Looks like he still cannot get over with Pocket. They were supposed to clone features from Instapaper etc. I paid for both Instapaper and Pocket (when it was still named Read It Later and had paid version on Android). I stopped using Instapaper and used Pocket exclusively because Pocket is simply much better piece of software. Period. On iOS and of course on other platforms Pocket can run but Instapaper can't.
He wrote "They’re coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to dominate the market, lock down this open medium into proprietary “technology”, and build empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of everyone’s revenue."
Well, what if they are coming with _better_ apps and fantastic business deals.. ?
Being an indie dev (or a small indie company) does not automatically make you a better developer / software maker than anyone else. Part of that may be lack of resource, but maybe just maybe you're competing with someone better.
With big enough amount of bad luck, anything can turns into a mess. OTOH sync (two-way sync) if done right can work pretty well and is quite useful in the real world. I am saying it as the developer of Autosync for Google Drive android app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.dr...)
Regarding Gmail: I've been using Google Apps for Domains for years, among other things to host my private family domain. All family members, wife, kids, have email accounts there.
Around New Year my 7-year old son's account was permanently suspended. Even I as the superadmin of the domain can't unlock it, there is no way to get the data out. What happened is he tried to register G+. No, our young kids don't have G+ or FB accounts. They are not allowed to and we monitor how they use Internet. But it's hard to avoid running into G+ these days. So my son clicked on a link somewhere. It turned out that a person younger than 13 years are not allowed to have a google account. Period. It's a violation of their TOS. Even though outside of USA, GMail or Google apps for domains never explicitely asked you for your age. Not before G+, and even now only if you register your G+ profile.
Bottom line: I have no other choice than to de-google-ify my life. Google forced me to do it. I know you can lie about age of your kid but doing so is risky. See above.
I have a cronjob that runs every hour to backup all Gmail inboxes to a IMAP server (dovecot) so in my case it's not a disaster. But imagine if I wasn't so paranoid about Google...
Also as they say if the service is free you are their product. These days everywhere every time when I can I choose the paid option.
I don't know if the author considers Czech Republic as part of Eastern Europe but $12/hour is pretty low there. It would be OK for a high school/undergrad student to earn some extra money that way, but other than that it must be a desparate "developer" to work at that rate.
If you buy something from me, even via Google, you enter a mutual contract. And as such you have to provide sufficient information to identify yourself. Same with me. Pretty normal for any law protected contracts.
just a little app for kids, but very polished and excellent execution. Free and no ads. It's refreshing to know someone is still doing stuff just for fun and share it
Sorry for sounding cynical but I am realy curious about the quality of GDrive client apps. The one for Android probably will be good. But I am unsure about the other platforms. Check out Google's "native" GMail app for iOS to see what I mean.
I used Instapaper for quite a while, even wrote a small Android utility app to quickly bookmark a link to my Instapaper account and read it later on a bigger screen. But it was a long time ago.
I use Read It Later these days. Simply because it's a better product than Instapaper. It runs on all devices I own and use daily: iPhone, Android phone and tablet, MacBook, Linux laptop, Linux workstation. I bought Instapaper app and still have it on my iPhone mostly to check if its latest update has anything great which I miss in RIL. Nothing.
PS Marco's personality certainly "helped" me switch. But it's minor.
I should add that Dropsync is also capable of Instant uploading, and not only photos/videos. Any new/modified files in your designated local folders in your phone/tablet.
Sync is a misleading term here. What the new Android Dropbox app added is an Automatic photo/video uploader, to a pre-defined folder on the server side. One way.
He wrote "They’re coming with shitty apps and fantastic business deals to dominate the market, lock down this open medium into proprietary “technology”, and build empires of middlemen to control distribution and take a cut of everyone’s revenue."
Well, what if they are coming with _better_ apps and fantastic business deals.. ?
Being an indie dev (or a small indie company) does not automatically make you a better developer / software maker than anyone else. Part of that may be lack of resource, but maybe just maybe you're competing with someone better.