Many Android bugs with 500+ stars closed as obsolete on December 25 • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by ulisesrmzroche » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 8:41 PM UTC

zcdziura wrote: post #74

jakobegger wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When it comes right down to it, people hate change. "It still works, so why change it!?" is a popular saying among most users. You're right, though. In this case, there definitely had to be an update to Apple's charging cables. Now that we're 3 generations into the new Lightning Connector, it's less of an issue for most people.

Apple has a huge majority of users who are basically into fashion. I usually buy the newest things and give away the old stuff, even if its just charging cables or an extra monitor.

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

#82

Post by bdcravens » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 8:44 PM UTC

duskwuff wrote: post #71

poopchute wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No. Doing a restore on an iOS device will always update it to the most recent version of iOS, not the one it shipped with.

It'll update it to the version you've installed, that is. In recent months I've restored and sold 2 iPhone4, one with ios7, one with ios6.

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

#83

Post by colechristensen » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 8:55 PM UTC

moca wrote: post #63

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.

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 Google Nexus devices become completely out of date after 2 years (too slow to run latest software, and too hard to get hardware repair support).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…

The primary reason Microsoft ever attained and kept its business is backwards and broad compatibility.

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

#84

Post by curiously » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 8:57 PM UTC

Had a phone from 2010ish. Recently switched to a Motorolla G smartphone with latest Android on it.

I am absolutely amazed how far Android has come. It feels so smooth and good. I thought about jumping to iPhone but my view of Android has changed drastically.

(My old phone was Galaxy Nexus and it was rife with randomly restarting during calls and sluggy OS).

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

#85

Post by Bud » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 8:59 PM UTC

ksk wrote: post #48

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.

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…

Most of the criticisms of brand-new OS updates being "slow and bloated" are from extremely impatient users (or professional clickbait critics) who don't even have the good sense to wait a few hours or a day or two for the processes that can make major upgrades a bit sluggish on ALL devices to complete, such as rebuilding databases, the fact that OS updates often result in dozens or even hundreds of app updates that have to download and install and in some cases update their own databases, etc.

Certainly, they do not wait for the first x.0.1 release, or for the release that usually closely follows the initial release and which is specifically intended to optimize performance on the oldest devices that can still support the latest OS. This was seen for iOS 7 and once again for iOS 8.

I don't think it's a valid comment, or a comment made in good faith, to say that iOS updates are a "bait and switch". That's just silliness and flies in the face of all the facts. The facts say, very loudly, that Apple supports its older devices MUCH better and for much longer than any competitor. It's not even close.

Now, if you are unable to acknowledge reality, and expect that a brand-new OS, designed to take advantage of devices that are about 10x as fast as three-year-old or four-year-old devices, isn't going to be quite as snappy on older devices, then in my opinion, that is on you as a user. Blaming Apple for trying to give more features to users on new hardware is ludicrous. Apple expends considerable engineering effort keeping those devices working as well as possible. The iPhone has been out for seven years. There's now more than enough history out there for users to know that if you install major iOS updates, you cannot easily downgrade. (It's not impossible, it's just a huge pain.)

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

#86

Post by baq » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 9:02 PM UTC

cryptoz wrote: 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…

does pressurenet even work? i can't find any news about it, the site (http://pressurenet.io/) is down for at least a couple of weeks and it looks like nobody else is using it since my map is always empty (which may be an artifact of the site being down). all this is a little bit disheartening.

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

#87

Post by oahziur » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 9:02 PM UTC

MichaelEGR wrote: post #60

Closing the very recent and ongoing with no hope in sight BLE bugs which are very real and heinous is BS: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=58381 BLE stack is even worse in Lollipop.

Totally agree, and the BLE peripheral mode only support Nexus 6 and Nexus 9. It was working on Nexus 5 on L Preview, and then unsupported...

https://code.google.com/p/android-developer-preview/issues/d...

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

#88

Post by mpdehaan2 » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 9:06 PM UTC

Managing any project with thousands of contributors is very hard - namely, duplicate bugs, low quality bug reports, bugs that are no longer valid given OS or version changes, etc.

I can't imagine how hard it is to manage something on the scale of Android, where it's so consumer-oriented, half of everyone with a phone (roughly) potentially could be using the bug tracker.

There may be some interesting room to build a bug tracker that can better semantically sort, and ensure better quality bug reports - templates for bug reports are a start, but there are very few if any good triage tools for the people on the other end of the system.

In this case, yes, there should have been at least a canned template response such as "if this still affects you,..." etc, but even that is difficult - with 50 people replying to a bug report, it's a good way to get 50 duplicates.

Ultimately, it's a sign where open source project management practices get increasingly hard the larger a project gets, and while it may be possible to keep up with the contributors, keeping up with userland can be an even larger feat.

In some ways, proprietary software has a it a LOT easier, and I don't envy the task.

While not every project can hire 15-30 extra people to manage and prune a gigantic issue tracker - Android probably can, and probably should, given the spirit of what it is.

Longer term, I still think we can do a lot better with bug tracker technology to provide more semantic views into what's there and needs to be done - eliminating the need to keep things pruned in this way. But we are no where close yet.

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

#89

Post by bradleyjg » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 9:10 PM UTC

mrec wrote: post #45

diafygi wrote: 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.

They did the same thing with GWT, except it was AssumedStale.

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

#90

Post by chralieboy » Sat, Dec 27, 2014, 9:15 PM UTC

mpdehaan2 wrote: post #88

Managing any project with thousands of contributors is very hard - namely, duplicate bugs, low quality bug reports, bugs that are no longer valid given OS or version changes, etc. I can't imagine how hard it is to manage something on the scale of Android, where it's so consumer-oriented, half of everyone with a phone (roughly) potentially could be using the bug tracker. There may be some interesting room to build a b…

StackOverflow provides a good example of how this could work. They identify duplicates as you type the questions and have many moderators dedicating time, for free, on cleaning things up.

Of course that doesn't solve the difficult matter of actually fixing the bugs, but I'm sure the Android developers would sincerely appreciate it. Closing duplicates or reports with little information sets a standard for the bugs that do get fixed.