Ambience: Something for esoterics?
asked 2014-01-06 12:52:57 +0300
This post is a wiki. Anyone with karma >75 is welcome to improve it.
Maybe it is just because it does not work correctly on my device (see https://together.jolla.com/question/10857/toh-problem-with-store-this-the-other-half-is-not-working/): To me, the whole concept of and the communication about Ambience looks and sounds rather esoteric. And it seems, that I am not the only one. Reasons, why I believe it is esoteric:
- The question quoting just an TOH error message was the shooting star of that evening. Although being asked after 22:00 h only, it had 60 views within about an hour -- no other question of that day has got the same attention. This means: A lot of interest on a subject not really understood.
- In the description of Ambience, the User Guide (http://jolla.com/guide/) just states: "You can have an Ambience for every mood - party mood, serious mood, work mood and so on. Play around and enjoy." This may be sensible marketing speech in advertisings. As profound information in the user guide it is a little bit low on content.
- Also User Guide: "You can give a favourite Ambience a name and you can select a set of sounds too. Tap each sound event and pick from the list or from your music collection." Strange. I neither can change the name nor can I allocate specific sounds to an Ambience. Any sound changes are applied to all Ambiences the same. (Maybe, with a working TOH I would have found more than just a volume control in the Gallery, however the User Guide does not tell me, where to look for sound settings, so I looked for it on the general Settings screen. And it already caused confusion, that there is a general Settings and an Ambience settings, see https://together.jolla.com/question/8901/confusion-with-system-sound-settings-and-ambience-sounds/)
- Ambiences are not created / set up via the standard way (i.e. through "Settings") but through Gallery, very strange. In other words: First become a member of the holy orders and then you will find out about Ambience. And only once you have got the ordains of a priest, you will understand how to configure Ambience.
- The wording of the TOH error message is misleading: There is no problem with the Jolla Store in general, it is a problem of the TOH and its RFID not being granted by the Jolla Store. Typical for esoterics: Show/claim relationships that are not there and divert from real relationships.
Requests:
- Communicate about Ambience in a more straight-forward way, detailed, precise and correct. (This also includes the User Guide: According to other questions here on Together, it is not only my Jolla, that cannot allocate specific sounds to a specific Ambience. Remove marketing speech from the User Guide.)
- Make Ambience accessible and fully configurable from the Settings (even, if for a start, it is a link to Gallery only). The Settings should be the main and central point from where to specify how the Jolla operates. It should not be possible to overturn any settings made in Settings from somewhere else without indicating in the Settings, that my current settings are not applied. If something is overturned by settings elsewhere, reasons/explanations should be given. This includes the general volume slider in the Settings, which at the moment is scaled by Ambience settings: It should be noted if currently it is not scaled to 100% (or even better: Add a scaling slider showing the current Ambience scaling).
- In the Settings make it clear, if any setting is applied to a specific (the current) Ambience only.
- Make Ambience a tool for productive environments, not just to express my mood (I am not an expressive person). Many ideas have been given in other questions, e.g. https://together.jolla.com/question/1319/additional-options-for-ambience/ –– https://together.jolla.com/question/5532/connection-settings-in-ambience/ –– https://together.jolla.com/question/6977/make-vibrations-onoff-an-ambience-setting/ [already closed] –– https://together.jolla.com/question/7382/create-and-modify-ambience/ [already closed] –– https://together.jolla.com/question/10604/led-settings-in-ambiences/ –– ...)
- While it might be a good idea, to couple a certain Ambience to a certain TOH: Allow for manual creation, full access to all settings and selection of Ambience independent from any TOH!
- Do not couple a TOH to a user ID in the Jolla store or make it in any other way traceable, what TOH I use (currently have installed and/or use in general)!
"Also User Guide: "You can give a favourite Ambience [..]" Strange. I neither can change the name nor can I allocate specific sounds to an Ambience."
For me all this is actually working but only for ambiences which I created myself. Have you created an ambience yourself and does it work for those?
minnist ( 2014-01-06 15:01:57 +0300 )edit"The wording of the TOH error message is misleading: There is no problem with the Joll[...]"
How do you know what the reason for the problem? I have the same issue and I don't know what the reason is. Could be the tag in the THO, the store, the NFC of the or the daemon checking for the THO?!
minnist ( 2014-01-06 15:06:32 +0300 )edit"Make Ambience accessible and fully configurable from the Settings (even, [..] it is a link [...]"
The link would be nice I guess and probably avoid some confusion. However, the configuration in the settings seem to be the default settings if no respective settings are found in the ambience config.
minnist ( 2014-01-06 15:12:15 +0300 )edit"In the Settings make it clear, if any setting is applied to a specific (the current) Ambience only."
I guess it is clear, the settings are accessed through the respective ambience which reside in the ambience in the gallery.
minnist ( 2014-01-06 15:14:09 +0300 )editFrankly if last point is true, i.e., the id/user pair of the attached TOH is transmitted to Jolla, then I don't see what the point is? Does that mean Jolla can also disable TOH or prevent me from downloading some code to get it to work? All this to prevent the sharing of exclusive content?
minnist ( 2014-01-06 15:23:02 +0300 )edit