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Last active April 10, 2025 13:29
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Shortcomings/gripes/complaints/missing features in products or improvement/automation ideas
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product-shortcomings.md

Product Shortcomings

This is an attempt to record shortcomings in products. I might feel like there is no proper channel for me to complain about the thing, so I attempt to record them here.

Some of these things might be fodder for my own attempts at providing solutions. When I feel like I have time to try to code for fun, I might try to hack things up with respect to these issues.

  • BigTime
    • The timers for tracking your time usage throughout the day use the pattern setInterval(() => {numberOfSeconds++; update();}, 1000) while the page is open. On desktop, this means that the timer will be 10 seconds or so behind after 5 minutes or minutes behind after an hour or more if your device sleeps. On mobile, this means that the timer will completely stop while your browser isn’t foregrounded.
      • Workaround: Fortunately, the webapp recalculates the passed time using a server-stored start time if you refresh the page. So be sure to refresh the page immediately before stopping a timer or starting another one (which implicitly stops the current one).
  • devdocs
    • When accessing the app occasionally, the documentation is immediately covered by ChangeLog entries which require mouse dismissal devdocs#728
  • Jira
    • notifications
      • Configuration: notifications are configured globally. If you want comment edit notifications, etc., you have no control in your account. The options chosen by the project itself control that. It is impossible to do things like 1. subscribe to new issues for this project (instead get added to the group or list of users configured in the global settings) 2. subscribe to a specific type of notification for a specific issue (instead choose “Watch” and hope that the notification you want is configured in the global settings to send notifications to “All Watchers”). I expected GitHub or Drupal Project Issue which provide project-level watch settings as well as issue-level watch settings.
    • time zones
      • Detection support: the website does not use the browser’s local time (except for relative time calculation, see below). I shouldn’t have to go into a page and manually specify my time zone every time. The browser provides that information to the web page. Why keep making me work so hard manually?>
      • Webpage relative time formatting: if you set your Atlassian account’s time zone to “America/Chicago” but are in “America/Detroit”, the webpage renders time zones in Central Time but the JavaScript library which renders relative times shows “1 hour ago” instead of “now”. They have the information necessary to calculate the relative time correctly, but they instead tell the web browser to treat a non-local time as if it were local.
  • Todoist
  • Twitter
    • Android app
      • Does not support back button correctly. If you tap on a notification while in another app, view the tweet, then pressing back should return directly to the prior app (though I would be fine if it behaved like the Reddit app which returns to the app’s main listing screen prior to returning to the prior app). Instead, pressing back once returns you to the main Twitter screen and pressing back again exits to the home screen instead of popping the top activity off of the stack. https://twitter.com/ohnobinki/status/1534945846181126145
  • Discord: Discord gripes
  • Roborock
    • S4/S5 Max does not “try hard” to discover the correct map (if you moved it to a different floor) when pushing the Home button. reddit thread
    • Android app currently has a 3.5s loading animation. reddit thread
  • Google
    • Calendar
    • Tasks
      • Task redisplification. If the Calendar or Tasks app installs updates or I reboot my Android, any notifications are lost because the app only attempts to display notifications when they become due. I’d like to have my entire backlog of tasks accessible through Android notifications. Various other feature desires depend on this.
      • Prioritization. When tasks are displayed in notifications, some which I want to do but are not critical will push back more important/real tasks. I want to be able to have the real/important/critical tasks displayed first always.
      • Completabiliy: It would be nice if tasks could be displayed and recalled depending on whether or not they are actually completable. This depends on recognizing external conditions.
        • Location aware/geofenced tasks. I cannot water the plants when I am not at home. I would like some tasks to show up only while I am at home (e.g., notifications recalled when not home, redisplayed when at home). This is similar to the whole “remind me to do something when I get home” Assistant feature, but I’d like to manage it through tasks and be recallable and completable rather than one-time triggered and dismissable.
        • Task displacement. If I work on something and realize something else is required first, I might want to make that a task and hide the original task until that other task is completed.
      • setTimeout() style recurrance. For example, once I complete my “check on the kombucha” task, I want another one scheduled for 3 weeks later after I complete the task. Not 2 weeks after the notification appeared
      • Task API shortcomings for using external applications like Provider for Google Calendar extension for Lightning (Thunderbird Calendar add-on)
    • Photos
      • Rich tags/descriptions using arbitrary taxonomies with rich search. E.g., I want to be able to tag a photo as taken by of with or of someone and distinguish those when searching
  • Microsoft
    • Windows
      • Terminal
        • Terminal windows just crash/close after a month or so of being open. This is apparently due to updates installing and should eventually stop happening with some newer version of Windows. However, the concept of being able to open a terminal window and run something and not worry about it being killed by the OS for, uh, years is simply gone with Terminal. https://superuser.com/questions/1676001/windows-stop-killing-my-terminals-for-an-update
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