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Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

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Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#111

Post by megablast »

VeilEm wrote: post #5
ceejayoz wrote: post #2

In fairness, it seems this is true for Apple (broken review process) and Google (malware infestation). Oddly, I haven't heard one horror story about the Windows Phone app store.

Google Play does not have a "malware infestation". I have never once downloaded any malware, lookout has never detected any malware on my phone and I've never known anyone who has downloaded malware from Google Play. Anecdotal for sure, but given you said "infestation" you'd think I'd be crazy to download anything at all from Google Play. Absolute nonsense.

> Google Play does not have a "malware infestation". I have never once downloaded any malware, lookout has never detected any malware on my phone and I've never known anyone who has downloaded malware from Google Play.

Seriously, what is the point of saying that? There are lots of articles about the problem, but you stick to your own experiences then!

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#112

Post by wglb »

lkrubner wrote: post #105
dang wrote: post #74

That title is over the top, so we replaced it with the much more neutral first sentence of the article.

I am sorry to say this contributes to the feeling that the HN rule about titles is entirely arbitrary. Most of the time the rule seems stupidly rigid and inflexible. After all, why can't developers highlight the aspect of the article that would be of most interest to the readership of HN? But then, suddenly, an exception is made, based on wholly subjective criteria. How do you define "over the top"? Have you tried to…

I am sorry to say this contributes to the feeling that the HN rule about titles is entirely arbitrary.

It isn't, really. Editorialized titles tilt the balance in an opinionated way.

Most of the time the rule seems stupidly rigid and inflexible.

For more detail, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10877460.

Or, you can write a blog post commenting on that story, and post the blog entry to HN.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#113

Post by CamperBob2 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #86
meesterdude wrote: post #49

Not surprised by this at all. >However, the Amazon system is so broken that it potentially offers a fix for itself. When the Certification Team rejects your app, you don’t need to change the app. You do not need to respond to their requests. You do not need to make any of the changes that they demand. Since a new person reviews each submission, and since there is no limit on submissions, one way to get through the ce…

> They also have started sucking in buying things, with things like "pantry" which require you to buy a box for $5 so you can get things like soap. Delivering batches of household goods of arbitrary size profitably is a hard problem that no one has figured out. Everyone is fiddling with business models trying to make it work. I think at the end of the day shipping is expensive and trying to hide that from customers w…

Delivering batches of household goods of arbitrary size profitably is a hard problem that no one has figured out.

Wait, wait, I think I've figured it out. Raise the price. Repeat until either the transaction is sufficiently profitable, or the customers go away.

That will work better for everyone than what Amazon has started to do lately, which is prevent you from buying certain items at any price until your order exceeds $25.

Basically, Amazon has started to tell their customers "No." That's new, and I agree with the other posters who call it a bearish sign.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#114

Post by crucifiction »

goldenkey wrote: post #104
rodgerd wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Makes me totally re-evaluate AWS after seeing how its built internally. Customers care about deliverables, not elegance.

I'm pretty sure Atlassian (recently IPOed) proved that to be wrong, especially in the case when your customers are developers. Besides, bad repetitive code almost always results in bugs. If there were a ten commandments of programming, that would be #1.

The JIRA source code is available when you buy a license and it is not the pinnacle of good engineering. It is textbook Java enterprise beans gibberish engineering.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#115

Post by goldenkey »

dgemm wrote: post #108
goldenkey wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked there as well and recently left, I'm super surprised as well to see them considered with the likes of Google or Facebook, etc. Shitty middle managers are rampant. The engineering culture is defined by Levels..Level 3, 4, 5 etc. Consistency is promoted over quality. Codebases were so horribly not DRY it makes me want to vomit. Unit tests for constants -- unit tests for specific code inside of functions.…

Why should anyone care about consistency in how AWS is put together?

The same reason you should care about consistency of the way the car you drive is put together. If you use a utility, you don't want things going wrong when your life or business depends on it.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#116

Post by melted »

woah wrote: post #109
melted wrote: post #42

No one has any idea how to run an App Store. Even Apple's App Store is vastly inadequate to sell the gigantic number of apps available on it. Top N apps make out like bandits, everyone else is basically dying. It will always be power law, but IMO the tail could extend quite a bit further than it does today.

The App Store is not there to serve developers

It's not clear who or what it serves right now. It stands to reason (from simple arithmetic) that the more money developers make the more money Apple will make as well. They do make billions off that store. Making more money means surfacing more apps to more users, adapting to user preferences, employing prediction, etc. Apple doesn't seem to be doing much (if any) of that.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#117

Post by nailer »

SixSigma wrote: post #31
nailer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's how app stores began - do you remember 'Click N Run' in 2002? http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q41/mp3tunes/cnr-linspire...

The NeXT Computer and the NeXTSTEP operating system was the platform used for creating the first App Store, originally demonstrated to Steve Jobs in 1993. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT

Do you have any screenshots? Your comment originally said NeXT created bundles, which is very different from an online store for software.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#118

Post by galactoise »

I'm the same "Galactoise" quoted in the original story. I'm really happy to see the conversation that cropped up here, about the lack of value around trying to certify a mutable black box, and hopefully the power of HN is enough to get some action from the Alexa team.

I also wanted to pass along a blog post I threw together on the topic. http://www.derpgroup.com/blog/on-the-topic-of-certification

It's pretty long, but the tldr is as follows: We're all worked up about this idea of having to build switches into our code to meet arbitrary certification guidelines, only to turn them off the moment we are live in prod. It's worth noting, though, that Amazon pulls these sort of antics (bait-n-switches) on us regularly and without remorse, and that there's really no way we can even know it happened. This is arguably even more destructive to the quality of our products than trying to build for a set of capricious guidelines.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#119

Post by chetanahuja »

golergka wrote: post #33
dgemm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost like stock price and reputation among tech people are somehow completely unrelated.

Oh, they are related. It's just this relationship is rather slow — but in the end, it catches up.

Agreed. Check out Microsoft stock price progression since the 90's.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#120

Post by chetanahuja »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #21
um_ya wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well lets see... You have to pay $99 a year, you need an apple computer to add an app to their store, it takes weeks or months to add an app, and I'm sure there's more.

None of those things are problems with the review process.

"takes weeks or months to add an app"

I'd say that's a problem with the review process.

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