Touch Kobo Touch Reading Life Awards (possible spoilers)

[koboy]

Originally Posted by JohhnyMix

Yea i have no clue on why it takes so long to come with a small update to fix a problem like reading stats... makes you think kobo only have like 1 or 2 firmware devs that are on vacation all the time. Also it would be nice that books bought in the kobo store have extra trophy's to unlock.

probably only 1


best wishes koboy

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by Cootey

What you and davidfor say isn’t wrong, but a lot of us like Reading Stats or Awards and wish they worked. I don’t know about being wiser than the rest, but if Kobo includes the feature, it’s not unreasonable to expect it to work. I have to admit that the awards available for the Kobo ereader is anemic compared to what’s available for iOS or Android, but still what is available for my KA1 is fun, even cute, and as a completist it irks me that I can’t unlock them. ¯＼(º_O)/¯

Yes, that there are awards not even available on the Kobo readers bugged me too, quite a lot actually. If anything, I would think their own devices would have the most awards available and not be missing any.

But even if they worked, unless they sync to your Kobo account somehow, if you ever need to factory reset your reader, they're all gone. I could probably live through the bugs now and then, but to have to start all over again just made them a huge irritation to me and I decided to not get involved in that mini-game of collecting and completing awards while reading.

But yes, I agree, in a perfect setup, they were fun. But that's definitely not Kobo's situation.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by JohhnyMix

Also it would be nice that books bought in the kobo store have extra trophy's to unlock.

Since I didn't know about this forum in its heyday, I missed out on a lot. From what I've read in this thread, there were quite a few book & author specific awards. I've tried to unlock the Sookie awards like Dead Reckoning, but have had no luck. Sharkus posted a very comprehensive list back in the day. You should look it up to see what you're missing. 😏



My guess is that many of these special book & author specific awards are no longer active like the old 2011 holiday awards because other iOS app awards can still be unlocked. I just unlocked LOLZ, and my Lost in Austen showed progress when I finished Pride & Prejudice the other day. Unfortunately, the reading stats are buggy on Kobo devices, so there's a limit to how many can be unlocked.



Since I reset my KA1 last night, only a dozen awards came back after restoring it. Hello Michael and 2hr are missing, but will pop back up soon if other resets are any indication. Curiously, the other time related awards never unlock.



But davidfor is correct. Fixing bugs is a tricky business. If Kobo doesn't have a team of in-house coders, then they have to get a third party to do it. They'll only pay for the most important bugs to squash. It's obvious that Reading Stats is low on their priority. Frankly, I'd rather have seamless annotation syncing between apps and devices like I have on my Kindle than have the awards functions fixed. Amazon fixed annotation syncing between apps and devices over 7-8 years ago.



And yet…I sure wish I could get Magic Kobo eReader unlocked on my iP ad. haha

[pmwt]

All I ever wanted was for Reading Stats to keep count of how many books I had read. Since that is broken (changed) to just keeping count of how many books are finished in current memory, I have turned the feature off and moved on. Too bad, one less fun thing about using the Kobo ereader.

[Cootey]

I just checked to see if 2hr had been unlocked after a 2½ hour reading session. It wasn’t, but suddenly supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and juggernaut had been reset. I may be close to becoming jaded like you others. Too funny.


Sent from my iPhone, proving definitively that I’m all thumbs.

http://DouglasCootey.com

[oren64]

Originally Posted by Cootey

I just checked to see if 2hr had been unlocked after a 2½ hour reading session. It wasn’t, but suddenly supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and juggernaut had been reset. I may be close to becoming jaded like you others. Too funny.[/url]

I think you can add a trigger to KoboReader.sqlite file and activate the awards, I didn't try it because I don't see the point of the awards.

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Is that a serious statement? If so...

To fix a "little" problem like this requires:

• Finding out people think there is a problem.
• Proving there is actually a problem.
• Finding where the problem is.
• Coding the fix.
• Making sure it doesn't break anything else.
• Testing it.
• Build and release the update.

And that doesn't take into account other problems that might exist. Any time you find a bug, you have to decide its importance against other bugs. And other work that is going on.

This all takes time. And costs money. Even a one-line change needs all this to be done. So, no commercial development team is going to rush out a one fix update unless it is for an important problem. And this isn't. It isn't stopping you from reading. It isn't deleting your books. It isn't sending all your data to Facebook.

Nothing in there that couldn’t be done in the span of a couple of years (that is how long the stats bugs have been known to exist).
If I was still using Kobos I would seriously be bothered by their unwillingness to work on anything that does not guarantee a immediate financial return.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

Nothing in there that couldn’t be done in the span of a couple of years (that is how long the stats bugs have been known to exist).

And the poster I was responding to wasn't taking about a "couple of years". That was referring to "since the last update release". And propagating the "surely that would only take five minutes to fix" myth.

If I was still using Kobos I would seriously be bothered by their unwillingness to work on anything that does not guarantee a immediate financial return.

And I never said that. I might have implied "not make an immediate loss". But, I was really saying, "do it in a reasonably efficient way".

I case people haven't actually noticed, Kobo do fix most problems like this in the next firmware. They don't hurry that fix out, but it gets done. And of course, if people don't report a problem to them, they might not know there is one, and they definitely won't know how important it is.

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by davidfor

And the poster I was responding to wasn't taking about a "couple of years". That was referring to "since the last update release". And propagating the "surely that would only take five minutes to fix" myth.


And I never said that. I might have implied "not make an immediate loss". But, I was really saying, "do it in a reasonably efficient way".

I case people haven't actually noticed, Kobo do fix most problems like this in the next firmware. They don't hurry that fix out, but it gets done. And of course, if people don't report a problem to them, they might not know there is one, and they definitely won't know how important it is.

So in the end it is people’s fault that rather obvious bugs like the reading stats problem have been present in Kobo‘s firmware for months and years?

[John F]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Is that a serious statement? If so...

To fix a "little" problem like this requires:

• Finding out people think there is a problem.
• Proving there is actually a problem.
• Finding where the problem is.
• Coding the fix.
• Making sure it doesn't break anything else.
• Testing it.
• Build and release the update.

...

Let me devil's (user's) advocate ...

[*]Finding out people think there is a problem.[*]Proving there is actually a problem.

There have been many reports over quite a span of time, shouldn't they know by now?

[*]Finding where the problem is.[*]Coding the fix.

Guessing this can't be that big of a problem? How hard is it to a diff on the code?

[*]Making sure it doesn't break anything else.[*]Testing it.

This doesn't appear to be a standard practice for Kobo. Looking at past problems, their testing seems to be done very quickly.

[*]Build and release the update.

Push a key and update a web page.

Again, playing devil's advocate with tongue in cheek.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

So in the end it is people’s fault that rather obvious bugs like the reading stats problem have been present in Kobo‘s firmware for months and years?

What reading stats problem that has been present for years? The reading stats problem we are talking about came up in the latest firmware release. This was in mid-December 2017.

And this isn't an obvious problem. Lots of people don't look at the stats. And the problem occurs for books started after the firmware was installed. This means that if you look at the stats of the book you started before the install, you might be surprised that they are low, but it isn't immediately obvious that the stats are broken. And of course, if this is such an obvious bug, why did it take a week before anyone noticed it and reported it here?

As to claiming that it is peoples fault for these bugs to exist, I NEVER said that. What I said was that if you want bugs fixed, report them to Kobo. And I say this for all bugs in all products. If you find a bug, make sure you tell the people who can do something about it. Tell the developer or company responsible. It is very likely they don't know about the problem. It is more likely that they don't know how important the problem is. By reporting the problem, you are telling them that you think it is important. And, when they are prioritising bugs to fix, any that are reported by an external party will be rated as more important than those found internally, and fixed first. And the more reports, the more important it will be.

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by davidfor

What reading stats problem that has been present for years? The reading stats problem we are talking about came up in the latest firmware release. This was in mid-December 2017.

And this isn't an obvious problem. Lots of people don't look at the stats. And the problem occurs for books started after the firmware was installed.

As to claiming that it is peoples fault for these bugs to exist, I NEVER said that. What I said was that if you want bugs fixed, report them to Kobo.

1. iirc the bug started showing with the first Aura One firmware
2. and 3. the bug has been reported early, but has not been fixed for months

In general: If the Kobo firmware did not come with so many bugs in general, less time would be required to fix what you call a minor bug. Basically what you're saying is that it takes Kobo months to fix a minor feature because they need all of the other time to correct more serious problems. If a software (and if we are talking about December '17 then we are not talking about anything like a .0 release at all) has that many problems after over a year (release version for KAO 'til December '17) of work on the software, then the development team truly has some serious problems. Alternatively, it could of course always mean that Kobo generally invests very little effort in bug-fixing (and that cannot be attributed to the fact that they actually did not introduce any new features – save the new homescreen, the current firmware is actually a stripped down version of version 3.1x).

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by John F

Let me devil's (user's) advocate ...


There have been many reports over quite a span of time, shouldn't they know by now?

Guessing this can't be that big of a problem? How hard is it to a diff on the code?

This doesn't appear to be a standard practice for Kobo. Looking at past problems, their testing seems to be done very quickly.

Push a key and update a web page.

Again, playing devil's advocate with tongue in cheek.

From the POV of somebody who works in software, really, not a good devil advocate, really, but yes of a user, of course

[robko]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

1. iirc the bug started showing with the first Aura One firmware
2. and 3. the bug has been reported early, but has not been fixed for months

In general: If the Kobo firmware did not come with so many bugs in general, less time would be required to fix what you call a minor bug. Basically what you're saying is that it takes Kobo months to fix a minor feature because they need all of the other time to correct more serious problems. If a software (and if we are talking about December '17 then we are not talking about anything like a .0 release at all) has that many problems after over a year (release version for KAO 'til December '17) of work on the software, then the development team truly has some serious problems. Alternatively, it could of course always mean that Kobo generally invests very little effort in bug-fixing (and that cannot be attributed to the fact that they actually did not introduce any new features – save the new homescreen, the current firmware is actually a stripped down version of version 3.1x).

You're not going to like this answer but I'd bet it's reality. Kobo will have a pretty good idea of what percentage of Kobo users have stats turned on (from those who sync with Kobo regularly). If that percentage is tiny, the business reality is that no matter how simple the fix may look, it's not going to get much attention because they can get a bigger bang for their buck elsewhere. As a user does that suck? You bet, and it drives me nuts when I see it, but I can also understand it.
Also, what looks like a simple fix may morph into something a whole lot more complex. Maybe they know what broke it, but the break was caused by a change that make something else work much better. So maybe they can't just turn back the clock because they then lose the much bigger gains that they got when they broke this.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

1. iirc the bug started showing with the first Aura One firmware
2. and 3. the bug has been reported early, but has not been fixed for months

Oh, that is what you are ranting about.

Firstly, please get your facts straight. You are saying they have been broken for "years". And now that they have been broken since the first Aura ONE release. At the most, that is 18 months, not "years". And the stats were not broken in the initial Aura ONE Release. My memory has it happening somewhere in the 4.2/4.3 range and getting fixed within a couple of releases. And there were a lot of releases at the time.

Yes, unfortunately, it was broken again in December. And that is bad. But, if you are going to argue this, at least argue using correct information. And that is simple: the stats have been working more than they have been broken.

In general: If the Kobo firmware did not come with so many bugs in general, less time would be required to fix what you call a minor bug. Basically what you're saying is that it takes Kobo months to fix a minor feature because they need all of the other time to correct more serious problems. If a software (and if we are talking about December '17 then we are not talking about anything like a .0 release at all) has that many problems after over a year (release version for KAO 'til December '17) of work on the software, then the development team truly has some serious problems. Alternatively, it could of course always mean that Kobo generally invests very little effort in bug-fixing (and that cannot be attributed to the fact that they actually did not introduce any new features – save the new homescreen, the current firmware is actually a stripped down version of version 3.1x).

Firstly, I'm not going to attempt to answer the last point. I know what has changed in the firmware since October 2017, and calling it a stripped down version of 3.1x is rather insulting and demonstrates you haven't been paying attention.

As to why Kobo haven't released an update since December, I point back to my post that started this: it costs money. Unless it is vitally important, you don't release an update to fix one problem. You aggregate a few and do one release. And you also look at what else is going on and decide what the best timing is. Do I think Kobo should have had something out before now? Yes. A late January/early February release would have been good. Do I know why they haven't? No. I can guess what probably happened based on my experience as a developer and what else I see happening (such as a new device coming out).

Of course, debating this is pretty pointless. You have your priorities, I have mine and Kobo have theirs. As none of use work for Kobo, and that Kobo have decided not to participate here, whatever we say is guesswork.