Rockbox General > Rockbox General Discussion

What's the future for rockbox ?

(1/4) > >>

steak:
Correct me if I'm wrong : as the Sansa Clip+ & Clip zip have been discontinued, there are only a very limited number of stable/unstable usable ports available as new.
These would be :
Sansa Fuze+ : nice and affordable but some critics on the buttons usability (users who like buttons saying these are not as good as they were on other Sansas)
HiFiman & HiFi E.T : I blindly guess these players are good but they are very expensive
There is the Rockbox as an android app option as well but if the device does not run it properly it needs serious computing abilities. 

Of course there are thousands of old players working and many will last but still I wonder if that situation will not end up with rockbox being used only by users who have the ability to fix and maintain old ports or develop their own builds for Android.

I don't know how many of such advanced/experts users there are and if they are happy to leave the majority unable to cope with the situation but I wish something was done to keep it available for all.

In my case for example :
I have 2 Cowon D2, a Clip+ and a Clip zip. The Clip+ and the Clip zip will die when the battery does. The D2s will last as long as the buttons and touchscreen do and spare battery are available.
I have used a couple of Android smartphones for about 3 years until they got stolen. Rockbox ran flawlessly on both.
Three next smartphones have problems with rockbox and I could not get support from the rockbox forum : in short I was advised to learn how to make my own build. "A great challenge" it must be. I looked at the learning process and gave up. I work in caring. I wonder if it would not be a "great challenge" for patients to learn medicine instead of relying on professionnals.
The only way for me to use Rockbox on an android port is to find one that works like my previous one did. Unfortunately I cannot try one after another until I find it and when I did an attempt to build a list of such device through the forum, I ended up patronized (to say the least) by some smart guys who eventually closed the topic.

Maybe I'll try to find "testers" through android forums. Besides the fact it may work, it would be good for three things :
One it may attract new users to the app.
Two I could do that on forums written in my mother tongue where discussing with pretentious experts would not be exhausting and pointless... so I hope.
Three I could also pick and give opinion on the hardware and be understood by sensible people... so I hope, again.

Finally I wonder how many estimated active users are there in the world, how many new ? How many "basic" users meaning guys like me who can see how good it is, only when it works.

Cheers to all open minded users and devs !!

pamaury:
I think more generally, the problem is that there are very few new MP3 players on the market:

* there are unbraned players, with terrible firmwares, using chinese chips and no two players are similar so it's impossible to support them
* there are few brands like archos (but less and less), or Sony, but they are usually expensive for the actual valueSo in my opinion, it is true that Android might be the only realistic future for Rockbox but there are very few active developers left and they don't have much time available.
Unfortunately, being one of those developers, I don't have the time neither the skills to do that port.
However I'm still working on a few ports on Sony players but I really don't have much time.

steak:

--- Quote from: pamaury on November 05, 2014, 09:04:00 AM ---I think more generally, the problem is that there are very few new MP3 players on the market:

* there are unbraned players, with terrible firmwares, using chinese chips and no two players are similar so it's impossible to support themSo in my opinion, it is true that Android might be the only realistic future for Rockbox but there are very few active developers left and they don't have much time available.
Unfortunately, being one of those developers, I don't have the time neither the skills to do that port.
However I'm still working on a few ports on Sony players but I really don't have much time.

--- End quote ---
In my experience Android ports are very similar and most apps will work on any but that does not seem to be the case with rockbox. Different ports with the same resolution will handle rockbox just fine, others not quite or not at all. Wether it relates to hardware, build version or android version, I don't know. I made an attempt to identify which smartphone work well based on user's feedback but the only result was a pointless argument.

Wouldn't the number of active dev grow if Rockbox had more users through Android targets ? I mean Android app developpers should be interested, at least some of them. Correct me if I'm wrong Rockbox is the only one of a kind compared to all similar tag based media players and to likewise similar music streaming service based players. It's also the only one with a huge list serious of settings that can only be found on a computer software otherwise.

Given how good and unique it is, I cannot believe there is a lack of new potential users, developpers and even targets (just how many new android device come up per year, how about the Mozilla smartphones ?). What we need is a (Master >:-|) plan.

wodz:
Android developers are different creatures. They live in javaish object oriented world while we are old school devs fighting for performance and resource usage. This two wolds doesn't have much in common. The only possible marriage would be rockbox as lib with native android ui. The problem is that there is only one folk working in this direction and his time is very very limited.

[Saint]:
Its really hard to not read this as "Rockbox is dying, and I want everyone but me to do something about it because I can't or don't want to learn how".

And I would really love to be able to just simply ignore this, but I cannot:

--- Quote from: steak on November 05, 2014, 03:59:08 AM ---<snip>...and when I did an attempt to build a list of such device through the forum, I ended up patronized (to say the least) by some smart guys who eventually closed the topic.

--- End quote ---

That's certainly an interesting way of putting it.

In reality what happened was several people (myself included) attempted (successfully) to prevent you from spreading misinformation. Claims were made that were demonstrably untrue, and these factual errors were corrected for the benefit of other users. Had your findings been based on fact, there would have been no problem at all.

Regarding needing a "Master Plan", what we actually need, is boots on the ground (or fingers at keyboards, rather). Its all very well to come up with a plan, but without anyone willing to implement it, its a complete waste.

What is needed, for lack of a better way of putting it, is less people telling us what we need and more people being prepared to actually do the those things.

Rockbox has never been a product, however. Its built by developers, for developers. If Joe Average gets a kick out of it, that's great, but they're not the target audience. There's no market. There's no advertising. It just is. If people want to use it, that's great. If they don't, that's great too. If they want to contribute...all the better.


[Saint]

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page