From a practical standpoint, why would you not try to pass the certification process first with a bare-bones, minimally viable service designed specifically to pass certification? Then iterate on top once it is in.
Amazon has no idea how to run an app store
171–178 of 178 posts
Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store
#172The Firefox Marketplace does the exact same thing. One simply submits a URL, it gets approved, then becomes available. Any changes made afterwards go unnoticed by moderators.
For FirefoxOS "hosted" apps this is true, but they also don't have access to any significant APIs. Only "packaged" apps do.
This is also not true for add-ons (for desktop/mobile or FirefoxOS), these are packaged as zip files and can't be arbitrarily changed.
However, there is the problem however of the app or add-on downloading and running code from the internet unchecked, which is probably intractable to do in an automated way (at least for the current APIs exposed, and for a dynamic language like JS), manual review is required.
Mozilla requires manual review, and Apple disallows interpreters. I'm not sure what if anything Google does about this problem for Android.
Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are assuming that the only purpose of certification is to catch actively malicious developers. I can think of many other perfectly good reasons to have one: to make sure server response times are fast enough, to make sure it fits the guidelines for types of content they want in their ecosystem, to make sure it doesn't blatantly violate any trademarks, etc. I don't think the concept of a certification process is t…
But that doesn't refute the parent's point: since the content at a URL is inherently mutable, they could judge that (at time of submission) some app is the type of content they want in their ecosystem, and then seconds after approval, it no longer is.
Right. Like I said, it doesn't do much for a malicious developer actively trying to subvert the process. That doesn't mean it's useless. I would guess most problematic apps are not malicious, but are an honest misunderstanding or disagreement about what level of quality is acceptable or what types of services are allowed.
A moderately clever developer could sneak something past the Apple app store review too. Wasn't there a flashlight app that included a secret wifi tethering tool?
Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 exc…
Maybe the current prices are already low enough that raising them would make the customers go away?
I can only speak for myself. Seriously, are people actually defending Amazon's add-on items? I'd love to hear more about the business rationale, no snark intended.
Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store
#175Actual title: Amazon has absolutely no idea how to run an app store Why did the title change? It used to be the same as the original article, but now it's been needlessly editorialized to be kinder to amazon. Seriously? What the fuck. That's not HN's job, and is a disservice to the article, and the community.
The title was obvious linkbait, so we changed it in accordance with the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . We're always happy to change a title again if someone can suggest a better one: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... . Edit: Ok, since people feel so strongly about this, let's restore the original title minus the high-octane "absolutely". If I hadn't bee…
It's reflexive because it's dealing with trust and the trust happens to be polarized due to the subject. We know the rules, but sometimes choose to break them when it matters. I think it's fine to call this out in the thread, for what it's worth.
I appreciate you for pondering on these things! Goodness knows I wouldn't want to moderate this place.
Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no reference though. It's just: > creating the first App Store which was originally demonstrated to Steve Jobs in 1993 without any footnotes. Would have loved to actually read something on the topic.
I only know really know about it from memory and even then it's from reading PC-World, not direct experience. The Bundle was one of those great ideas for users that got kicked in the nuts by Copy Protection methods until signing and activation was bult into the OS proper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundle_%28OS_X%29 Even on early Windows all you had to do was xcopy a directory to share it with friends. My Quake2 f…
Yeah, I get what you're saying about bundles, and I think they're a great idea, I just want to see if you have anything about what you said re: a place to buy bundles online.
Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store
#177[deleted]
Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store
#178Follow-up, this post getting love on HN seems to have helped us get their attention. We had a conference call with them where we were able to work through a lot of the issues we were facing:
http://www.derpgroup.com/blog/the-certification-saga-problem...