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I had been using a great app that’s been around since before the iPhone came out (PocketMoney on Palm). They rewrote it for IOS, and it was able to import the d

• hansvm 6y ago
  Navionics had a variety of bathymetric charts in the app store that underwent a similar fate when they were bought by Garmin. It didn't matter that I'd paid $20-$30 (forget the exact value) for a lifetime license on a piece of software; they felt the need to shove a crippling update onto the version I'd paid for before releasing a new product line. On the bright side, in the years since I bought their app a free, better competitor was released, but I still don't think that absolves them of their responsibility.
  • flowcont 6y ago
    Off-topic, but what is the Navionics free, better competitor? Thanks.
    • hansvm 6y ago
      Polaris Navigation GPS. It was hyperbolic of me to say that they're "better" in every way, but they cover all my personal marine use cases and several others, so I was excited when I found their app.
• causality0 6y ago
  Not even that is risk-free. I was doxxed by a developer after Google's idiotic real-name policy put me in his crosshairs for my one-star review.
  • HenryBemis 6y ago
    Tip/suggestion: Make a separate Google account with fake name/suername for reviews on Google. I have a few Google accounts. Only one is my actual name. Especially for games and reviews I use an aliased account (just like I use an alias here). Google can still track me I guess (IP) but a single dev will never find who UnrealName UnrealSurname is. And I do tend to leave brutally honest and detailed feedbacks whether positive or negative.
    • scns 6y ago
      Let us hope this little trick will not get all of your accounts suspended without recourse.
    • markdown 6y ago
      You can't create a Google account these days without a phone number, and you can't reuse phone numbers. Worse, in my country, you need to register to get a phone number (anonymous /unregistered sims were outlawed a few years ago).
      • krageon 6y ago
        You can get digital disposable phone numbers online
        • wolco 6y ago
          Google/Facebook block those.
      • mclehman 6y ago
        I was just able to create a new google account with no phone number.
• iliketosleep 6y ago
  If it's an option for you, it is possible to downgrade most apps if you jailbreak your phone and install a downgrade tweak.
  • asdff 6y ago
    Some apps are growing wise to holdout users, and force you to update to continue using services. That's ultimately been the death knell in every jailbreak effort I try, some essential app will eventually force me off the jailbroken iOS version.
    • zelos 6y ago
      That’s not necessarily out of malice, though. Quite possibly the older version is using some server endpoint or format that the developer has deprecated and they want to reduce their maintenance burden.
      • krageon 6y ago
        > That’s not necessarily out of malice It is not malice, it's laziness and stupidity. Most apps are so trivial it is absolutely not necessary to break compatibility when you release a new version.
        • dividedbyzero 6y ago
          Depending on the app, it's just sound security. On a jailbroken device, you cannot assume any of the OS safeguards are still in place. On a stock iOS device, there's pretty much no relevant malware that could be on that device. On a jailbroken device, all bets are off.
• MAMAMassakali 6y ago
  I'll check if I am able to extract the data.
  • orev 6y ago
    It’s in an SQLite file, and I just happen to be the type of person who made backups of the actual files every few months. I’m sure I could probably figure it out, but I’m just annoyed that something that just worked is now a big project.
• darkwater 6y ago
  I'm aware that I will sound condescending but... that's exactly why people "invented" opensource (and/or free software if you prefer). I'm sorry for your problem nonetheless.
  • jacquesm 6y ago
    App stores and SaaS do an end run around open source.
    • tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      And to be frank, a lot of it at the application level is mediocre.
    • moring 6y ago
      Isn't that a false dichotomy? The package repos from Linux distros are basically open-source app stores (in the full sense, only those that support payment are). With regards to SaaS, nothing prevents open source SaaS software that can be set up for multiple small to middle-sized-user bases. One could argue that things like phpBB is exactly that. They might even connect to each other to form a larger network... I'm still hoping for a major breakthrough in this area.
    • pitay 6y ago
      SaaS does an end run around GPL in particular. Unless it is Affero GPL.
    • hvis 6y ago
      Yes and no. At least in this case the OP could have installed a different version of the app (older or customized), and kept the 20 years of data usable.
    • sumtechguy 6y ago
      You may be right. You can not even usually go back to an older version of an application if you want undo some bad decision by the developer. Source code is spotty if you can get at it. Your data is locked in by them on some server you do not control. In some cases they do not even really control it. I would add the other anti pattern companies use is opensource vendor lock in. They take what would basically be a 'meh' product and put good stuff ontop of it. But to get that 'good stuff' you have to buy their service contract. Sure you are using some open source. But the key bits are still proprietary.
• ekianjo 6y ago
  > Then sadly the author died, and it languished for a while until it was sold to someone else. The new owner seemed to try to keep it going, but then finally gave up last year and crammed an absolutely awful “update” that was actually a totally different software via the automatic update process. Everyone’s financial data got locked up in this new version that is almost useless. ~20 years of financial tracking just gone. To make it worse, they did it in December, just before people would need to pull reports for tax season. It's usually better to design your (critical) data around formats that can be shared across a multitude of applications than on the bet than a single app will forever exist. Of course, it's a trade-off between convenience and flexibility.
  • tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Is there an open format for bookkeeping data? I suppose you have ledger-cli but that's hardly useful for normal people.
    • shawnz 6y ago
      There is OFX format: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Financial_Exchange
    • chmod775 6y ago
      CSV file(s)? It's not like the underlying data is in any way complicated. A lot of software can export and import these. Those that can't export to CSV have usually another way of getting that data into a spreadsheet application, from where you can export it as CSV... And yes I know CSV technically sucks (varying encoding, lax standards, etc.), but it's the lowest common denominator for a lot of software.
      • jmnicolas 6y ago
        SqLite is the solution to all our CSV problems.
    • rraghur 6y ago
• Joeri 6y ago
  There are very convoluted ways to backup and restore apps and data on iOS, even to go back to an older version of an app, but they require a lot of fiddling (literally, with fiddler), and if the app has changed its data format you need to have a backup of the old data in a format that can be restored. It would be nice if apple added time machine to iOS and iPadOS and let you restore any previous version of an app and its data. This example demonstrates that the walled garden is not as safe as people think it is. Granted, reviewing every update in detail is a monumental task. Then again, this is why apple takes the 30%. I don't believe apple can catch all bad updates before they get sent out. An easy ability to revert to an older version of an app and its data would be very useful. Given how an iCloud-powered time machine for iOS would slurp up iCloud storage and push people to higher paid tiers I'm amazed they haven't done it before.
  • saagarjha 6y ago
    Not only does Apple not care, they themselves have pushed updates to iTunes to remove this functionality…
• HenryBemis 6y ago
  If it ain't broken, don't fix it... Updates on phones: I had been blessed (?) with having a few iPhones in my life. After getting burned from a crappy update I changed my tactics. I have switched off the "automatic updates". I manually updated on iphone5 and if the update was good I'd proceed to update When I switched to android I do the same with a phone and a tablet. I only update 'blindly' my e-banking apps. Everything else (e.g. I frequently used CamScanner) does not get updated. Ever For the PC, I use WFC and I block all apps that don't meet internet connection to work. VLC? Excel? Your use may be different of course. You may need the autonatic translation features of Word. I don't. Outlook only speaks to my email server, not MS. winRAR? Why? V5 is good enough. And so on.. I too have been burned by Devs removing features from the "current" version and pushing them to a paid one, or removing them altogether because of maintenance,shifting them to other products they run, and many many other reasons. Steve Gibson says: if you didn't go looking for it, so not install it. My XYZ app works just find on its current version. Do I want an update? No thank you. A tax software could be different though, tax code changes every now and then and you can't escape the updates.
• MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  This is a real 'Stallman moment'. The issue there is less about updates, than about non-Free software (the thing the FSF talk about), and data silos (the thing the IndieWeb folks talk about). You committed to a non-Free software solution, the maintainers of which held all the power over the software, denying you the freedom to have the software do as you wish. When they make a decision, it's to maximise their benefit, not yours. (They might also do so incompetently.) When they make a decision against your interests, unfortunately you have little recourse.
  • Silhouette 6y ago
    The modern problem of having your data locked up is a much bigger one than the old arguments about Free Software. Data portability would be a good solution to a lot of the problems with user-hostile technologies. The trouble is, given the vast range of things we do with technology, it may be unreasonable or impractical to create a universal obligation for software developers to provide export facilities that allow transfer of the data in a standard format. For example, what if there is no standard format, perhaps because your software genuinely does something new or in a different way? Going after hardware developers who try to contain data within their walled gardens isn't a bad idea, though. For example, the GDPR imposes certain requirements on data controllers to provide for data portability, and imposing similar measures on the makers of devices could both solve immediate problems for some users and provide for much more competition in the marketplace.
    • swiley 6y ago
      Is it so hard to just give the user a sql dump of all of their data? (or a json blob if it’s some nosql thing.) If it’s not in a db then just give them the files. None of that seems complicated.
      • Silhouette 6y ago
        Surely this will depend on what your software does and the data it works with. Huge amounts of software, particularly embedded software, doesn't have any sort of single structured database or a simple set of data files that you could just dump. Even where you do have these things, the dump won't be worth much unless the DB schema or file structure can be successfully interpreted in order to reconstruct the meaning of the underlying data within some other system. That might or might not be easy, depending on how complicated the original data formats were. If it's something common and widely understood, perhaps some text a user wrote or a photo they saved, that's one thing. But what about something more specialised? Suppose you're moving to a new home. How do you export the training data from the AI in your old smart front door lock, which now recognises your friends and family's faces, so you can set up the smart locks on your new home to recognise the same people? Unless there are industry standards for representing whatever data you're working with, providing portability between applications or devices that offer similar functionality from different manufacturers/developers is always going to be a problem. Encouraging standardisation is certainly beneficial here, but imposing some sort of blanket obligation on the manufacturers/developers to provide import/export functionality in the absence of any relevant format probably isn't.
• m463 6y ago
  The app I used was "gas cubby" recommended by a friend to keep track of my car. You could record your fillups and compute gas mileage and lots of other statistics. You could keep track of the vin, the insurance policy number, part numbers and service intervals. I slowly put all my data into it and... The app was sold, and one day they changed it and uploaded all my data to the cloud. I deleted the app (and apparently all my data). what jerks.
• jmnicolas 6y ago
  I find myself in kind of the same case as you. I use a personal finance app on Android that I chose because it wasn't connected, so my data stays on the phone if I don't manually save it elsewhere. 2 years ago I looked at the SqLite db with the project to build a desktop app that would use this db, but I didn't commit to it. Last week I wanted to finally build the app but I discovered that the developer had encrypted the db with AES256 in one of the previous updates. I plan on contacting him to see if I can convince him to give me a way to read my data but I'm afraid that if he won't do that or I would potentially have the key to all his users db.