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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

#61
Enterprises are able to pay huge maintenance fees. Single consumers are not and game theory teaches us, that they are unable to unite to get it (free rider problem).

So I fear, that we need stronger consumer protection for software products. I do not know the situation in the US, but in the EU we have a mandated 2 year warranty for almost every product with very few sensible exceptions (food and the like).

We need the same for software. Features that are advertised have to be guaranteed. Of course software has bugs, so the law has to be about software getting fixed, not being perfect. Actually that is the same with physical products as they do not have to be replaced, they can be repaired, so this does not even make a difference.

There has to be some lightweight definition of non-functional requirements. This one is difficult and dangerous as the big players could unite and regulate the small ones out.

Related to that, double or triple the warranty periods. This is not so much an issue with smartphones and the like, as they become obsolete by superior successors or fashion, but with stuff like printers, vacuum cleaners or electric toothbrushes. Of course, this would hurt companies like hell and will never happen. I imagine in the long run, it would actually be super beneficial to those, who remain, because it would create a brand "Sold in the EU" much like "Made in Germany" with all the mythos of the deregulated Autobahn but the highly regulated warranties :D

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

#62
post #48

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.

The reason people complain is because iOS updates are a horrible kind of bait and switch. You update the OS because you think its awesome, but are unable to downgrade when you find that in reality, its slow and bloated. The most infuriating thing in all of this is that my iPhone 4S is STILL a fast device. The CPU hasn't shrunk since the time I bought it. Apple has decided that I am unworthy of restoring my phone to t…

Yup. I had 1 iPhone, my first and last Apple product.

My mom just got an iPad mini, was infuriated when she discovered she can't buy Kindle books from the Kindle app like she could on Android.

The artificial restrictions Apple places on developers and users are ridiculous. And Android 5 is the first release where I can say that Android is unequivocally a nicer experience than iOS...

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

#63
post #6

Google's handling of Android bugs is unpleasant and difficult to swallow. The QA seems minimal and little or no attention is paid to user filed bugs. The barometer on the Nexus 5 is still broken after a year+ of software updates. Infuriating. The bug with hundreds of stars is marked obsolete! The barometer is still broken. I'd like to debug and fix it but other things have priority, and I don't feel confident that if…

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.

Among major companies, Apple did a better job with supporting old devices. Google Nexus devices become completely out of date after 2 years (too slow to run latest software, and too hard to get hardware repair support). Software wise, Apple could have done a better job as the newer version of iOS is indeed bloated and doesn't run well on old devices. On the other side, Microsoft did great job on supporting Windows XP for over a decade with wide variety of hardwares.

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

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do support for an app with several million downloads. While it may not make sense on a technical level, it's really powerful for your app and your users to reach out and explain this. For us this is a quick two line reply that the wish is on the wishlist and may be picked up later. Many of the wishes you get are completely logical, some are for very specific use cases, and some are completely off topic. We still tr…

I think this would be great if they could do that.. but when it comes to millions of users I dont think even google can handle that much feedback publicly without falling seriously short. It's amazing they are able to address as many issues as they do, after all there are like 14000 open issues right now in that tracker.

You're focusing on the wrong numbers. "Millions of users"? You're talking about 14000 open issues, a FRACTION of which were closed.

The android team is large and the closed bugs surely have been reviewed by the team before being closed (otherwise they're just closing randomly in which case: WTF?). So really, doesn't it make sense to give an actual reply for even just the more popular ones? We're not talking about millions here, we're talking about dozens...

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

#65
post #25

That's a shame. I had 1285 (USSD API) starred, which would have allowed for some interesting carrier-specific apps. Do any mobile OSes let apps get a USSD response?

Same for me, I got an email recently that bug I starred has been closed. Pretty disappointing, this would open so many possibilities

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

#66
post #62
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people complain is because iOS updates are a horrible kind of bait and switch. You update the OS because you think its awesome, but are unable to downgrade when you find that in reality, its slow and bloated. The most infuriating thing in all of this is that my iPhone 4S is STILL a fast device. The CPU hasn't shrunk since the time I bought it. Apple has decided that I am unworthy of restoring my phone to t…

Yup. I had 1 iPhone, my first and last Apple product. My mom just got an iPad mini, was infuriated when she discovered she can't buy Kindle books from the Kindle app like she could on Android. The artificial restrictions Apple places on developers and users are ridiculous. And Android 5 is the first release where I can say that Android is unequivocally a nicer experience than iOS...

Just so you know, you can't buy kindle books from the Android app anymore either - main reason I use Aldiko to read epub now.

Agreed about Android 5 though, best yet!

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

#67
post #45
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then mark them as WontFix with a comment explaining why. Marking Obsolete without comment and restricting further comments is a huge slap in the face to your biggest supporters (those who went through the trouble of trying to contribute positively by filing/commenting/starring the bug).

Yup. They did the same thing with Chrome a couple of years back - just had a bot go through and close everything older than some threshold en masse. As you might expect, I don't bother reporting Chrome bugs any more.

Suppose the Chrome team closed everything older than some cut-off date but explained why (perhaps on a blog) and encouraged people to open new tickets about issues that carried forward to currently supported versions.

Would that gesture have kept you motivated to report bugs?

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

#68
post #48

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.

The reason people complain is because iOS updates are a horrible kind of bait and switch. You update the OS because you think its awesome, but are unable to downgrade when you find that in reality, its slow and bloated. The most infuriating thing in all of this is that my iPhone 4S is STILL a fast device. The CPU hasn't shrunk since the time I bought it. Apple has decided that I am unworthy of restoring my phone to t…

Wont a factory reset bring it back to iOS 5 or whatever it shipped with?

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

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There have only been two apple charging interfaces for iPods, iPhones and iPads (excluding the shuffle), and the new one was necessary (if I understood correctly) to take advantage of faster USB3 data transfer rates.

Lightning doesn't currently support USB3, unfortunately. It did get rid of a lot of obsolete old interfaces that were present in the 30-pin dock connector pinout, though, and opened up possibilities for new devices (like the HDMI adapter).

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

#70

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…

Why look so far down the list?

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82

Bug 82. Number one on the list. Been open 6 years. Patch offered and integrated into CyanogenMod for years. Y u no integrate the patch Google?

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