Fwd: decaf

[Jurg van Vliet]

people,

we have been trying to get decaf to a very high level of quality. in this process we try to take every complaint or suggestion very seriously. because we think in every criticism is some truth, or at least some frustration.

below is a mail exchange with one of the earliest users. there were some people who helped us realize that we were not very careful with using the resources of the phone. angelo was one of those people.

we spent a good amount of time optimizing decaf with respect to resource usage. at this moment we think decaf is using the minimum necessary for doing the task of monitoring and maintaining amazon ec2 infrastructures.

we will continue working on ebs instances, rds and multiple accounts. because that is where we think we will add most value, at this point. if you have anything to say/add to this discussion below please do so.

(angelo does not agree, but that is clear from his latest rating.)

groet,

jurg.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jurg van Vliet <ju...@truthtrap.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 8:00 PM
Subject: Re: decaf
To: Angelo Mandato <ang...@mandato.com>
Cc: Flavia Paganelli <fpaga...@gmail.com>, Eduardo Röhr <ha...@gmx.net>


great :)

when you reboot your phone we have to check if you had notifications enabled. so it is natural you see decaf, for a little bit. but after it realizes it is not necessary it will be silent and not reappear if you kill it. (if this is not the case we have a bug.)

the nature of android doesn't make it easy to 'kill' yourself, you can only make yourself obsolete. the os (or the user) will decide what happens with app after that.

the star rating is still yours, of course. but it is quite a struggle to have some sort of attention for an application like this. the only thing we can do is keep our users happy. they show that by either not deinstalling (we DO have a high rate of active installs) or with a rating.

i hope it is better now! otherwise let me know and we iron out the other bugs you experience as well...

groet,

jurg.

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 7:47 PM, Angelo Mandato <ang...@mandato.com> wrote:

I'll check it out later today.

I never said you threatened anything, but our associate Flavia did imply that I change my star rating.

Quote:

Currently all our users rated us with 5 stars, we only got a low rating (of 2) from you. We believe that that can 'scare' users away, even though the comment is not valid any more. So I wanted to ask you if you could check the latest version of Decaf and if you think it's ok, pleaseeeee, change the rating. We are just a couple of enthusiastic developers who want to build a good and useful application.

The comment is valid and I do see 'Decaf' running in the background every so often using the Taskiller app. I understand the importance of the ratings, but I know what I see and I see Decaf running with the Taskiller app even after I kill it. It even comes back when I do a cold reboot of my phone.

I'll install this latest version later today. If I don't see Decaf appear in the running list over the course of an hour I'll know the service truly is removed and I'll update my star rating.

Thanks,
Angelo

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 12:31 PM, Jurg van Vliet <ju...@truthtrap.com> wrote:

hi angelo,

(it is a bit of long mail, sorry for that :P)

no one ever threatened doing anything with YOUR star rating. we appreciate you give us your feedback in whatever shape or form. but sometimes it is very hard to understand what exactly the problem is. the initial problem you reported was also reported by some other people. we fixed those problems, though we needed at least 2 iterations of decaf to fix it completely. almost everyone reports it is fine now, everyone except you.

to summarize we have fixed the following use cases

- only installed, not opened (accepted the EULA)

- installed, accepted the EULA

- installed, and running in demo mode

- installed, in read only mode (not demo mode, but invalid or missing keys)

- installed, in full read/write mode with background service off

in full read/write mode there is a setting called 'Watch instances' (before it was called 'Enable notifications' but we changed it, as you suggested.) the summary of this setting shows clearly if the service is enabled or disabled, also because of what you report. we tested this feature on the G1, Ion and Tattoo as well as most available types of emulators. as far as we can see it works as expected. (new version is 1.0.11 and we just published this.)

the only service we have is a service that updates the widget. if you do not have the decaf widget this service will not run. for the rest we don't use services (anymore, for a long time.)

i have been monitoring battery usage on both Tattoo and G1 for a long time. before the battery usage was not that good, but we removed the services and it got better. if you watch your instances regularly you do use power, of course. and if you enable the widget also. but if you have no widget and the background service disable Decaf doesn't do anything.

but, of course, your way of using might be different. and we might have overlooked a particular kind of use. if the way you use it is different please take a couple of minutes to describe in detail how you use it.

if this does not meet your criteria let us know. we'll refund you. (the star rating is yours, of course, as you pointed out.)

kind regards,

jurg.

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 2:16 PM, Angelo Mandato <ang...@mandato.com> wrote:

I appreciare you are trying your best.

Don't ever emply what sort of star rating I should give you. Very rude.

Problem still persists, decaf seems to still be installed as a service app in my Phone. The app is going to keep reappraring until you remove it as a service. You should add a setting that is very clear that it removes decaf as a service as well. If you need examples of apps that work this way, check out itweet, or twitteroid, the settings make it obvious whether the app runs in the background or not.

Thanks,
Angelo

On Jan 21, 2010 12:46 PM, "Flavia Paganelli" <fpaga...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Angelo,

I was wondering if you did have a look at the latest Decaf.

We are doing our best to adapt the app to our users' needs, that's why we fixed the problems that you mentioned in your comments.

Currently all our users rated us with 5 stars, we only got a low rating (of 2) from you. We believe that that can 'scare' users away, even though the comment is not valid any more. So I wanted to ask you if you could check the latest version of Decaf and if you think it's ok, pleaseeeee, change the rating. We are just a couple of enthusiastic developers who want to build a good and useful application.

Thanks in advance,

Flavia

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 3:07 AM, Angelo Mandato <ang...@mandato.com> wrote:

> > Hello jurg van vliet, > > I'll try out the latest version tomorrow. > > Thanks, > Angelo > > > O...

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