Topic: Bitcoin Wallet for Android - page 8. (Read 121407 times)

Well actually it *does* as when the S3 is poorly performing I go into Settings->Applications click in Running and kill off a bunch of them and voila it performs much better - are you gong to tell me I just imagined that (every time I've done it)?

We are talking the difference between taking up to 20 seconds to respond to a click (before me killing tasks) and less than 1 second to respond (after).

As for the file explorer whether added by Samsung or not I find it to be a very useful tool for copying files and installing apps to/from USB flash drives.

And how often do you think ordinary users go into the "app manager"? It's buried in the settings screen for a reason. Stopping apps from there doesn't even do anything - if they're off screen the OS might stop them itself when it needs the resources, and they can be restarted at any time even if you stopped them. It's something of a placebo button for people like you guys

If there's a file explorer in the S3 then it's something Samsung added. Apps themselves never expose it to the user (or aren't supposed to). Samsung have a pretty severe case of throwing everything they can think of into TouchWiz regardless of how useful it is. One reason why I prefer the Nexus phones.

Strange - the Galaxy S3 I have clearly shows whether an application is "running" in the Settings -> Applications (and you can stop them from there too).

Also it has a file explorer (the only way I know how to install APKs via USB) which I think would be classified as a "user-navigable file system".

That's an argument you should take up with the designers of Android and iOS. Obviously both teams worked independently and arrived at the same conclusions, so neither platform has a well defined concept of "stopped" vs "running". Nor do they have user-navigable file systems or other things that are taken for granted on the desktop space.

In fact Android is kind a pain in the ass to program for because your app will be left running when it's no longer on screen, until the OS decides to kill it, at which point you may or may not get a chance to save files and do general tidyup. The result is that Android doesn't have a clear concept of saving files either. You're expected to constantly write your state to disk as soon as it changes or you get pushed off the screen. It's simpler for the user but harder for the programmer.

Manual resource management is usually indicative of a bug. Andreas thinks the high battery usage might be coming from a bitcoinj issue to do with what happens when network connectivity is flaky - I'll make it a higher priority to fix that and then the abnormal battery usages should go away for good.

Ergo, Ignorance is Strength?

How can we expect to inspire programmers to take up the discipline when all our operating systems are becoming Nintendo reminiscent? Your attitudes are very depressing, children are capable of learning anything, including how to be lazy and dependent

"Close program" is very power-userish and clearly a relict of the past. Most users just don't care what lies behind them, they just open the next program.

Heck, even the concept of programs is obsolete. The only thing that counts is tasks. That's the main theme of Android, as it was designed from version 1.0 on.

I fail to see how "Close" is a power user feature. Not convincing, guys

Thanks, Mike.

Yes, Bitcoin Wallet is aimed mainly at non-technical people. Concepts like "synching" does not make any sense to them, so I want to remove them from the UI entirely.

If you are a power user and want full control, I suggest building your own version. It's open source.

The Android wallet app isn't a CAD suite or IDE. Those are power tools for professionals where you are expected to take a long time to learn how they work. We really don't want Bitcoin to come across as a pro-tool for specialists.

It's a strangely mellifluous argument being presented.

I say "why can't I control what the software does?"

And people reply (at somewhere above 500% verbosity) "but that's not what you want"

This sort of concept of user control would be totally unacceptable for software development suites, or image manipulation software, or CAD software (trying to convince people they don't need to be able to control what their software does)

Why can't I control what the software does?

At the moment the wallet app could tolerate a few more options, but the point hgmichna makes is a well known one in the software design industry. It always seems easier to just throw in another setting than make something work automatically for everyone, transparently. It's like boiling a frog. One day you wake up and realise your app is a bloated disaster zone of random switches and buttons that make no sense to anyone new.

It's so easy for this to happen that even Android - which hires entire teams of designers, does usability studies etc - in the dark corners it still suffers from this problem. The brilliant WiFi settings are a good example - what the fuck does "minimise battery when wifi is on" do and why would someone ever NOT want to have it enabled? This switch must do something, but what? Why does this setting even exist? Most likely it's the result of some kind of internal disagreement inside the Android wifi team ... they couldn't decide on whether a particular optimisation was worth the cost, so instead of making a clean decision they pushed it onto the user.

Making these tradeoffs is always difficult. Modern operating systems try to subtly push developers in the right direction by calling them "preferences" rather than "settings". A preference is something that is genuinely a matter of taste and will always differ between users, like a wallpaper or what sounds to play. A setting is something that controls how the software achieves its desired results and which has a correct value in almost all cases.

The hardest time to make the right call is when a feature that should work automatically for everyone isn't fully baked, and there are genuinely sound reasons why a power user might want to tweak the inner workings. Perhaps background sync is currently like that, although it feels like it's nearly there. Done properly it should never be noticed and have no impact, so why would you ever tweak it?

That's why Andreas is saying things like, if you see a lot of battery or data usage impact, let's fix that. Let's not just make background sync a toggle. Because otherwise we'll never make the feature work 100% and the setting will be stuck there forever, with the majority of users getting a worse default experience.

That's not a very meaningful response to my point.

If there were an over-abundance of menu choices that action useless functions, then sure. But that was not the point I was making at all

Removing a menu item is very valuable, particularly if the menu item is superfluous. Android is for mobile phones, and mobile phones are for everybody, not just for technophiles.

Here are some utterly negative examples from the advanced Wi-Fi settings: "Keep Wi-Fi on during sleep", "Scanning always available", "Avoid poor connections", "Wi-Fi frequency band", and in a sarcastic sense my personal favorite: "Wi-Fi optimization" - "Minimise battery usage when Wi-Fi is on". Next they will probably introduce: "Minimise battery usage when Wi-Fi is off". None of these settings should be there, as the phone can make a much better decision for each of them than any normal phone user. They are outstanding examples of the designed-by-engineers-for-engineers category.

An app should never offer the user any choice that has no significant effect on the result for the ordinary end user.

Anyone know how to disable that sound the app makes when sending payments?

It's a cultural thing with the Android apps, there's ostensibly a performance advantage to having all apps as background processes, and so developers are (seemingly) ushered into this mentality. But the same reason that makes that true (low latency persistent Flash memory) also makes it false, so it seems more like just hiding usability from the user: why not let the user choose? Would that really be so unconscionable? With so many apps that require network permissions, it just seems like it's increasing the attack surface for any potential hacker. Maybe they prefer to simplify the interface, but I don't believe that, they must realise that the older generation are less likely to take Android on, and the young can adapt to mostly anything, and that's what bothers me about their whole disfigurement of computing culture: it's like they're trying to indoctrinate people to expect a narrower range of choices, all for the sake of removing a single menu item. Can't wait til they disable use of apps without a signature from the Play store  

Thank you!

Somebody agrees with me!

I'm not the only one who thinks that this app running in the background, burning up data plan and battery, is not the best idea!

It's a great app, don't get me wrong on that, I just wish it would have a way of not running until it was time for the user to actually want to use it.

A single checkbox, that would be strictly obeyed by the app, would make all the difference:

[ ] Run in background

Uncheck this, and it would never run except when in the foreground.  No hooking the reboot event, to run then.  No hooking the charger connection event, to run then.  No running on a periodic timer, either.  Simply do not run at all, unless the app is in the foreground.  That's really it.  That's all we want.

Your words are effective.  I can't seem to communicate to the developers, they are deflecting my requests, and patronizing me by merely adding a link to the "Data Usage" settings screen.

Yes, I enabled the connection bars.  However, we're at a fundamental misunderstanding here.  Hiding the connection bars will only mask the problem, making it less visible.  The problem is that this app wakes up in the background and does its stuff, and the user has no way to disable this unwanted behavior.  Do you see this?  Do you realize this?

Before I deleted it, it had used 5% of my battery.  That's not just in my head!

Armory has a "print-safe" system.  You write an additional (short) unlock key on the paper backup.

Hoping, of course, that none of Google's cloud administrators is into collecting private keys to beef up his pension after resigning from that highly lucrative job.

Seriously, I would not even let my private key run through any Windows computer, much less through a cloud. If you cannot print without the key making larger rounds outside your well-protected wallet (a single-purpose Android device or similar), it is much safer to copy and write it down manually, as Andreas already recommended.

Yeah, so use them as a bearer token effectively.

Raw private keys aren't a great way to do that. An actual wallet stored somewhere online is better. Then the qrcode can just contain a URL to the wallet. It could be encrypted and the password hidden under a scratch card if need be.