[Captivate Android Development] littlewierdo:
TB=Titanium Backup

RM=Rom Manger

LP=Launcher Pro

For the record, I have purchased the premium versions of all three.

While it might be anecdotal to say that just because we 'hear' most people saying they use TB and RM, this doesnt mean the majority do. Nonetheless, particularly with TB and LP it is totally useless for me personally and because the paid keys dont remain intact for TB and LP, it creates extra steps (not fewer steps) for me when they are included with the rom.

In the case of TB, I have to hit up the market to re-download the pro key file to make TB batch my apps so hitting up the market is a must regardless.

In the case of LP, in order to re-enable the premium version, I have to hit up my email and re-enter the code to make it fully functional - something I didnt have to do in previous builds of Cog that did not have LP included. TB doesnt seem to restore LP already unlocked.

When it comes to a launcher, the problem is that the stock launcher is not available on the market to download. Some people have already expressed they prefer the stock experience which unless you know a bit about rebuilding roms and are willing to rebuild a package every time it is updated, this is a huge time sink that is really not necessary. It takes 30 seconds to grab an app from the market, it takes much longer to rebuild the rom with the stock launcher.

I also want to take a moment to address something that has kept me from participating much here on the forums - the strange hyper sensitivity to any criticism whatsoever.

It should go without saying that we all love Cog. We all love the work that is being done on it.

To be fair, I havent had a chance to donate to DesignGears yet and I will probably get around to donating a nice healthy chunk of cash for some well deserved hookers and blow ('in the morning', of course :) ) but I have purchased RM, TB and LP and even sent feedback to the authors of each of those programs. They all appreciate feedback on how to make their program better. I would think DesignGears feels the same way. If someone gets out of hand, that is one thing but constructive criticism I think is a good thing.

The primary reason I did programming back in the day was to make it the best at what it could do as possible and to get the warm and squishy feeling that people were using something I had created to achieve that products goal(s).

Without feedback, programmers are very easily locked up in their own cave bubble and are unable to see anything outside of the work they are doing. This is why bug reporting and feature requests are so popular in software today. If you want your product to be the best, you need feedback from people outside of your personal bubble.

This is the trouble Google found itself in with many of its products (Buzz & Android come to mind) where they designed their product inside the Google sphere and didnt take usability in the general masses into account. This is why Android looks so much better than its early 1.0 release back in Sept of 2008 (hard to believe Android is only 2.5 years old).

In fact, if memory serves, they even stole a few people from Microsoft to help with the UI in Android.

Feedback is a good thing and I certainly feel like I have to walk on egg shells whenever I post here because of the extreme hyper sensitivity to any sort of criticism.

The major thing about Cog that I dont understand is that it seems to have no direction. I suppose this is fine but you shouldnt have a mission statement and then completely contradict it.

If Cog is the smoothest stock experience, without reading literally into that, the UI should come as stock as possible. Under the hood is where the optimization takes place but to the user, if Cog is trying to provide the smoothest stock experience, this rom ideally should be either the stock experience that Android provides out of the box or the stock experience that Samsung 'should have provided' out of the box.

Boiled down, in my mind this should mean either the Android or Samsung basic stock UI running as fast as possible (with stability being the priority here) and all hardware functioning wherever possible. I understand there is a conflict with using HSPA and Bluetooth at the same time so here is where a decision is made, in order to utilize both pieces of hardware, we naturally would disable HSPA which allows us to still upload (just at a slower rate) but keep bluetooth functionality. Also important is to make sure all settings work when they are toggled to a user's preference (for example, keypad tones in the settings). If it isnt possible with the current configuration, the setting should be removed or disabled (if that is possible).

Again, just my 2.5 cents.