Calibre Companion prerelease 3.3.0e

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by kaufman

It's for all official kitkat releases, and its stupid and limiting, but depending on how somone uses their card, it might not impact them that much.

For example, if you only use your card as a media device and load it up with videos and music from your computer, it may not impact you at all. If you only use apps that write their data to a single directory on the card, and no other app needs to write to that data, they can be updated so that they will work the same. It's only for the case where two apps have to write to the same directory that there is a real problem.

It's a huge pain, but in most cases, not an insurmountable issue.

Sd cards are mostly used for movies and music etc so I dont think many people will notice.
@Chaley are you aware that if calibre companion is writing books to a folder on the external sd card in Android Kitkat 4.4 when it will be uninstalled it will take all the books with it. You might start getting complains if people dont read the fine print.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

@Chaley are you aware that if calibre companion is writing books to a folder on the external sd card in Android Kitkat 4.4 when it will be uninstalled it will take all the books with it. You might start getting complains if people dont read the fine print.

I think if anyone is stupid enough to uninstall CC, they deserve whatever bad things happen to them. Books deleted, house burned down, dog run away....whatever.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by PatNY

Charles, if some of your customers are truly unhappy with this, you may want to suggest they go over to the XDA forums and investigate whether there is a CM11 version for their specific device. There aren't versions for all devices, but they have ones for the Nook HD and Nook HD+, and probably for the most current and popular Samsung devices. This, of course, is not an option for those who are not comfortable tweaking things on their tablets or phones.

--Pat

There is a work-around that might be easier than flashing a new ROM. You must root your phone, then follow instructions found on a zillion sites such as this one. I suspect that rooting a phone is easier and less dangerous than flashing a new ROM.

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Is this in all devices or the just the Google Play edition? If it's all, that's ridiculous. I know Google devices will never have an SD card, but to make it so other devices can't either is nuts.

As kaufman said, all devices running an "official" kitkat or higher android release will have this new restriction. It could be that some vendors will remove it to get a "marketing advantage", but that could be a bit dangerous for them depending on where Google takes things. It appears that Samsung has not removed the restriction. I have no idea what Amazon will do, or even if Amazon devices have SD cards

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

Sd cards are mostly used for movies and music etc so I dont think many people will notice.

I can tell you with total certainty that people are noticing.

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

@Chaley are you aware that if calibre companion is writing books to a folder on the external sd card in Android Kitkat 4.4 when it will be uninstalled it will take all the books with it. You might start getting complains if people dont read the fine print.

Yes, that is one of the more nasty gotchas of their change. Even if you uninstall simply to test a new reelase your books are gone. I suspect that "Clear Data" will do the same thing, so you can't even reset the app without uninstalling it.

It could be that this change could lead to more and more vendors going the Google way and not supplying SD card slots. The manufacturers are damned either way, so they might choose the path that generates less support headaches. "You don't have an SD card slot? " is much easier to deal with than "You deleted all my files!" or "Your SD slot doesn't work because I can't write to it! I want a new device that works!"