I find myself typing up feature request emails quite often. Even with the apps I use every day and love, there’s always something that I wish it had, something that worked a bit differently, or even just looked a bit better/differently. It can be something major and not necessarily possible, like wishing Tasker could export scenes as widgets, or something almost insignificant, like wishing that TvShowFavs had an option for font size for the widget.
In fact, I can’t think of a single app that I’m 100% happy with. 99%, sure, but there’s always something. Something that I would have done differently if I had created the app. Thanks to Tasker, I am actually capable of creating certain types of apps myself now, like my todo list. I run it internally in Tasker, but you wouldn’t know that from looking at it, and I could make a standalone .apk of it in a minute if I wanted to – so I’ll refer to it as an app. The app is made by me, for me, and as such, the features it has – and lacks – reflect me. There’s no sync system, because I don’t need one. There’s no time based alerts, because I don’t need them. I get alerted based on calendar entries, WiFi connection status, AC charging status – but not time. To me, time based alerts are just stupid, since I can’t think of a single case where I would need to be alerted based on time. Not when I have an arsenal of other triggers, ranging from whether or not the phone is even on to how long I’ve been using a certain PC program for. And still, the idea of a todo list app without time based alerts is sure to sound ridiculous to many other people.
There’s really two ways of creating an app: By targeting a specific usage situation, or by targeting as broad an audience as possible. Many apps show clear signs of being made for the developer, despite being public. You’re pretty much guaranteed that the bugs that are present on the developer’s device and OS version will be fixed, while that’s not necessarily the case with the rest. If an app tries to target as broad an audience as possible, it might actually end up targeting the lowest common denominator, making it good but not perfect for most of its users. Even if you make an app that has 100 settings, there’s someone out there that will suggest number 101. Just as an example, the following is a quote from the support page for Francois DESLANDES, the developer of a series of apps that are extremely customizable:
I receive around 10 new feature requests per day. I let you imagine if I create a new ‘option’ for each request.
I already spent 1 year of developement for each app… you would have around 500 options in Pure calendar for example
(source)
I found this while looking for the proper way to suggest adding an option to adjust the font size of the hour indicators in week view of the calendar widget app he has. At that point I had tinkered with pretty much every other option in the app, and made myself a calendar widget I really liked. Looking at how specific my own request was, I think that proves his point about having 500 options in the app pretty well. His solution is to allow users to vote for suggested features, which is one way of handling it.
Another example would be the ever-growing todo list of the Tasker developer, a list that is publicly available here. The size of it once again proves how much work is involved in making an app that works for everyone. Release a stick, and by the end of the week, you have requests to make it longer, shorter, thinner, thicker, flat, square, curved, angled, blue, green, pink, transparent – as well as one request to make a Tasker plugin for it, likely requested by me.
My point here is that I’m not even sure it’s possible to be 100% happy with an app. Before I stared doing some app-like things in Tasker, I considered myself 100% happy with a bunch of apps, but I can’t think of any that I would add the last couple percents to now. I’ve gotten too used to being able to tweak my own creations just how I want them, and that mentality has changed how I view apps that I can’t do that to. I have to say that I don’t envy developers, and I’m not sure I would have released anything publicly had I been in their place.
This is the world we live in. You can’t please everyone all of the time. And the android ecosystem makes it so much harder with device and operating system fragmentation.
Being a software product manager for software development, I can confirm that there is no way to please everyone. Everyone will have their own work flows and ways of doing things, and thus something as simple as a button for one person, another would prefer it to be a drop-down menu. The real trick is finding the balance. You have to first see what is the hottest issues, what percentage of your users in encountering the issue, and to fix the issue which way would make the most amount of people happy. When the line is pretty close to 50/50, that is when we consider making it a user choice. This adds complexity but will also allow both sides to be happy. Also you have to be prepared for the ultimate failure as well. Sometimes you can have the best intentions and what appears to be a brilliant idea, but the after implementation you find that the users absolutely hate it. And then there are also those times when initially users hate it but then they get use to it and suddenly they now love it. So it’s an endless back and forth battle that really will never completely satisfy any side – case in point Android vs iOS.
P
This is the reason why some people become developers – they want to do it the way *they* like it.
I’m not sure i would be 100% happy with an app I developed either. For one, I don’t have the skills, but two my taste is always changing.
I use time alerts *all* the time. I use them for quick naps, to remind me to put the clothes in the dryer because the washer doesn’t buzz when it’s done, for one-time last-minute reminders because it’s just easier to do that than go into my calendar.
I can’t even remember all the reasons I’ve used them, but it’s rare for a week to go by when I don’t use them a couple of times…which may not seem frequent, but really I’m glad to have the option when I want it. So, to me, calling time alerts “stupid” sounds just bizarre.
I use time based alarms, but that’s different from time based todo list items. I do, however, have custom made systems for what you mention here. I have a shortcut that pops up a menu showing laundry times for our building, clicking one that I’ve reserved automatically sets three alarms at start/dryer/pick up times. As for naps, I have a nap mode that I can activate with or without an alarm, that does things like turn off the lights and put the phone on silent at the same time.
My todo list, however? Haven’t needed time based alarms since I stopped using apps that don’t do anything else. I’m either at work, school, or home. To me it just makes more sense triggering alarms based on when I’m at any of those places (or in between for shopping list), not try to guess when that is going to be.