores like your Mac Mini soon become, seven, six…?

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