The Botched Software Update That Cost $600 Million

毁损的软件更新,代价高达6亿美元

The Journal.

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2025-03-07

21 分钟
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单集简介 ...

Sonos, the high-end speaker company, continues to reel from its disastrous app update last May. The company lost revenue and approximately $600 million in market capitalization. Then came the layoffs and a CEO exit. WSJ’s Ben Cohen explains.  See The Journal live! Take our survey!  Further Listening: - The Glitch That Crashed Millions of Computers  - The Snowballing Problems at Vail Resorts  Further Reading: - The $500 Million Debacle at Sonos That Just Won’t End  - Sonos Finally Hits the Hard Reset Button  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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  • Updating your software.

  • It's one of our modern common chores.

  • Mostly it's annoying, inconvenient,

  • but we do it because it's supposed to make sure our stuff works better.

  • So when a software update somehow makes things worse, people get mad.

  • Like back in 2014 when an iPhone update caused a bunch of people's phones to crash.

  • The latest Software update called iOS 8.0.1.

  • Meant to fix software bugs, reportedly crashing some users phones instead.

  • Or in 2016 when an update to the Nest thermostat left people angry and cold.

  • Their Internet connected thermostats have been malfunctioning.

  • Ever since they got a software upgrade last month.

  • Or last year when a crowdstrike software update caused major travel delays.

  • It was a faulty software update

  • by cybersecurity company Crowdstrike that caused disruptions across across multiple industries.

  • In the best case scenarios, companies act fast and fix the problems and we can all move on.

  • But our colleague Ben Cohen recently wrote

  • about a software update that has plagued a company for months now.

  • It was so buggy

  • that it turned into one of the most disastrous software updates

  • in the recent history of consumer technology.