I thought it was just me so I kept quiet. But looks like other customers complain about this too. Just read this review on amazon about C8. Ultimately arrogance can kill the company:
Unfortunately after years of using Hubitat and recommending it to lots of other folks, I've just reached a point where I can no longer recommend it.
The hubs have bad memory leaks and will routinely run out of memory, lock up and freeze and need to be rebooted. The developers don't care.
They'll remove functionality between upgrades: Devs don't care.
They'll lock you out of accessing your own data: Devs don't care.
And not only do they not care. They will rudely mock you for even suggesting that these problems are actual problems.
Before purchasing check out the Hubitat community and read the responses from Bruce (bravenel) and Mike (mike.maxwell) to get an idea for just how hostile they are to user requests.
Responding to these kinds of posts / situations can often be treacherous.... On the one hand I want to stand and defend HE's record, the Community and the responsiveness and engagement by the HE staff in dealing, frankly with any issues that users raise. On the other hand, I don't want to completely discount the user experience for the person who posted the comment that was quoted. I personally have sailed relatively comfortably through my C-8 upgrade, without any major Zigbee or memory issues, at least not that drove me to write such a critique as the one quoted.
I've wanted to reduce my responses to these topics at times.... But some just have too many triggers.... One major gripe would be the statement that the "dev's don't care". Let me go and re-fill my glass.....
For me starting out in an IT career... while it was not a driving factor while studying at University or as I started my working career, I soon became addicted to the prospect of users getting a positive outcome and improving their (typically working) life as a result of the work I was doing. Some may take a cynical view and say some people are only interested in pleasing their bosses to improve their own career and professional status.... But that hasn't been my experience with the true developers I have worked with. And in a relatively small organisation like Hubitat I expect that is likely the ethos for the developers delivering our platform of choice (looking to improve the outcomes for the users of the HE platform).
When it comes to dealing with Bruce, Mike and other HE staff... It's rare, from my assessment, for companies to offer up the senior members of staff to engage so actively in conversation with users of the product (I'm sure there are plenty of examples people could now quote to prove me wrong, but certainly in this space of HA, that hasn't been my experience). I'm not going to pretend I have always agreed with their responses on the Community, but that's life, at least that can be the response when you are relatively detached from the conversation. If you feel you are somehow the target of some kind of ridicule or poor treatment, I could understand feeling aggrieved, but to post about it publicly as a reflection on the company as a whole, where the prosperity of other employees is involved, seems an overreach. I guess it can depend on the significance of what is being proposed....
People are probably not going to read too much past this point... So all I would end on would be.... I would caution people to temper their emotions towards someone that posts a provocative critique... Behind the emotion is a user experience that is likely not ideal, but still worth assessment, just not with so much emotion from either side of the emotion spectrum. Just because someone comes at us with a strong negative tone with experiences that doesn't tally with our own, let's not automatically rebuke their claims as being inaccurate because they don't align with our experience, but try to understand their point of view.
Not sure I got to a logical point there.... but hopefully you got something out of that rambling rant...
But if Iām not mistaken, the gist is that these threads about strongly held but unsupported opinions get to be pretty pointless, pretty quick. Sometimes they even start out that way.
There are a couple of people who have frequented this forum that simply want to complain or stir the pot and not want to have any sort of resolution. I have a suspicion of who this is but I won't say for sure. The whole thing about "locking you out of accessing your own data" is the tell and it's because they can't backup the z-wave and zigbee radios without a subscription. They're also mad because they're past the 30 day amazon return window. This is honestly not something I would worry about. The majority of users are happy with the product and know where things stand with both this community and the devs at hubitat.
If nothing else it serves as a reminder to people that once you inject emotion into issue like those quoted it doesn't help, best to keep things in this space factual and understand you will not always get what you want. Which is kind of ironic....
By that I mean it feels like a repeating topic. Admittedly not particularly frequent, but not a new one... No reflection on your or Mark... Just a more general observation.
Ahh.... This will always be a repeating conversation because we can't help ourselves. Reading incredulous posts like this forces us to because we're weak Seriously though... When I see posts like that I simply reply that they are a rare issue and then point out they aren't looking for a fix or they didn't pay attention to the documentation or something spelled out very publicly. Then they just grumble and go away. As I said though I'm pretty sure who this is and if you look at certain keywords for the last 2 weeks you'll see who it is too...
Repeated poor-form is worth calling out, but I am also conscious of how that or other response may appear to others without some of that context. I wouldn't want people to think that simply offering a criticism is swiftly rebuked without providing that background to explain the response.
Because of the people on this forum (you and others) I find myself taking a breath before replying to that kind of person as I don't wanna be "that guy". (I'm already "that guy for enough crap ). I try to balance my responses and if someone is becoming increasing hostile I'll let someone else take over usually. This place has done a good job at curbing my temper..lol.. You mooks are the reason I keep coming back here.
It takes all kinds.... avoiding an argument or calling a spade a spade is not always helpful... Sometimes we need people to be blunt... Which I'm not entirely against... So don't hold back too often.... Even for me...
I tend to think allot of the problems people have is the at they expect our little ARM powered smart home box to act just like a cloud based system that is the wild west with little to no resource limitations. These little boxes do have limits. They are great for what they can do. I always cringe when I see comments about memory leaks as I tend to think that it is more of a reflection of what we are asking the hub to do instead of a memory leak.
I have been at the end of a response from HE staff that was blunt, but I have also received some help from him when working on a programming idea. I am confident the response was just answering the question and nothing negative was behind it. I think we all need to remember that sometimes text is easy to come across blunt and harsh when it isn't meant to be. I know I am guilty of that at times too.
One of the things on here I don't usually mind is being corrected on something. Either through my own mis-reading something (hey you kinda just skim when on the toilet and haven't had your coffee yet) or a mis-perception about something. It adds to my own knowledge base and even if it sounds harsh, I always appreciate it.,
I do agree with this and sometimes have thought responses were a little harsh, but its not typically directed at me so I just stay out of it at that point. I also understand that some people (like me) may be straight to the point and don't beat around the bush, especially when you think (know) you are right. This at times has lead to my statements in my work place being considered rude by others. Not saying this is the case here but certainly possible.
As for features being removed, yes it has been done, and when there was significant unexpected resistance they brought some things back as legacy apps with no future development. So I would say they for sure do care about the users feedback.
Locking out of data, I would assume this is in relation to the hot topic of backups being encrypted and not able to be extracted or edited. This is a very big deal to a very select few people, and not a big deal to most everyone else. I am not aware of anything else that would fit into that statement.
The fact that some people think because parts of HE are open source that they have a right to look at the code and when they find out they can't they get a little nuts and make baseless accusations regarding security and what not.... Makes you shake your head..
One major gripe would be the statement that the "dev's don't care". Let me go and re-fill my glass.....
Seriously though... When I see posts like that I simply reply that they are a rare issue and then point out they aren't looking for a fix or they didn't pay attention to the documentation or something spelled out very publicly. Then they just grumble and go away. As I said though I'm pretty sure who this is and if you look at certain keywords for the last 2 weeks you'll see who it is too...
