Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

again quote from fb

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Fact is that Jolla Ltd. does not guarantee that they won't sell private data - they can't guarantee it. If Jolla Ltd. is bought by another company than this data won't be deleted but sold together with all other assets. And that a prospering small company is bought by a big one is nothing uncommon. Nobody could ever have imagined that Notch would sell Mojang to- or that Nokia would be bought by MS. So this is not "nothing more than speculation, without any good reasons, even."

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

If Jolla Ltd. is bought by another company, they are still bound by restrictions mentioned in privacy policy. New owner can change the privacy policy for service(s), but they are required by law to announce the change beforehand and give users the right to either accept it or refuse it and get their data removed from systems.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Jolla has said many times that it doesn't give the account data to anybody (NSA, other companies, etc).

A login name, a password and a email ? Which all can be made arbitrary, i.e., fake ? With them, a list of installed softwares ? Wow, what a lot of data...:p

It is nonsense to compare user data collected by Jolla with data collected by Google and Apple : contacts, emails, localization (GPS and WiFi hotspots) and many other files and data.

This is the tatics : 1% = 99%. Nonsense.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Do you have even the slightest clue how laws work?

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

You are making a lot of fuss about privacy this and privacy that, but again: you're using a mobile phone, tracking device #1. All your complaints are invalid.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

This is just speculation, but could the requirement of an account for access to their repositories and updates be related to the presence of third party binaries?

maemo.org still doesn't distribute flashable images because permission hasn't been given, and in the olden days when Nokia was Nokia, you had to input your IMEI to download one. OTA updates were different, but how much of those updates included code from 3rd parties? Jolla's updates include the Alien Dalvik stuff.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

(Assuming a typo in tactics...)

There is a bigger difference between 0% and 1% than between 1% and 99%.

Yminus is right: Apple and Google have trained the masses well. Now everyone is expecting every company to harvest your data and no one even bats an eye. Yes, Jolla may be asking less than the other guys do but that is still an infity times more than what they need to ask! We should not be grateful to them that they do not ask 99%. We should question why they ask even the 1%.

In fact, I just have :)

If anything, the above argument is invalid. Yes, my phone is being tracked by default. By my provider, by my ISP, by various law enforcement agencies... Does that mean that I should be happy with Yet Another Company added to the list?

Besides, if Jolla really wants to track me so much, why do they need my account? They already have my IMEI.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Newbie question here: do tablets have an IMEI? (That is, tablets that don't include cellular hardware...) I'm personally planning on separating my computing hardware from my cellular hardware in the future (i.e., sticking to dumb-phones from now on), so I'm kinda hoping that cellular-style IDs won't be making their way into non-cellular mobile hardware. :)

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

No.

You know, I was considering the same idea today. After many years with a Palm OS phone that no "smart" device I have tried ever since could as much as shine a candle to in regards to usability and the phone functionality, I am seriously considering a cheap "dumb" phone for, well, making calls and new "smart" devices purely for browsing the web and reading emails.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

It depends:

- what are they doing with that information
- what is the extent of your personal extremism on the issue

In Jolla's privacy policy it is stated that the information is used mainly to improve Jolla's services, which at least considering the amount of often-not-so-constructive criticism should not be something to be despised. But if your take is that absolutely nothing should be collected and they should only have that often-not-so-constructive criticism as a source of information to improve things just because collecting information is plain wrong per se like it's all black & white, then I'd say you are being extreme. But of course, why make things difficult if with small effort they can be made impossible.... :)

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Touché.


10chars

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

JulmaHerra,

1. No one is criticising anything. We are asking a valid question.
2. If you take every case when someone has as opinion different from yours as "criticism", then the people around you have a difficult life indeed.
3. For your information, "constructive criticism" = "criticsm with suggested alternatives". Whether you like those alternatives or not is another topic but that does not make the criticism not constructive.
4. If you really insist on interpreting this as "criticism", then I would like to point out that the suggested alternative is staring right in your face: do not require an account.
5. Just in case you have missed point 1, this is just a question. No answer has been given yet, only "why does it matter".
6. I like my Jolla despite all its shortcomings. And believe me, there are quite a few. I have also a lot of respect for Jolla the company. But it does not mean I should think they are infallible and untouchable. If you do, then with all due respect, it is you who is extreme, not me.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Ok, I may be going too far off-topic here, but let me pose this query: so far as I know, the only two mechanisms available to treat intellectual property as a salable product to the public are (a) associate the IP with an individual (the system used by app stores today) or (b) associate the IP with a physical object (used by DVD, BD, and such media).

Associating the IP with an individual requires some form of human identification; but if you've got your IP tied to a physical object, you can sell the physical object without knowing anything about the buyer. So, would it be possible to construct an app store based around the sale of IP tied to some sort of physical objects? Say, a dongle or something you'd use to authorize use of the app after it was installed on the device. (For example, you could sell the dongle anonymously at retail stores or the like; then, use it to authorize something downloaded anonymously from a repository on the net.)

Anyway, just an idea here. :) It seems that, for the most part, folks generating IP today wish to sell it directly to individuals, and for the most part, individuals today seem happy purchasing IP individually for themselves. So long as that is the case, some form of single-user licensing is going to need to take place...

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

if you scroll from left to right and having message tab below you can see a big fat black mouse pointer over the minimized messages app. :D

Not the best image of It but..atleast its visible...does they use some compononent incorrectly for the messages app so this can appear?...its an easter egg.

http://oi57.tinypic.com/27xdug5.jpg

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Copernicus,

The fact that these are the two systems in most common use today does not mean that they are the only two methods possible. You had a few suggestions offered in your own thread. There were at least two cases I know of (Datawiz and Sygic) who were selling software through Maemo repositories, an app "store" with no concept of a user account. Before Maemo, I bought some Palm OS software through sites like Handango, again with no user account. More in my comment in the TJC thread. Sorry, I have not worked out how to link to a specific comment, so I have to link to the whole thread.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Dave999,

This is a known issue. Jolla has not commented yet.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

That is what all claim - I guess the NSA officials also believe that they collect data only to improve their service. This justifies nothing.

Can you please post a link - I would like to read such statement, maybe it helps to dispel my doubts ;)
By the way, Jolla's privacy policy says:
We may share non-personal data (provided that it is anonymous) to select third parties. And about the importance of such metadata an NSA official said: ‘We Kill People Based on Metadata’.
But stop - no I do not fear to be killed by the NSA if I register a Jolla account :)
However, there are serious concerns that speak against data collection, e.g. de-anonymization.

I am not a lawyer - are you? If so, please share your expert knowledge about this issue and help us to understand why an account may be necessary. (Instead of insulting people only because they have concerns you don't share or understand.)

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Yes -- the suggestions offered there mainly involved an "activation code" or key; while this allows the software to be downloaded anonymously from the Maemo Extras repository, it still requires you to give _me_ some specific information about yourself (at the very least your e-mail address and some form of payment) in order to receive the code. So, this still doesn't allow for anonymous purchase of IP...

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

No one? Then I guess comparing Jolla to Apple and Google, stating that their policy is no better than theirs doesn't count as criticism (though you were not the one making that accusation)?

My approach is to look at the arguments behind opinions. Some are valid, some are not and weighting them against each other will always result opposing opinions as we are all more or less human. I do recognize myself as not being the easiest person though.

I agree about that.

Yes you did, however there are arguments against that approach and I'm also not convinced about the reasoning behind the idea that requiring an account is bad per se. Also, that approach would be limiting factor when developing services (not just those we have now but new ones too), so tradeoff wouldn't be that nice. It's not worth it for just for the sake of paranoia.

Most of the reasons can be found from Jolla's privacy policy. It's clearly stated there what kind of information they collect, why and what they are going to do with it.

Agreed on that one too.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

With that approach it doesn't really matter if they say anything at all, and it doesn't matter what finnish law (under which they operate) says about things. But it makes me wonder, why on earth do you use any advanced communications device if you are so afraid of being spied on by just about everyone?

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

If law enforcement, Intelligence agencies and ISPs are spying on me I can't change that.
But when buying a phone I have a choice. I like the Jolla phone and I like my N900. But I was very disappointed when I found out that Jolla Ltd, like most of the other manufacturers, are forcing me to have an account. I don't understand the reason and so far none of you explained it to me. All you say is that I am paranoid and it does not matter.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

I am not saying needing an account is a good thing - I would understand a criticism such that it is an inconvenience to set it up (I somewhat agree), but a privacy issue? Give me a break. As pichlo mentioned, they already know your IMEI, for god's sake.

I understand the requirement from developer's point of view:
The account is needed for many things - commenting on apps, rating apps, installing TOH software (tied up to an account), opt-in upgrades (like Uitukka or the network update during the summer), etc.
It is much more convenient to ask the user to create an account in the beginning (made up credentials don't matter) and then presume that everyone has one, than to add a checking mechanism to each and every situation that requires it.
Adding a checking code and "Oh, you don't have an account, do this first" dialogue in every app is a PIA and most of all, creates an inconsistency, because you have two groups of users, behaving differently.

Again, I am definitely not a fan of accounts (wasn't pleasantly surprised when I couldn't enter my Kobo without one), but all I'm saying is I can understand the reasons without all the 'evil spies' paranoia.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Why do you think Apple and Google are bad and what makes you believe Jolla is better?

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Well this sure shows a bias I have, but for starters Apple & Google are both US based companies that operate under US legislation, and (possibly) violate even that when operating in other counties.

Jolla is a Finnish company that operates under Finnish legislation.

Now which of those is the one you prefer...? :D

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

No. But in the same post you also say:

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

For Google collected user data is a source of revenue, in forms of advertising etc. Apple at least states they are not selling user data but they surely collect it a lot more than Jolla does. Also, both of them reside in US and work under US law which has very weak protection for privacy compared to Finnish law which is very strict when it comes to handling such data. So IMO there is a difference.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

By the way, for those not active on TJC, eric has given an answer to pichlo's question why the Jolla account is needed: https://together.jolla.com/question/...#post-id-77860

He also says "We will very soon communicate specifically on that topic, stay tuned, thanks!" at the end, which seems to be about support for paid applications. Could it be?

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Touché ;)

That might be the case. Looks like nodevel may be onto something.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

My concerns are not driven by paranoia, but by my responsibility as a consumer.

In my very first post within this thread I said, that Jolla Ltd. is worse than Apple and Google. It was not wise to put it like that, because Jolla Ltd. obviously collects less data than the other 2 companies.

However, as a consumer, if I have a choice to spend my money to a company that collects much data, less data and no data I tend to choose the company that collects no data unless the other companies cannot convince me that they have good reasons for infringing privacy.

I am convinced that "privacy" is valuable per se and that "data collecting" is only valuable if it serves a particular purpose. I know that collecting data may be useful sometimes, however I don't want to support companies that collect data without a good reason.

I'd rather call it idealistic.

I am following the thread in Jolla Ltd. and hope that the question why repository metadata is associated with the user and not with the device will be answered.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Reminder: a Jolla account asks for just a username and password.

They don't ask for your address, name, social security, passport, mothers maiden name, first cat, name of your teacher, favourite breakfast cereal, inside leg measurement or how many lumps in your tea.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

In their answer, one reason was performance. I do remember how painful it was to install apps to N900 because every single refresh took like forever - and it did so often! Such behavior would be completely unacceptable in consumer device today, especially if target audience is not strictly restricted to fraction of techies who don't mind such things. Additionally, if account consists of username (like MickeyMouse) and password, it hardly counts as "infringing privacy." So, IMO tradeoff for not having an account is not worth it. You of course have the liberty to make your own choices regarding devices, accounts and information you are ready to share in order to use certain services.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Indeed. And, as Copernicus and I shown, that reason is complete BS.

I am not assuming anything nefarious on Jolla's side. What I am assuming is that Jolla also fell into the Apple trap and set up their "store" in exactly the same way, "because everyone does it". They did not stopp for 5 seconds to consider the reasons. Far from being "unlike", they were "very much like". Not deliberately, but simply because in the world indoctrinated by Apple no one questions the holy truth.

Now suddenly someone asks for the reason. They cannot just say oops, we were brainwashed by Apple and did not think it through. They have to justify it post-factum. So they make up arguments like "performance" that, when you look more closely, hold no better than a house of cards.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

:) I don't think so... I just went through your (+Copernicus') comments on TJC and if anything, it shows that you either did not fully get Jolla's answer, or you don't seem to understand how people use apps.

Reposting my answer here:
I, on the other hand, think that Jolla's answer pretty much ended all discussions whether the account is a good idea or a bad one. Having used the N900, I absolutely agree that refreshing all repositories was a PIA - not just having to wait every time, but also the data cap from my provider was usually ruined by this technique. That's why these tips exist and also why I completely stopped using the integrated app manager on Fremantle.
The idea of personal repositories is ingenious and also a good way to allow transferring apps between devices (just an automatic "install all apps from the repository" command) in the future. When posting my previous post, I was not really convinced that an account was needed, even though I could see how it simplifies the system development, but now I'm sold.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

Considering that your suggestion has caveats too, I wouldn't call it a BS.

I really hope that being unlike doesn't translate into being diffiecult, inefficient and stupid just to be different from Apple. But please tell me, how would you accomplish this without an account:

- let's say we have an app store with both free and paid apps
- let's assume that we do it your way, so that everything is bound to the device and not user (account) as you suggested earlier
- let's forget for a moment that by making any transaction you effectively bind your precious private data to the device
- let's assume I bought such device and then some paid 3rd party apps to get wanted functionality on my device

OK, so I bought this device and used it for something. Then there's a glitch which means that the device has to be replaced (as my first Jolla was replaced last spring). How will those apps be transferred to the new device if they have been bound to the original device and not to user account? There are couple of ways I can think of:

- apps would have to have their own way of associating themselves to the device and enabling that change (ie activation keys etc) or,
- Jolla would have to store the information based on IMEI, or
- Let's be "unlike" and just forget about such inconvenience

First part means that burden is placed on app developers. This might be "unlike" but also probably scared away great deal of developers. So not that good idea.

Second part means that apps you bought would be part of the device, which would in turn be annoyance when changing devices. Instead of logging on with some user account and installing your apps to a new device, you would have to do it all manually and then find a way to transfer your paid apps (which might be a bit difficult if ie. your old device died completely). And all that for what? To avoid simple user account (which doesn't necessarily have to identify you as a person at all) and being "not like apple"?

When I get my Jolla tablet, I would like it to go like this:

- Login with my user account
- Get a list of my installed apps (on my Jolla phone) to choose which of them I want to install on my new device
- Get it set up in less than 5 minutes with my preferred apps installed

Do it your way, it would be rather difficult to accomplish. But of course, what can't be sacrificed for just being "unlike apple" ;)

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

I think this really sums it up.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

There is a difference between a solution that "has caveats" and one that does not work!

In the same order:
- Yes, let's imagine that hypothetical situation ;)
- I did not say everything. Do I need to repeat that ad infinitum? I said what is installed on the device. That is the property of the device, nothing else.
- You do? How? What data? Sorry, you've confused me.
- OK...

There is this mysterious process I've heard about somewhere. If only I could remember what it is called... Oh, wait, I know: "installation"!

For cases like replacing a broken device, there is this thing called a "backup". A decent OS can make a backup that, amongst other things, contains a list of installed applications. You "restore" this "backup" on your replacement device and hey presto, all the applications are installed anew.

You are suggesting nothing more than moving this backup out of your control and have it on some central server in Helsinki. Not that there is anything wrog with that per se, but it should not be compulsory.

Most of the rest of your post talks about things like:

• Making sure you have the same applications installed on two different devices.
  This is basically about the "centralized backup" as mentioned above. Well, I am the kind of a person who
  a) May want two devices with completely different application sets;
  b) Does not mind to install the same appliocation twice;
  c) Would be p!$$ed off if the device forced the same app sets on my two devices because I used the same account. As happened with Android: the same patch from Motorola was forced on another device in our household. Who cares that the other device was a Samsung? It used the same account.
• The transfer of intellectual property.
  This is the only case when "something" - not the application, but the right to install it - is associated with the person. An account does not entirely answer that if it can be shared but it is better than nothing. An account also does not help if the app developer wants you to buy a different license for each device, so the developers will just have to suck it and put up with Jolla's distribution scheme. Luckily (for Apple followers, that is) there is alraedy a precedence that people are used to.

Provided these are the arguments for having a user account, then I am willing to accept them. Not unconditionally since, as I explained above, it also has its caveats. It could work as a "convenience" for some but not for others. In that case, the account should be optional: if you want to use these features, sign in to your account. Just like on TMO: free to read anonymously, but if you want to vote, post and keep track of what you have read, you must sign in.

However, eric did not mention any of those things. He said,

My Jolla is a second-hand First One and I get updates along with other First Ones. Not with the plebes as a user account approach would indicate.

And this is the part I object to. What is installed on the device does not depend on the account. It depends on what is installed on the device. Using the account to speed up the metadata refresh is just not going to work. That is the typical "map versus terrain" problem. Only the terrain reflects reality accurately.

EDIT
Sorry to bang on about it, but it has just occurred to me: we have two Jollas in the family, both sharing the same account. The two have very different application sets. To the point that the only thing the two have in common is the preinstalled apps.

Now here is the crux: at no point in using either device has the option of synchronizing the application sets been offered by Store. In other words, JulmaHerra's idea of a central backup and an easy transfer from device 1 to device 2 is moot too.

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

BTW
can anybody tell me where the data goes that you have to enter on first switch on, i.e. account, name, surname, telephone, birthday and so on?

I would to see that anywhere in settings or in a file or?
And would like to know if this data gets synchronized with jolla online account data?

Re: Jolla User Experience Thread
 

While you may be right, package management systems don't work that way (and probably shouldn't, because aside from being slightly inefficient, you've got an information leakage!)

Right now, when upgrading, your friendly package management system says: "please give me a list of all packages and their versions". Then it determines which versions are newer, of the packages you have installed, and it updates them appropriately.

This is the point that didn't scale: with extras, this meant downloading metadata for every third party package anyone had ever uploaded, no matter if you had it installed or not.

With this system, it says "please tell me what my private virtual repository contains", and it is sent metadata only for packages that have been installed over the store.

As far as I understand it, your proposal is: "I have these packages installed locally, please send me metadata for them". This is inefficient, at least on the Jolla device, because packages are split across multiple different repositories: you would be uploading metadata for every package on your device for n different repositories, and only a tiny subset of those would apply to each seperate repository.

The "information leakage" I mentioned is that you're now implicitly saying "hey, I have this installed, and it's at this version". This sounds harmless, except it now lets an adversary know more about your systems and how to attack you. This isn't much of a problem if you only ever install things from the store, but if you ever had software you wanted to keep to yourself (self-developed, or whatever), this leaks that information.