hackoder
I would suggest you open source it under a non-commercial license. Also, take a look at how some successful android open source projects are run. In particular, I like XPrivacy (https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy). This is an excellent app. Open source with optional purchase, similar to yours. Personally, I paid the $6 they charge because I'd rather not compile the src myself.
You've already had a lot of downloads and are an established app. Clones can't replicate that.. If you are a recognized dev on xda, with your own thread for discussion, feature requests, bug reports etc, no clones will be able to replace that aspect even if they can clone your app.
You should be able to get more downloads/purchases from privacy-aware users. And you can have donations for feature requests if you want.
Just some thoughts.. best of luck with the app!
If you're using Android, I'd highly recommend using a combination of XPrivacy [1] and Android Firewall [2] (iptables frontend).
To make your life easier, disallow everything from accessing the net in Android Firewall. Then, for those apps which you've allowed net access, further tweak what they're allowed to access in XPrivacy. As a rule, turn off account info, clipboard, location, contacts, and storage.
Not perfect, but a decent solution.
[1] https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jtschohl.a...
To make your life easier, disallow everything from accessing the net in Android Firewall. Then, for those apps which you've allowed net access, further tweak what they're allowed to access in XPrivacy. As a rule, turn off account info, clipboard, location, contacts, and storage.
Not perfect, but a decent solution.
[1] https://github.com/M66B/XPrivacy
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jtschohl.a...
Just to add some more thoughts based on other comments.. yes a lot of companies do stuff like this, particularly startups. The upside in these situations is that you end up learning things extremely quickly which wouldn't be possible in a more controlled environment. However not having backup and restore working is just ridiculous and I keep shaking my head at how they blamed the OP for this mistake. Unbelievable.
In any case, I did a few things to make sure I never ended up destroying any data. Creating temporary tables and then manipulating those.. reading over my scripts for hours.. dumping table backups before executing any scripts.. not executing scripts in the middle/end of the day, only mornings when I was fresh etc etc.
I didn't mess up, but I remember how incredibly nerve wracking that was, and I can relate to the massive amount of responsibility it places on a "junior" programmer. It just should never be done. Like others have said, you should never have been in that position. Yes, it was your fault, but this kind of responsibility should never have been placed on you (or anyone, really). Backing up all critical data (what kind of company doesn't backup its users table?! What if there had been hard disk corruption?), and being able to restore in minimum time should have been dealt with by someone above your pay grade.
You make two very good points here and in your other post.
1) Kids are different. There is a whole spectrum of right and wrong decisions depending on what your kid is like. Would anyone suggest that the same methods would work with a kid who is stubborn and one who is easy going?
2) These decisions depend on a kid's age. A 2-5 year old is not logical or rational, and can do outrageous things just to see how you would react. Don't deceive them, let them be kids, yadda yadda are almost funny to read. Like you said, walk a mile in the parents' shoes.
Anyway, getting back to the original post, I do see an issue with this approach (to parenting, not the technical solutions): I'd rather solve the bigger problem of the kids not listening to what the parent is saying rather than fixing this single instance. On the other hand, it is easy for kids to get rowdy without realizing it and this method seems to fix that particular issue well.
I think it'll be useful in convincing yourself to do that 15-60 min task that you've been putting off.. or just to get you motivated (I'll fix this bug quickly in 15 mins... and before you know it you've fixed a few).
Ofcourse, you are not to blame since Lenovo still markets it as a ThinkPad..
I have a working arch install. I don't touch it unless I have to reboot for some reason and then I read for known issues, do the upgrade and then reboot. Otherwise, no touchy.
At one of my past jobs, we worked like consultants (we quoted hours that a task would take to get done, tested etc). We filled daily timesheets to ensure that our hours did not exceed our estimates. In fact, the time on those timesheets had to total 40 hours every week. So we worked the full 40 hours. And we billed those 40 hours to the client. In those few months, I was as productive as I've ever been.
Unfortunately, we weren't paid like consultants.. we got a regular salary. Management was doing nothing wrong. They failed to realize that the 'consultant lifestyle' of billing and working in hours only works if there is an equally motivating paycheck to go with it. I've known multiple people to leave because of how hard it was.
You shouldn't need a person to blame field. Good responsible employees will know what they did wrong and work to fix it. And if they don't, having the field in there will only increase finger pointing and people trying to protect their own jobs. And your bottom line will still not improve. So why do it?
And its not like they're lacking in features or speed. Firefox for Android (while buggy) could view the same bookmarks/history/open tabs as my desktop browser and this is a great feature which only recently came to chrome.
Stability is the biggest problem with Ubuntu I believe- people will generally adapt to the UI changes that canonical is making, but breaking stability is a complete no-no. Even today, on Ubuntu 11.10, Unity shows wierd bugs time and time again. Apps like VirtualBox and KeePassx will show multiple times (or just disappear) in the dock. And sometimes the whole unity interface will close and restart itself.
Compare this to the old gnome2, or xfce, openbox etc; You can go for months without the UI doing anything unexpected.
The T/X run well with linux, so you get all free software ;-) Also, the x220 is 3.3 lbs [1][2] vs 2.96 lb [3] for the air.
[1] http://www.lenovo.com/psref/pdf/tabook.pdf
[2] The 4-cell actually puts it at 2.97 lb, but the capacity is only 28 Wh compared to the Air at 50 Wh. The 6-cell on the other hand is 62 Wh.
When you buy anything non-Apple, you have to be a smart buyer. This can be good or bad, depending on your world view.
If you compare premium non-Apple brands, they compare favoribly to Apple. For example, my Nexus S was $300 off contract (brand new). This is much cheaper than the comparable iPhone 4 at that time, retains good resale value, and will probably be fast enough/supported for as long as the iPhone 4. On the PC side, ThinkPad T/X series offers similar (or even better!) reliability/cost effectiveness/resale value to MacBooks. For example, the x220 series configured new at lenovo will cost ~1000. Current resale puts it at around 800, which is better than the MBP (for e.g. base at $1249, refurb @ apple for $1049, and resale at around $950).
Directly from the article:
> “Our technology is not real time,” he said at the time. "It's not constantly reporting back. It's gathering information up and is usually transmitted in small doses.”
The issue is, we don't know what this software is gathering and sending. It is not being done with consent.
But you're right, this needs to be looked into before getting the pitchforks out. But certainly, having the presence of a keylogger is bad enough in itself.
To get access to your location data on the iPhone, someone would have to steal your phone or get into your itunes account. This is happening in the background.
I dont see why valid criticisms of what Apple is doing get such a negative response. A lot of us love Apple software and hardware, and have invested a lot of money in various parts of the ecosystem. We are not windows fanboys who are making a fuss without having ever used Mac OS.
A lot of changes I can understand; moving forward may mean annoying a portion of your users. But a lot of these changes do not change anything for the better. There are no reasons for them at all, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread.
Briefly though, (as another user who switched from Mac OS X), I can certainly give examples of what he says:
Not all of these are specific to OS X, its the overall hardware and software that is getting frustrating.
More user-hostile
- If you replace your SuperDrive with another drive, you CAN NOT boot any operating system (other than Apple's) off usb drives or even external DVD drives plugged into usb slots. So with two hard drives, you can not install Windows or Linux. [1]
- Batteries are not considered user-swappable anymore. [2]
More buggy
- Battery life degradation when moving from SL to Lion. Apple forums are full of examples. [3] (78 page thread, no confirmation or fix from Apple).
- We all know how annoying the switch to Mission Control was, right?
[1] http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1125135
[2] http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1756
[3] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3194235?start=0&tst...
[Edit: formatting]
Some tweaking tools are around anyway and more will come with time. Gnome shell extensions are pretty good and they'll mature with time.
... 30 minutes worth of typing on that keyboard and bad support for alt-tabbing between apps and the tiny screen, I was back at my comfy ThinkPad. Even for other types of work, such as when doing research, I find it cumbersome to swap between my browser and note taking application. The selection of apps (compared against mac, windows or linux) is just not powerful enough. It gets tiring after a while. A good ultraportable (say the MBA or x220) offers much better value for me. I find tablets are good for reading, surfing etc, with some nice apps to let you get work done if needed. But certainly not something that you'll want to be using for a while.
[1] A small footnote on how good the user experience is when the software that you use is open source. It didn't support some of the keys on the Asus transformer (for e.g. using the back key for 'esc' in vi). I was able to fork and fix that pretty quickly and was on my way.
Some of these apps are built into windows (but not with the same modern feature set) and most are available for free, but OSX seems to have hit a good selection of apps that you can use out of the box.
Edit: Also that I upgraded/time machined from my 2008 white MacBook to my current generation MBP on Lion without loosing any performance, apps or data was a remarkable time saver.
Like you, I enjoyed OS X and the fact that everything worked so well. But it came to a point where MBP's hardware limitations just got too much (no dock so I had to plug and unplug peripherals 2-3 times a day, battery not swappable so 5-6 hrs was the maximum I could get, no way to have two hard drives (SSD + HDD) without voiding the warranty etc) and I decided to switch.
So far so good, the flexibility and build quality are great. Lets see how long before Windows 7/Debian start to become annoying though ;)
I'm mostly seeing nerds going crazy at the cheap hackable tablet.