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Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25

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Re: Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25

#51

Post by madez »

spiralpolitik wrote: post #44
valvar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if iPhone is the only alternative, while in fact there (will soon be) lots of alternatives. Right now there's the Jolla, which I personally own (and it's fantastic), but soon we'll also see the Neo900 which will be almost as free and open as you can get, and on the horizon Firefox OS and Ubuntu phones are looming.

While all are worthwhile ventures they are all too late to the market to make a difference. We are now in the middle years of the smartphone market. The time for new entrants ended in 2010. It's iOS and Android locked in a struggle that neither can completely win from here on out.

What do you care who "wins"?

Re: Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25

#52

Post by jakobegger »

mfisher87 wrote: post #35
titaniumdecoy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common but completely unfair criticism of Apple. Plenty of people complained when iOS 7 was made available for the iPhone 4 (because the hardware was too slow to run it properly). And Apple still sells and supports relatively ancient hardware (the iPad mini) as a result of their current strategy of selling last year's model as the second-best option.

I wouldn't say it's completely unfair. Using proprietary data/charging cables and changing the design every so often, obsoleting whole generations of products seems like behavior consistent with my criticism.

Apple introduced the Dock connector on the iPod in 2001. The same connector was used for over ten years, before it was replaced with the lightning connector in 2012.

The MagSafe connector was replaced after 6 years by the MagSafe 2 connector, also in 2012.

Both of these connectors where replaced for good reasons. The Dock connector was not reversible, prone to break, and was easily clogged with dust. It was also too big for smaller form factors. The MagSafe connector was often confused with USB and also too thick for thinner devices, and it used a low charging voltage (less efficient).

Switching to a new design is often inconvenient, but also often necessary. To ease the transition, Apple even provided adaptors for compatibility with older chargers.

Re: Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25

#53

Post by mikeash »

titaniumdecoy wrote: post #21
mfisher87 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most major companies, to me, seem to be following Apple's example and forcing a shorter support lifecycle for each device, expecting users to simply replace their "obsolete" device with the newest one.

This is a common but completely unfair criticism of Apple. Plenty of people complained when iOS 7 was made available for the iPhone 4 (because the hardware was too slow to run it properly). And Apple still sells and supports relatively ancient hardware (the iPad mini) as a result of their current strategy of selling last year's model as the second-best option.

It's not a choice between no software updates for old hardware, and bad software updates for no hardware. At least in theory, Apple could have made an iOS 7 update for the iPhone 4 that actually worked well on that hardware. It's not "unfair" to complain that Apple does a bad job of supporting hardware after only a couple of years, when your counter is that they release OS updates that don't work well on them.

Re: Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25

#54

Post by valvar »

spiralpolitik wrote: post #44
valvar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if iPhone is the only alternative, while in fact there (will soon be) lots of alternatives. Right now there's the Jolla, which I personally own (and it's fantastic), but soon we'll also see the Neo900 which will be almost as free and open as you can get, and on the horizon Firefox OS and Ubuntu phones are looming.

While all are worthwhile ventures they are all too late to the market to make a difference. We are now in the middle years of the smartphone market. The time for new entrants ended in 2010. It's iOS and Android locked in a struggle that neither can completely win from here on out.

What does that matter? All I personally want is a good and open phone, and right now I've got that, and it looks like we'll have even more alternatives in the future. Just giving a heads-up to other hackers...

Re: Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25

#55

Post by nailer »

jspaetzel wrote: post #37

I'm not sure if you guys actually even looked at what these requests were but most of them are irrelevant and rightly so... obsolete/irrelevant features. To choose one particular example that stood out to me from the first page with 198 stars: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1140 I wont even get started on how much information this is lacking for it to be actually executed. The point being that mos…

Conversely, the first one I saw was support for calendar attachments (.ics files). Which:

a) GMail sends

b) Google Experience devices still can't recieve

Re: Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25

#56

Post by nailer »

higherpurpose wrote: post #36
krschultz wrote: post #22

At some point in a long living project, you have to declare some bugs are #wontfix. You are just lieing to yourself if you think you will ever get to the end of the bug backlog. It also can become an anchor, the team is focused solely on fixing bugs here and there instead of moving the ball forward (and hopefully fixing more fundamental problems along the way). I've made the call to mass close tickets like this. It's…

This reminds me. Google has the (rather great) Google Moderator tool - so why aren't they using it on a site where Android fans can ask Google properly for features? Using that "issues" list for features is such a pain. Right now if the community wants a new certain feature or they really hate one of the already implemented features, it has to make a big fuss about it on r/Android, an unofficial feedback channel.

Weren't they going to shut down Moderator?

Re: Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25

#57

Post by sarciszewski »

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #47
yourad_io wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same person/profile[1] who closed these issues has been merging issues as far back as 2013[2]. I doubt that would have been him. [1] https://code.google.com/u/116776574616066648526/ [2] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=63433

If you guys are really interested, the profile you linked has a list of projects. Glancing at the "vogar" project which it says is owned by e...@google.com (first I happened to pick), you can see links to the blog of Elliott Hughes. His site indicates he's a Google employee. So, not exactly proven, but seems to fit the bill.

Except Ellion Hughes shows up elsewhere as elliot...@google.com

https://code.google.com/p/enh/

Re: Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25

#58

Post by jspaetzel »

nailer wrote: post #55
jspaetzel wrote: post #37

I'm not sure if you guys actually even looked at what these requests were but most of them are irrelevant and rightly so... obsolete/irrelevant features. To choose one particular example that stood out to me from the first page with 198 stars: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1140 I wont even get started on how much information this is lacking for it to be actually executed. The point being that mos…

Conversely, the first one I saw was support for calendar attachments (.ics files). Which: a) GMail sends b) Google Experience devices still can't recieve

and also has not been updated since May 28, 2013

Re: Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25

#59

Post by sduclos »

yourad_io wrote: post #23
kelukelugames wrote: post #5

Silently? This isn't that dramatic. edit. title has been fixed.

Silently == closing without comment. Dramatic or not depends on the issue: This[1] issue (note the id) has 6275 people following it and 1659 comments/activities. Marking it obsolete with "(No comment was entered for this change.)" is kinda middle-finger-ish, don't you think? [1] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82

Wifi ad hoc network (82) seem like good thing to have in an emergency. Searching around I found Wi-Fi Peer-to-Peer in Android doc at

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/connectivity/wifip...

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