So apparently beta testing for Android version 2 STILL hasn't started....(sigh)

[Holmes245]

Losing my patience with Andrey, seriously. I really don't think they need to take on more platforms with the development being this slow. On March 26, MLO team posted on Facebook a response in the comments to someone who inquired about the Android update:

"A little Android update - the development is finished and V2 is now ready for beta testing! When all the tests will run successfully, we will make the release. Thank you for being MLO user and for your patience."

Keep in mind, that was March 26. I posted a comment in response to the MLO team, commenting that something like that aught to have been a major post or update on their social sites or blog. I saw a response from them today, on April 22nd, nearly a month from their March 26 statement, stating:

"A post regarding Android update will be certainly a separate one. As soon as beta testing starts, we will make announcement with app screenshots and the list of new features."

On March 26, last month, they said that MLO v.2 for Android was ready for beta testing. I thought that sounded great. Now we're hearing, on April 22nd that it hasn't started but it's ready. 

Sure, sure, right.

[robisme (Olivier R)]

I totally agree with you.

As a member of the beta team, I'm even wondering if there wouldn't be an Alpha Team somewhere.

It is now more than two years there has been no beta release!

Olivier

[Robert F]

It's really sad. MLO is the best platform available. But it's going to fall to less capable ccompetition because they better manage customer expectations and provide ongoing incremental improvement and support.

I'm very sadly going to jump ship to another product. Much prefer MLO but Android is too far behind now. The user experience is important, as IOS shows time after time. MLO on Android is just too clunky to be enjoyable and at times an impediment to its job.

I would happily pay for a wicked product. But hard to buy into vaporware.

pS: I left 5 star review years ago and tend to be very patient. I'm not a complainer. If I am bailing I'm sure a great many others already have.

[G German]

Hi I am in the same boat, please let me know what do you move into if you jump ship. Haven't seen anything in Android space that has good user experience.

[robisme (Olivier R)]

I suggest, MLO people, you'd release something asap, because you are losing Android customers. And when a new "boat" will fit the needs, soon or later you will lose Windows customers.

[Jean-Marc Meessen]

Just wanted to point out that there is a war going on in Andrey's country (Ukrainia) if I am not mistaken. This can explain the "slugish" development. How would we work it out if our country was torn by a civil war.

Jmm

Le mercredi 22 avril 2015 14:31:54 UTC+2, Holmes245 a écrit :

[Dwight Arthur]

Hi Jean-Marc. Yes, there is a war and just this February the city where MLO keeps its offices had a terrorist explosion (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31575384). I did computer work in New York City in 2001 and we lost about four months productivity after the September 11 attack. One big issue is that it’s terribly difficult to retain your talented and knowledgeable developers after something like this happens.

 

Anyhow, I’m staying with MLO not because I feel sorry for the citizens of Ukraine and not because I’m doing a charitable act, but just because I feel even the old, tired Android version is by far the most powerful and flexible task management tool available on Android today.

-Dwight

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[Andrey Tkachuk (MLO)]

Hello everyone,

Yes I understand that you upset because public beta testing of the new generation of MLO-Android has not started yet. I feel the same way and each time I delay the release I think about it. However the quality of the product is extremely important to me. The release was delayed several times because our tests indicated potential data loss issues. That’s how development process goes - you can’t predict everything that can happen. Sometimes we just want to check on smth twice to be sure that everything will be ok with your personal data during testings.

So let me update you on the status (yes I know I should do it more frequently). The good news is that the last week I decided that it was stable enough and have added a few external testers to the testing process to check MLO-Android v2 with real data. The test was good and as a  result we discovered just a few new issues which I hope will be fixed soon. After these fixes v2 will be releases to the entire beta team. And I personally use my real data with MLO-Android v2 already.
I can assure you that all we are working on right now is Android beta last preparations, and we will send it to the beta team as soon as we can! I am sure that you will like the new version as much as I like it already :)

As for the situation in Ukraine, it upsets us, of course. But it doesn't affect the development process in MyLifeOrganized directly. Also I already mentioned this several times and will repeat it here again: all our development environment and your cloud data are stored only on USA servers manged in automated way or by people who live out of our country. So do not worry about this.

We want to be more opened for our users, and soon we will publish an article about MLO team and our working process, so that we could understand each other better.

I would like to say thanks to everybody who contacting me personally and supporting me and our team during this time. I really appreciate it.  We really like what we do and with your support we do it even better.

Andrey.

MyLifeOrganized

On Friday, April 24, 2015 at 7:50:47 AM UTC+3, Dwight Arthur wrote:

Hi Jean-Marc. Yes, there is a war and just this February the city where MLO keeps its offices had a terrorist explosion (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31575384). I did computer work in New York City in 2001 and we lost about four months productivity after the September 11 attack. One big issue is that it’s terribly difficult to retain your talented and knowledgeable developers after something like this happens.

 

Anyhow, I’m staying with MLO not because I feel sorry for the citizens of Ukraine and not because I’m doing a charitable act, but just because I feel even the old, tired Android version is by far the most powerful and flexible task management tool available on Android today.

-Dwight

 

From: mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com [mailto:mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jean-Marc Meessen
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2015 8:14 AM
To: mylifeorganized@googlegroups.com
Subject: [MLO] Re: So apparently beta testing for Android version 2 STILL hasn't started....(sigh)

 

Just wanted to point out that there is a war going on in Andrey's country (Ukrainia) if I am not mistaken. This can explain the "slugish" development. How would we work it out if our country was torn by a civil war.

 

Jmm

Le mercredi 22 avril 2015 14:31:54 UTC+2, Holmes245 a écrit :

Losing my patience with Andrey, seriously. I really don't think they need to take on more platforms with the development being this slow. On March 26, MLO team posted on Facebook a response in the comments to someone who inquired about the Android update:

 

"A little Android update - the development is finished and V2 is now ready for beta testing! When all the tests will run successfully, we will make the release. Thank you for being MLO user and for your patience."

 

Keep in mind, that was March 26. I posted a comment in response to the MLO team, commenting that something like that aught to have been a major post or update on their social sites or blog. I saw a response from them today, on April 22nd, nearly a month from their March 26 statement, stating:

 

"A post regarding Android update will be certainly a separate one. As soon as beta testing starts, we will make announcement with app screenshots and the list of new features."

 

On March 26, last month, they said that MLO v.2 for Android was ready for beta testing. I thought that sounded great. Now we're hearing, on April 22nd that it hasn't started but it's ready. 

 

Sure, sure, right.

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[Joel Azaria]

So it's a month and a half later Andrey.  Has this been released to the "beta" team?   Will those not 'fortunate' enough to be selected for your private beta team see any of this new functionality anytime soon?

Besides for new features, have any of the sync bugs been addressed?

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[Dwight]

Hi, Joel,  Dwight here. One of the conditions of joining the beta team is agreeing not to discuss the particulars of the beta test outside of the circle of beta testers. But this statement by itself should reveal to you that there is a beta test cycle currently under way.

I am very interested in sync bugs myself.  I wonder if I'm aware of the specific bugs that are on your mind.  Have each of these bugs been reported on this forum? If so, would you mind replying to this thread with links to each place where these bugs were discussed? This would allow me (and anybody else who is reading this thread) to refresh our understanding of problems in this area.

Thanks,
-Dwight
Mlo betazoid on Android sgn2

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[Joel Azaria]

Thanks for your reply Dwight but with all due respect I was looking for an answer from Andrey - a follow up to his previous comment; an "official" statement if you will and a keeping up of his stated "intention" to be more open with the end-user base. 

(despite no real evidence of actually trying - fluffy blog interviews not withstanding - I'm still masochistically hopeful.)

At this time I have summarily abandoned mlo and I have not renewed my sync subscription for some months already.  No reason to pay into an ecosystem that falls apart when I leave my desk and that doesn't deem respecting or communicating with it's users, even as they express outrage, to be important.  I have stopped recommending mlo to others although I'm not yet actively encouraging others to bail.  I expect my patience will wane on that point soon enough though.

I find it additionally interesting that quite a few of the people who stood and vocalized opinions on my positions or comments, labeling me harsh or insensitive to the devs and other users for asserting myself and calling BS on this shell game of red herrings and misdirection, are now themselves feeling fed up and thinking/looking for alternatives.  I need to learn once and for all that my bullshit detector goes off miles before those around me.  

I've not yet settled on a replacement for MLO though so theoretically there is time to salvage this "relationship".  Though just today I revisited a solution that I rejected two years ago and found it has flourished quite nicely since and supports pretty much every platform I could want and may just be my direction.  Unlike MLO, this company seems to have figured out how to keep pace on multiple platforms simultaneously, including a web app that is continuously evolving. I'm waiting to see Andrey's next move but I'm really not holding my breath.

[G German]

Hi Joel

Care to share what solution that is? 

From what I see Android is currently in beta testing, but I am aware that is bound to be slower than iOS with so much fragmentation and different devices in the Android side as opposed as Apple.
Cheers

G

[Daniel Sekera]

I am asking this question totally devoid of drama and emotion.  It is not a flame attack take it however you choose but I just stated I have no intent.

With everything you just wrote I cannot help but ask; why are you still here?

you dislike what it is, you feel promises have been broken, you claim to have found something that will suit your needs and you state you abandoned this platform.  Just go then.  

I do not care if you're still here and more than likely others do not as well.  You could have written your discourse in a private email directly to the development team yet instead you choose to post on a public forum

So since you picked a public place to vent then I am just as entitled to have my "BS" meter go off as well and I'm calling it.  Stop threatening to leave and just do it.

Every one of your complaints can always be categorized under the heading "actions speak louder than words" because that is what you're asking for you are asking for; MLO to have actions and not just words without meaning.......

so walk the talk

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[Joel Azaria]

On Friday, June 19, 2015 at 9:09:22 AM UTC-4, daniel wrote:

I am asking this question totally devoid of drama and emotion.  It is not a flame attack take it however you choose but I just stated I have no intent.

IF you had no feeling or emotion you would not interject nor even bother to post at all.  Your intent may be x but your body language betrays you ...

 

With everything you just wrote I cannot help but ask; why are you still here?

A better is question is why do you care?   You claim no care and no emotion yet you have such pointed questions.  What is YOUR intent Daniel?  I have my intentions and of course you have yours.  You've stated you have no intentions that involve nor entwine me.  Yet here is this post, entwined and involved full of me.  So what is it here you seek?  Am I so fascinating that you cannot resist but to engage me??  I would be flattered but I just don't believe it's true.  No, there's something else.  I just don't know yet what.

 

you dislike what it is, you feel promises have been broken, you claim to have found something that will suit your needs and you state you abandoned this platform.  Just go then.  

 While that does sound unemotional and drama free, I feel a need to correct bits of it:

I've always held that MLO was at it's core a unique and highly capable product and I've never waivered from that sentiment.  It does things that most others don't even consider and opens possibilities not approachable with many/most systems I see today. 

It's achilles is that its functionally "broken" (notice the quotes..) right now and stays that way because it's development is stilted.  None of us know quite why but most probably by somehow-or-another ineffective management.  Of course this just MY gut-level conjecture but transparency from the devs and mgmt, would bare-out or dispell my conjecture for sure.  Certainly if you've followed my posts as closely as you appear to have, you know that transparency between dev, mgmt and end-user is a core of my typings.  Transparency is the way forward for any 21st century software company looking to stay relevant at this point, and you know that transparency and openness are at the core of what I've advocated for since day 1. How then do you infer dislike for the product?  I may dislike it's current state of disrepair, I may dislike what the management has done to it, but that doesn't mean that if it was fixed tomorrow it wouldn't be a killer app.

I'm pragmatic enough to see that it will take more than just a UI update and some feature cross-pollenation for this all to be "fixed" though. Those "in charge" will need to change quite a bit too. 

So?  Don't I get to speak my piece?  Are my thoughts on the matter somehow less relevant than others'?  Less relevant than yours perhaps?

You may not fancy my choice of words but I don't think my obligation here is that of pleasing you.  Correct me if you know otherwise. 

An unfortunate shame of all this is that MLO is not easy to replace.  As I said above and have always said, it's a unique piece of work with *great* potential - too much of which is running quite untapped these days. 

Its present state also ranges from mildly to sorta to pretty darn broken depending on how exactly one uses it.  If you are on the quite broken end, do you need to just go f*** yourself and sit on it because expressing demand for fixes to paid stuff somehow irks Daniel?   Conciously thought out I don't think even you would agree with that...

As far as what I found Tuesday, it could likely replace MLO for a fair share of its users.  Due to some limits I found in early testing I may not be one of those users, but others may.

Before I started using MLO, I spent over a year following and researching it. It was both strong and weak at the same time but a major release was pending and was gonna fix so much.  I put some faith in the dev team and signed on.  That release was more lipstick on a pig than real meat & potatos but the desktop mostly works well anyway and the newness didn't appear to break anything major.

It's just that ****** mobile stuff that needs fixing. And so I waited.

That faith wasn't rewarded with very much. 

And of course, I (along with a sad remainder of the user base plus some unfortunate new catches) am/are STILL waiting - damn near two years *since I'm hearing it's NEAR BETA*.  

Last Christmas-ish wasn't it (6MONTHS AGO!) we got screenshots as some sort of appeasement present showing us it was in dev (just fluff, we found out later it was barely in dev if at all).  

Now it's near-end-of June and we have a few shallow assurances that it's been released to the *very limited* private beta team and little else.  Care to hazard a guess at how long till this thing gets through pvt beta and sees any kind of public testing?  Care to hazard a guess how many bugs will get through the tiny sample-size beta team into public release?   But with my voice on the forums, and those of other users when they agree, maybe we can effect some changes and move it all just a little bit faster.  Maybe.

That is, of course, if speaking up doesn't irk you too bad Daniel.  

Is it ok with you?  Can I (and others here too I suppose?) have my/our own opinion, and some space to express it to the devs and other users, without scrutiny and ridicule from you Daniel?  

I mean, that would be super nice.

I do not care if you're still here and more than likely others do not as well.  You could have written your discourse in a private email directly to the development team yet instead you choose to post on a public forum

Yes. I have corresponded by email directly with the organization.  I found their canned replies unflattering and an empty repetitiveness of them made the effort feel in vain.  

The public fora have shown more effective and so I favor them.

As for you not caring about my presence, you certainly have made that known.  We are all now quite aware just how much you don't care about whether or not I'm present.  Good thing you haven't gone out of your way to call any attention to my presence or others might start to think that actually you did care about my presence.  Either way, my presence is now known and so others will know I'm present.  I hope my presence doesn't present any challenges to your present presence here.  If so please present your findings and I may consider provisionally modifying my present presence presently.

 

So since you picked a public place to vent then I am just as entitled to have my "BS" meter go off as well and I'm calling it.  Stop threatening to leave and just do it.

Entitled you are.  Quite entitled.

I have not "threatened to leave" as you unemotionally and undramatically chose to put it and your "BS Meter" needs calibrating.  

I'm adding my voice, reporting my latest status and postion on MLO-A and it's ecosystem, as I stand *at this time*.  In the process I am updating other users who may share at least some of the frustrations I do as they encounter more of those same glitches and gotchas that I already have and maybe sharing some bit (I used to be more active, now I'm kind of meh but I'll intercede sometimes) that will help another user weather the disruption of having their personal productivity system injured, mamed or possibly even crippled and fall completely to sh**. (already at least one user above is asking..)  

I mean, I sympathize.  I speak from experience. It took me months to figure out how to set up MLO and in all probably 8 months+ of tinkering to get a system working the way I wanted.  That's quite an investment.

Except it never worked right because key parts of almost every config or setup wouldn't carry through corretcly to the mobile.  Key parts that basically nullified any MLO advantage because they wouldn't work WHERE they were needed.  And as of right this moment they still dont. In those moments I might as well have been using Google Tasks frankly.  Either would be equally useless to me.  

But the kicker is that after all that time and personal investment to be holding not something somewhat useful, slightly useful, kinda useful, almost useful -  but in my case virtual fistfuls of sand.   And ot because the base software wasn't sound; mostly it is but because the devs couldn't be bothered to tie up loose ends or they'd shortcut and deliver crippled or half-features in the ui on the mobile platforms or in the sync mechanisms (and on the desktop in a few cases iirc) or just never getting around to fixing bugs if they didn't affect a major portion of the user base.

Quite frankly it's infuriating.  And it's not really coding incapability or resources that seem the problem here - rather it's poor management or more.  

It's almost a year since ppl are waiting for any release or bug fixes on the Android client but there's no dev on the 1.x branch.  NONE.  ZIP, ZERO, ZILCH, NADA, NOUGHT, NOCHT, NULL, NOLL, RYO, REI, MARU

The ONLY dev in sight is 2.x and that's been a pipe dream so far. For over a year I payed into that Cloud Sync because they said it was better (and because the broke the other sync) and it routinely scrambled my contexts.  

But you want I should sit quietly with my hands folded because why?  Because I irk you?  Don't hold your breath.

You try sitting there and redoing a context heirarchy 3 deep with some 70 or 80 contexts monthly or more often... 

It's not getting fixed in the 1.x branch. There's no dev! 

I don't even know if it's getting fixed in the 2.x branch (there's so much focus on the lack of dev and comm, it overshadows discussion of bugs and fixes) but I'm sure at some point before the turn of the decade we'll at least see 2.x and find that out.

As it stands I am not using MLO. I said that because it's true. My licenses are paid for (pro dekstop, android, iphone) but they're just electronic paper-weights.  I'm trying other things actively and researching at least twice a week but there is no clear winner for my purposes yet.  Seems it may have to be a two or even three piece set but even then, the actors are not yet clear.

I actually hate what I'm using now but I do have to get stuff done while I navigate this swamp.  At least it works on both desk and mobile and at least it doesn't scramble my s*** like an omelette.  I'd take up MLO again in a heartbeat if it worked better than the thing I'm using which I rather hate.  It should tell you something that one uses the thing they quite hate rather than the thing they quite want.  Even you'd have to agree, something's wrong with that picture.

 

Every one of your complaints can always be categorized under the heading "actions speak louder than words" because that is what you're asking for you are asking for; MLO to have actions and not just words without meaning.......

so walk the talk

Welp, not exactly sure what "walk the talk" means...

My entire "journey" here has been walking my walk. 

Don't blame me if there's problems with your rose-colored glasses. 

MLO the organization/leadership will, at some point, either embrace most of these "new-fangled" ways and methods I'm calling attention to (transparency in dev, including/esp. in dev problems and delays, user involvemnt and feedback throughout and into dev processes, frequent communication, etc.) or it will ultimately fail.  

When and how fast it fails are variables TBD but we should at least pray it doesn't fall on the possible even worse fate of wallowing in stagnation (failing at an infinitely slow pace), neither dying nor thriving and thus eternally trapping it's employe and talent in it's tractor beam of mediocrity and mundanity, never letting them die nor letting them move onward.   I speak from experiences and I faintly smell that musty funk starting.

Personally, I would rather the company & product succeed.  I think I've made that clear.  But I think Andrey has made it clear that he will choose to flail about or grind it into the ground exactly as he sees fit rather than embrace this new paradigm and engage or rely on the larger user base.  

Perphaps I can and perhaps I cannot influence anything about that.  The one certainty is that *I* will dictate my voicings and word choices no one else.

If in light of all this you still find my choices to speak and my demands for an improved product offensive, I think the talk you need is above my pay grade.

Salud, Salute, Cin Cin, Sante', Cheers, L'Chaim, Yamas, Kippis, Na zdravie, Na zdorovie, Prost, Proost, Sie Gesund, Kanpai, gan bei, Vo, Mabuhay

 

/j 

[Joel Azaria]

No, I don't mind G, but message me pvt (or use the contact form at    w w w d o t f h s n y d o t c o m)

I may not like the state of things but I don't want to be the one firing any critically damaging blows.

J.

[Alan Limebeer]

Couldn't agree more. I suggest not responding further. It only encourages them. :)

I'd only add "Shut up <eyes rolling>" and "Be gone, then" to the OP.