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Poweramp v3 Project Update (please read first post for latest info before commenting)


andrewilley

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18 hours ago, jacko9000 said:

Yes, it's about moving forward, but the "liability" (as you correctly described it) is the responsibility of Google, not of the app developer.

There was a time when OS manufacturers took it upon themselves as failure if OS upgrades broke third-party applications (before your time, perhaps?), but it has become the norm now.

Nevertheless, Android is nothing without developers, and if these developers refuse to run simply to stand still, as Google increasingly expects them to do, then developers can ultimately just pull the plug on their app and move on (Max, are you listening?)

And to say that Google provides enough backwards-compatibility help to app developers simply isn't true.  The support-v4 and support-v7 libraries are a shambolic joke; they are no more than a token gesture, a mere drop in the ocean, from an organisation with vast resources, who are (and I'll use your term again) liable for app breakages upon OS upgrades.  Yes.  They are.

It's a shared responsibility. Not Google's alone. Most developers move with it and others sit and moan. And this is Google we're talking about, it's in their DNA to try new things, they're where they are today because of their experimentation oriented approach. Developers are not doing Google a favour by making apps for Android, they need the platform and there's only two on the planet today (as far as mobile goes). It's never one sided. It benefits both and in the end, in most cases, the consumer benefits greatly too.

Before my time perhaps? I started with Windows 98 in school, if that tells you anything. And it was a hugely different scenario back then. Nothing like today. There's a massive difference in software and software development between then and now. Comparing apples to oranges in a way. I want to see these developers that want to pull the plug and move on, move on to what? You make it sound like developers are crying on Android. If you're too lazy to move with the development, feel free to pull the plug and do something else. It's quite simple. That's the nature of fast moving development. And how many apps have broken across OS versions? Poweramp right here has been working fine (for the most part) without a single update over 2 major Android versions! That's more than I would expect.

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15 hours ago, andrewilley said:

The thing that bugs me about OS updates is when they are simply fashion-setting trends (such as Material Design) which you know will alter again in a few years. For example, one of the big things that I disliked about MD was the flattened and boring way visual elements were handled, and the lack of real-world imitation (Windows 8 was another horrible use of that mentality, compared to the the rich interface of Windows 7). They insisted that icons and graphic elements become more simplistic and mono-coloured. And yet here we are with 8.1 reversing that trend and adding graduated coloured backgrounds into notification drop-downs. This is  actually a nice bit of variety IMHO, except that it breaks existing apps.

When an app is functionally working fine, it is completely wrong of Google to virtually insist that developers spend more time reworking it - not for valid technical reasons, but on their whim.  

Andre

That's just your opinion. Things have to be tried in order to improve. We'd be sitting with Windows 95 on desktop and Symbian on mobile otherwise. Remember how amazingly beautiful those were? 

And it's completely wrong of Google to update the aesthetic of Android and urge developers to follow a more cohesive UI/UX path? Okay! I mean there are still thousands of apps on the Play Store that work, but look like they're still in 2010. So, there IS a choice for developers - to sit in the previous decade and moan how there's no technical reason to update/refresh the UI/UX. You want the KitKat UI back? I don't. It looked childish and somewhat of a tron-inspired, amateurish design job. Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean there's no valid reason for it to happen/exist. You hate Material Design, at the same time there are millions that love it. Make what you will of that mate. 

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2 hours ago, utahman1971 said:

MD is not as ugly as the older OS. Anything that looks as old as it looks like it came from 1995, is just fugly. I hate staying in the past.

Indeed, but is MD not getting old on you now? I liked it when it first came out, but I'm completely sick of it now and would like to move on to something more interesting...

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6 hours ago, spacebar2011 said:

You want the KitKat UI back?

Yes please! I only switched from it under duress a couple of months ago, because there were several apps that are important to me which were no longer getting updates under KitKat. Otherwise there's no way I'd have switched to this Material nonsense. But that's progress for you I guess.

Andre

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On 19.12.2017 at 1:38 AM, andrewilley said:

No. It is unlikely to be in the final release of v3 either, as feature requests have taken something of a back seat to the ongoing work on the new user interface.

I've made my own opinions on that matter known in the past, in that I personally would have preferred to have seen two years worth of work on genuine new features, rather than the same time updating the look of the app, but a Material Design interface is what the userbase voted for and that's what Max is doing.

Andre

So Max is taking all the time and the years only for material design in v3?

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Quote

Yes, that's the gist of it. That's what the userbase voted for about two years ago, and it turns out it needed a ground-up rebuild. 

Are you seriously!? That is, Maxim writes the interface for two years !? But maybe all the same sound is important? Alpha version was quite nothing, it was only necessary to adapt to 7.1.1 and 8.0.
 

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Will be enteresting (if possible) to know - how many votes for interface were from users, who buy PA ?

Why this vote was not announced in player or by mail for registered users ?

Many users didnot know about this forum and just listen to MUSIC.

 

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On 12/18/2017 at 2:23 PM, jacko9000 said:

Poweramp is neither "way outdated", nor "vintage".   Users should routinely be asking Google to ensure that new releases of Android are backwards-compatible with existing apps.  Has anyone opened a support request with Google on the matter?  Because that is the solution.  It is Google who is at fault here, not app developers.  And it applies to all apps, not just Poweramp.  Google ought to be continuously flooded with millions of backwards-compatibility requests from users of all apps from all over the world.  And app developers should stand firm and refuse to jump through the hoops created either by Google with their lack of backwards-compatible releases, or by users who fail to see that the onus is on Google to build such compatibility into new releases of Android.

Google will require apps to be met current API requirements in 2018.  Apps that are not updated to current standards will be removed from Play Store and will not install.  I don't know how PoewrAmp is at this point. but it hasn't been update in long time, so I can only speculate as to its end of life if its is not updated soon.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/12/19/play-store-require-new-updated-apps-target-recent-api-levels-distribute-native-apps-64-bit-support/

 

"Future Android versions will also restrict apps that don’t target a recent API level and adversely impact performance or security."

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1 hour ago, speedingcheetah said:

Google will require apps to be met current API requirements in 2018.  Apps that are not updated to current standards will be removed from Play Store and will not install.  I don't know how PoewrAmp is at this point. but it hasn't been update in long time, so I can only speculate as to its end of life if its is not updated soon.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/12/19/play-store-require-new-updated-apps-target-recent-api-levels-distribute-native-apps-64-bit-support/

 

"Future Android versions will also restrict apps that don’t target a recent API level and adversely impact performance or security."

I hope the update comes around Christmas ?

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Users who demand cosmetic changes are the ones holding back innovation.

I tried to explain to googleboy2011 that the Material Design support libraries, support-v4 and support-v7, offered to developers by Google, are not straightforward to use.  Google tout Material Design as being modular, a dream to work with.  But this only applies to new apps, which is why Max will have to re-code Poweramp from scratch.

Max's problems will be further compounded by the allow/deny permissions model introduced in Marshmallow.  This in itself requires app code to be completely re-structured in order to handle the user's choices.  Often it doesn't even make any sense to ask the user for permissions when an app can't work without them.  Yet the user must still be asked, and they can still say no.  A logic nightmare ensues in the application code.

And Max will have to decide on his use of the support libraries to support Material Design on Android versions back to a specified API level as far as 14 (Ice Cream Sandwich), in order to retain as many users as possible.  Of course, he doesn't have to; he could just say "f" anyone below Android 6 in order to simplify development and testing.  It would mean he would "only" need to test on Android versions M, N, O and P, as opposed to I, J, K and L also, effectively cutting testing time by half.

In conclusion, those of you who thought Material Design was just a few simple changes to layout, colours, and buttons, have been sorely misled by Google (maybe not for the first time?), and it is Google to whom you should be expressing your frustrations.  The fact that you are unlikely to get anywhere doesn't mean you then turn to the developer for an explanation.  I've given it to you here; you'll get it when it's ready.  It's not possible to give timescales when developing under such conditions, as each new day throws up unforeseen problems which shouldn't even have to be dealt with.

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2 hours ago, jacko9000 said:

Users who demand cosmetic changes are the ones holding back innovation.

I tried to explain to googleboy2011 that the Material Design support libraries, support-v4 and support-v7, offered to developers by Google, are not straightforward to use.  Google tout Material Design as being modular, a dream to work with.  But this only applies to new apps, which is why Max will have to re-code Poweramp from scratch.

Max's problems will be further compounded by the allow/deny permissions model introduced in Marshmallow.  This in itself requires app code to be completely re-structured in order to handle the user's choices.  Often it doesn't even make any sense to ask the user for permissions when an app can't work without them.  Yet the user must still be asked, and they can still say no.  A logic nightmare ensues in the application code.

And Max will have to decide on his use of the support libraries to support Material Design on Android versions back to a specified API level as far as 14 (Ice Cream Sandwich), in order to retain as many users as possible.  Of course, he doesn't have to; he could just say "f" anyone below Android 6 in order to simplify development and testing.  It would mean he would "only" need to test on Android versions M, N, O and P, as opposed to I, J, K and L also, effectively cutting testing time by half.

In conclusion, those of you who thought Material Design was just a few simple changes to layout, colours, and buttons, have been sorely misled by Google (maybe not for the first time?), and it is Google to whom you should be expressing your frustrations.  The fact that you are unlikely to get anywhere doesn't mean you then turn to the developer for an explanation.  I've given it to you here; you'll get it when it's ready.  It's not possible to give timescales when developing under such conditions, as each new day throws up unforeseen problems which shouldn't even have to be dealt with.

Love your explanation, thanks. 

Google's Android was a cowboy town for a long time... pirating Java from Sun-Oracle, slow as crap. With Android O, limited modularity is finally here.

Well, we all got what we wished for, whether we voted or not. (like Trump, right?) Since Max has already gone more than halfway towards completion for Material Design, we should just encourage him to make sure that his code is easy to maintain and upgrade for future Android versions. These are things that cannot be rushed.

Mozilla faced the same problem with Firefox. You can't just improve old code. Old code follows old paradigms. You need to construct new code along new guidelines. That took years, but finally, Firefox is ready. 

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4 hours ago, jacko9000 said:

Users who demand cosmetic changes are the ones holding back innovation.

I tried to explain to googleboy2011 that the Material Design support libraries, support-v4 and support-v7, offered to developers by Google, are not straightforward to use.  Google tout Material Design as being modular, a dream to work with.  But this only applies to new apps, which is why Max will have to re-code Poweramp from scratch.

Max's problems will be further compounded by the allow/deny permissions model introduced in Marshmallow.  This in itself requires app code to be completely re-structured in order to handle the user's choices.  Often it doesn't even make any sense to ask the user for permissions when an app can't work without them.  Yet the user must still be asked, and they can still say no.  A logic nightmare ensues in the application code.

And Max will have to decide on his use of the support libraries to support Material Design on Android versions back to a specified API level as far as 14 (Ice Cream Sandwich), in order to retain as many users as possible.  Of course, he doesn't have to; he could just say "f" anyone below Android 6 in order to simplify development and testing.  It would mean he would "only" need to test on Android versions M, N, O and P, as opposed to I, J, K and L also, effectively cutting testing time by half.

In conclusion, those of you who thought Material Design was just a few simple changes to layout, colours, and buttons, have been sorely misled by Google (maybe not for the first time?), and it is Google to whom you should be expressing your frustrations.  The fact that you are unlikely to get anywhere doesn't mean you then turn to the developer for an explanation.  I've given it to you here; you'll get it when it's ready.  It's not possible to give timescales when developing under such conditions, as each new day throws up unforeseen problems which shouldn't even have to be dealt with.

Well don't you think that the update will help implement new features better? Now Poweramp will be featuring a better engine a cleaner interface and a source code that will comply with the latest of android . There is no problem with what the result of the poll was .. the problem is the time that it is taking to get the beta ready..but now max has gone solo and we can only wait that he will deliver the same quality he delivered with the v2 and i think he will.

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11 hours ago, barcajuvebilbao said:

Andre it is almost 2018, can you please ask Max about beta till 2018 ? I am sure everyone here wants only one reply from the developer. Thanks in advance

I emailed him a few days ago but have not had a reply as yet. The last specific thing I heard back about dates was on 9th November, saying "planned beta release is late November or first week of December, I sincerely hope".

It's only a few days until Xmas now, which I would have thought would make this a bad time to release a completely re-built beta version as it will be harder to respond to any issues that may need urgently addressing over the next two weeks. However I'm just as much in the dark as you guys I'm afraid, sorry.

Andre

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4 hours ago, quirK said:

 

Mozilla faced the same problem with Firefox. You can't just improve old code. Old code follows old paradigms. You need to construct new code along new guidelines. That took years, but finally, Firefox is ready. 

Well said, only difference is, Mozilla changed the whole Firefox engine and technology in 2 years and as a bonus addition revamped its look. Max is changing the look as a major version update, which is unusual to say the least as major updates usually have deeper changes and improvements.

Programing can be time consuming, I know, the best solution would be if he actively searched for other devs and made a team to push things forward in another manner.

23 hours ago, andrewilley said:

Yes, that's the gist of it. That's what the userbase voted for about two years ago, and it turns out it needed a ground-up rebuild. 

I find that very disappointing, the more it took for the long announced v3, the higher my expectations where, now that I know that, I can forget about it. Max made a bad desicion imo, I like material design and any app writer that cares about his code, keeps his app maintained to the latest guidelines like material design, but that is not worth a major version update without fundamental improvements, that's how I see it.

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32 minutes ago, amar7 said:

but that is not worth a major version update without fundamental improvements, that's how I see it.

v3 will also support high-res audio and visualisations. Once the interface is done, there will be more options for third-party skinners too.

Andre

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3 hours ago, amar7 said:

Well said, only difference is, Mozilla changed the whole Firefox engine and technology in 2 years and as a bonus addition revamped its look. Max is changing the look as a major version update, which is unusual to say the least as major updates usually have deeper changes and improvements.

Programing can be time consuming, I know, the best solution would be if he actively searched for other devs and made a team to push things forward in another manner.

I find that very disappointing, the more it took for the long announced v3, the higher my expectations where, now that I know that, I can forget about it. Max made a bad desicion imo, I like material design and any app writer that cares about his code, keeps his app maintained to the latest guidelines like material design, but that is not worth a major version update without fundamental improvements, that's how I see it.

 

2 hours ago, andrewilley said:

v3 will also support high-res audio and visualisations. Once the interface is done, there will be more options for third-party skinners too.

Andre

I have yet see a single popular mainstream app take 2yrs to "re-build from scratch"  just to apply a new GUI. o, sure , and update is "coming eventually" while in the mean time, users on the newer OS have a half functional app with noticeable bugs.

In any sort of software production environment, this would be unacceptable. However, Android apps and in its community can be developed by one person, or a team of a hundred people.

If developer wants to keep any form of user base....they need to stay active on their project and at the very least, address critical usability and security bugs. If the current dev can't handle it for whatever reason(lack of time or lack of technical ability are the most common these days), then hand it over to someone else who can. Else, watch their past work get shit upon and slowly disappear and is removed from the market. Especially when there is zero direct communications or update posts by the main dev as to status and reasons for delay or no support.

Poweramp is a very good app. Its a shame to see it suffer from this lack of support and development. To me and many others, this app appears to be dead.

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I'm honestly quite hopeful about the new Poweramp version, even if it takes a few more months into the new year to release.
The last release is still the gold standard for Android Music Players today, even if some Oreo features aren't supported.

If the new release hits it will probably be very stable, ready for daily use and Max will have a solid milestone to work from.
At least that's what I think will happen after all the time and care he's been putting into it.

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January 8th will Mark two years since Max asked for the next build priorities in the forum, and in my opinion Google play music and Cloud storage weren't really that enticing at all, the only ones that were was Material design and DLNA support, and those were the two most requested. DLNA support is probably not known by everyone so some people might have seen Material design as the best option on the list, I'm positive that no one knew the development would take this long, including Max.

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16 hours ago, Ameya28 said:

Well don't you think that the update will help implement new features better? Now Poweramp will be featuring a better engine a cleaner interface and a source code that will comply with the latest of android . There is no problem with what the result of the poll was .. the problem is the time that it is taking to get the beta ready..but now max has gone solo and we can only wait that he will deliver the same quality he delivered with the v2 and i think he will.

The truth is, whether Material Design was requested or not, the app would still require re-coding from scratch because of the recent onslaught of Android version releases.

There are now effectively eight Android versions to be supported (from I to P).  Release M was a killer for many apps; I outlined the permissions model issue, for example, in my previous post.  And from one Android version to the next, API functions are deprecated, which means additional version checking within the code, sometimes requiring sections of code specific to each version in order to accomplish a particular task.

The use of the support libraries is crucial in this regard, in order to handle these multiple Android versions.  A full understanding of these libraries, and how to use them, is required by developers as there will always be a need to support previous Android versions, as well as to prepare the app for future versions.

So, yes, I believe re-coding is both necessary and beneficial at this point, albeit time-consuming, frustrating, and sometimes soul-destroying.  The criticism I put to googleboy2011 is that Google really ought to be more active in assisting developers to support past, current and upcoming Android versions.  As it is, Google are offloading the weight onto developers, and it's leading to code duplication on a gigantic scale; there are thousands of developers all having to write the same code as each other, rather than the code being written once at the source (i.e. by Google).  

But I don't doubt Max's ability to make the best of the resources provided by Google.  Far from it.  As a former development team leader myself, I can tell when an app is well-written, and Poweramp falls into that category, as it did when I first used it back in 2012.

I had been watching this thread for a while.  I rarely post on forums (as you can see from my profile), but felt the need to clarify things from a developer's perspective.

As far as the poll result goes, I thought I read at least one post on this thread which stated that functionality updates should take priority over UI.  Personally, I would agree with this; I would place functionality, stability, reliability and performance above UI.  Criticisms that an app "looks old" are a bit beyond me.  Ultimately, however, if it's what users want, then that's what needs to be done, but they have to be made aware of the cost involved, in terms of timescales, and I felt that was one of the points, along with a few others, missing from this thread.

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7 hours ago, Stevieex23 said:

January 8th will Mark two years since Max asked for the next build priorities in the forum, and in my opinion Google play music and Cloud storage weren't really that enticing at all, the only ones that were was Material design and DLNA support, and those were the two most requested. DLNA support is probably not known by everyone so some people might have seen Material design as the best option on the list, I'm positive that no one knew the development would take this long, including Max.

Agreed, the poll itself was meaningless for the reason you adressed, few really meaningful options other than material design and also not enough people who participated to get a representative result.

54 minutes ago, jacko9000 said:

The truth is, whether Material Design was requested or not, the app would still require re-coding from scratch because of the recent onslaught of Android version releases.

There are now effectively eight Android versions to be supported (from I to P).  Release M was a killer for many apps; I outlined the permissions model issue, for example, in my previous post.  And from one Android version to the next, API functions are deprecated, which means additional version checking within the code, sometimes requiring sections of code specific to each version in order to accomplish a particular task.

The use of the support libraries is crucial in this regard, in order to handle these multiple Android versions.  A full understanding of these libraries, and how to use them, is required by developers as there will always be a need to support previous Android versions, as well as to prepare the app for future versions.

So, yes, I believe re-coding is both necessary and beneficial at this point, albeit time-consuming, frustrating, and sometimes soul-destroying.  The criticism I put to googleboy2011 is that Google really ought to be more active in assisting developers to support past, current and upcoming Android versions.  As it is, Google are offloading the weight onto developers, and it's leading to code duplication on a gigantic scale; there are thousands of developers all having to write the same code as each other, rather than the code being written once at the source (i.e. by Google).  

But I don't doubt Max's ability to make the best of the resources provided by Google.  Far from it.  As a former development team leader myself, I can tell when an app is well-written, and Poweramp falls into that category, as it did when I first used it back in 2012.

I had been watching this thread for a while.  I rarely post on forums (as you can see from my profile), but felt the need to clarify things from a developer's perspective.

As far as the poll result goes, I thought I read at least one post on this thread which stated that functionality updates should take priority over UI.  Personally, I would agree with this; I would place functionality, stability, reliability and performance above UI.  Criticisms that an app "looks old" are a bit beyond me.  Ultimately, however, if it's what users want, then that's what needs to be done, but they have to be made aware of the cost involved, in terms of timescales, and I felt that was one of the points, along with a few others, missing from this thread.

The last  thing you've mentioned was me writing this. I'm a heavy user and most good apps I have are regularly maintained in functionality, stability and reliability but also updated to the latest guidelines, which is material design that most apps I use support. To me tweaking the UI is not the most important thing in an app, but neither is it unimportant, as it influences user friendliness and user experience at a fundamental level.

As an example, VLC media Player is one of the technically most advanced programms for windows and regularly maintained and updated, but it still looks really bad imo, it has no real own UI, rather uses the standard old windows look and it seems that the long announced v3 still won't look much better.

Guess the clichee sometimes is true that the designer is not good in writing code and vice versa.

As for Poweramp, if I had the choice and the dev resources are that terribly limited, I'd invest 2years+ much rather to improve the app technically and outsource or postpone the material design thing, as standard Poweramp look still is alright even without material design.

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