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by wtmt
3696 days ago
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I almost guessed the name of the company by looking at the headline, but I didn't know the background story and the structure of it. I had assumed the article was about Global Delight, an arm of Robosoft. Global Delight seems to have been a bit disingenuous from the beginning. In 2009, it released an app called Voila, which was a straight out copy of Realmacsoftware's LittleSnapper. [1][2] When GlobalDelight started iOS apps, it copied Camera+ (made by tap tap tap - John Casasanta of MacHeist, Lisa Bettany and others) and released "Camera Plus" (this app was made the free app of the week this week). Why they had to also use a similar sounding makes me wonder if they really wanted to trick people and get some sales away from Camera+. As for the Boom volume booster on the Mac, it has the same potential to damage your speakers as VLC could if you boost the volume beyond 100%. It's useful in certain cases, but I wouldn't recommend prolonged use of such apps. It's not like Apple and other notebook manufacturers (on the Windows PC side) and OS makers intentionally cap the volume output of the speakers for no good reason. Overall, every time I hear the Global Delight name, I feel bad that the company could have been a lot more without having to plagiarize so much if it had wanted to. [1]: http://web.archive.org/web/20090708143947/http://www.realmac... [2]: http://macheist.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=15395 |
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What's wrong with copying someone else's features ?
AFAIK Camera Plus was released BEFORE Camera+. But it was easily beaten by the other and it became so popular that now it seems like it was the other way around.
But yeah Boom is a bit over hyped. It doesn't increase your speaker output beyond the permitted maximum and so it can't really do any damage. Its just applying a limiter / compressor to your audio output. The thing is that noone has bothered to make something cheaper or free.
Robosoft was working on Apple Tech way before it was cool (from 1995..). A lot of the experienced Apple developers in India may have had their origins at Robosoft.
One minor but important aspect missing in the PR of the essay is about how they treat their employees. Anyone joining them fresh out of college has to deposit an amount equivalent to half their starting salary in a bank account for which you surrender the papers to the company.
If you leave within 3 years , the amount is forfeited. Now this is an incredibly shabby way to treat your developers. They claim it's to recover training expenses , but yeah 3 years !? Gimme a break.
Not exactly the "global" startup they claim to be. If you think I'm lying just go go to glass door and read their reviews. Remember to sort by date.
I didn't write this to crib on my employer but to add some perspective. Sometimes devs on places like HN forget how lucky and privileged they are to be treated so well. This is how Indian developers are treated even at some companies doing good work that is globally competitive.
But all in all it's still a pretty impressive achievement. I admire what they have done. However the building mentioned in the article is only half full even after the company has been in operation for 15 years.
I'd like to think that one of the reasons they've never reached their true potential because of the high attrition resulting from how they treat their developers.
But then that's how Indian IT consulting works. Keep a small skeleton crew of experienced "managers" or "lead developers",while most of the actual work is done by fresh grads , who are then billed to the client as "experienced senior developers". By the time they get actually experienced and start demanding more , replace them with another set of grads , chain them to the company , rinse and repeat.
Don't hate the player , hate the game and all that.