Adium forces users to update?? (is it a feature?)

donkei · Post by **donkei** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 9:33 pm

Hi guys,
I wanna file a serious complaint. Why Adium keeps crashing whenever new version is available to download?
The longer the new update come out, the longer Adium can be stable.

It's such a disgrace to force users to always update to newer version. Some users would surely prefer the old versions if the new versions just offer stuffs they're not interested in. Especially if the new one is BLOATware wih higher system requirements.

I'm terribly dissapointed, because whenever my Adium is acting weird, the solution is usually easy to guess: new update available.

Sometimes I wish Adium will never be updated anymore, so that the recent version can always be stable. Furthermore, lots of new features are actually useless to novice users as most of top-wanted features are apparently not done yet.

Please dont act microsoft. or else I can guess what's coming: $400 price tag for Adium with 10 different versions bloatware.

sorry if it's too harsh, I'm honestly frustrated by this 'Adium feature'

aptenergy · Post by **aptenergy** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 9:54 pm

Um... what?

Adium hasn't been updated for over a year. It was just recently that 1.0 came out. If you're referring to the 1.0 betas, they are clearly marked that they can be unstable and might not work all the time. They are designed so that users can offer feedback and help test things; by no means were they supposed to be production versions, which is why they weren't published on VersionTracker or MacUpdate. They pushed a lot of beta versions to keep ironing out bugs and gathering feedback. They were NOT meant for general consumption. And you can easily ignore updates of Adium too.

The idea that the same version of Adium gets more stable over time doesn't make any sense. If Adium is acting weird, there is probably a bug that a new version will fix. If your version of Adium fritzes up with a different issue during every beta release, I'd point to your system setup rather than Adium.

Adium is licensed under the GPL. Which means it's free and will stay free. Your comparison to Microsoft has no justification whatsoever - there have never been concurrent Adium releases.

I've found most of the features in Adium very useful, and over the betas, it's not as if 1000s of new features have been added. And fixing the problems you're probably referring to (video, etc.) are not simply up to the Adium team. It requires a lot of work, much more than you can guess. Have you ever heard of libgaim?

Is your issue that the updater feature of Adium is crashing or something?

donkei · Post by **donkei** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 10:16 pm

sorry I was just frustrated as I was chatting with important client and the frequent crashes were just disturbing. however, I'm still upset with the main issue I raised here.

Adium hasn't been updated for over a year. It was just recently that 1.0 came out.

EXACTLY! it's been over a year since my adium last crashed!! and that was when the last public version of adium came out (0.89.1)

In the past, updates were much more frequent, and whenever the new public version was out, my adium would keep crashing until I update it. I've made peace with Adium over the last year, and interestingly there has been no update in that while. Now, when my Adium keeps crashing again, my first guess was straightly new public version update. and guess what? I'm right.

Post by **evands** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 10:53 pm

So you're saying that when Adium 1.0 was released, Adium 0.89.1 began crashing for you?

Post by **bgannin** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 1:04 am

All you've done is draw an inflammatory correlation, not provide any evidence. Updates are designed to fixes crashes, not generate them, and certainly can't do so in prior versions (that's technically impossible AFAIK.)

As to the rest of your rant, it's rather silly. To cease development of an application because you feel updates are an annoyance is supercilious and rude because the efforts of Adium's developers are pro bono and community driven. Supporting older versions and platforms is an exponential cost for development, and Adium already provides a pretty solid swath for all users.

You aren't forced to upgrade. For all we care you can keep 0.89.1 until 10.9 is released. It will not be supported, fixed, or addressed again though and when crashes happen, connections break, or anything else occurs, you'll not be able to get support - you'll be pointed to the source or an update, which is what the developers' focus is on.

TheSilverFox06 · Post by **TheSilverFox06** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 2:03 am

The release of 1.0 will not be the cause of 0.89.1 instabilities for the same reason that the release of a newer model of my car will not cause my car to begin breaking down.

FredAkbar · Post by **FredAkbar** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 2:08 am

Could there be a bug in the new-version checker, such that Adium crashes for donkei when it tries to report a new version? That's the only possibility I see. Donkei, even if this is the case, it's a bug, not any kind of evil tactics by the Adium developers.

Post by **evands** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 2:49 am

FredAkbar wrote:Could there be a bug in the new-version checker, such that Adium crashes for donkei when it tries to report a new version? That's the only possibility I see. Donkei, even if this is the case, it's a bug, not any kind of evil tactics by the Adium developers.

I considered that when I read his post, too -- it'd have to be one heck of a subtle bug for the version checking code in 0.8x, which was used for a loooong time (nearly 2 years) to have a problem previously unreported and undetected.

Post by **The_Tick** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 3:03 am

We don't have the resources to support older versions, but if they work for you we're not going to stop you from using them.

This isn't how we operate. You've got 2 devs, multiple users, and now myself all responding saying that you are misguided.

Simply put, if you'd like to continue this discussion and just vent, we're going to have to lock this thread. However, if you could tell us more about the actual crashing that you are seeing, what the symptoms are, what setup you have, etc, then maybe we can make it so that you don't have to update.

donkei · Post by **donkei** » Sat Feb 10, 2007 8:54 pm

evands wrote:So you're saying that when Adium 1.0 was released, Adium 0.89.1 began crashing for you?

true.

Post by **Crypt** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 12:27 am

donkei wrote:
evands wrote:So you're saying that when Adium 1.0 was released, Adium 0.89.1 began crashing for you?
true.

Considering this is a single case, i would just call this coincidence.

donkei · Post by **donkei** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 2:37 am

Crypt wrote:
donkei wrote:
evands wrote:So you're saying that when Adium 1.0 was released, Adium 0.89.1 began crashing for you?
true.
Considering this is a single case, i would just call this coincidence.

yes, hopefully it's just my powerbook.. I've updated to v1 and it's all working again

Post by **Crypt** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 3:12 am

donkei wrote:
Crypt wrote:
donkei wrote: true.
Considering this is a single case, i would just call this coincidence.
yes, hopefully it's just my powerbook.. I've updated to v1 and it's all working again

Sounds like everything is working good.

*slams hood of car shut*