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Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

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Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#181

Post by postsantum »

sandGorgon wrote: post #51

My developer account has been getting mails about "apps that are not compliant with permission requirements". The problem is that these are 3 year old, UNPUBLISHED apps. Turns out, you cannot delete old apps . You can only unpublish them. Google will still keep the app up if even one phone has the app installed. I wrote back saying that this is a years-old app that I no longer even have the source code to. The reply…

>>Finally I got a a notice my apps were deleted with a warning email

Suspended or removed?

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#183

Post by bad_user »

xvector wrote: post #167
bad_user wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an iPhone user currently, have been for some time. However all of the points you mentioned are still true. There is no open source in iOS and the entire platform has an anti open source culture. Android has a lot of open source apps available, including an app store meant just for open source ( https://www.f-droid.org/ ). If you don't like Google Play, at the very least you can distribute your app independently w…

> at the very least you can distribute your app independently without jailbreaking the phone. The discussion in the article is about developers. If you’re kicked off of Play by a robot, there’s nothing you can do. > with ads-blocking extensions and everything, as the default browser. Ad-blocking is easy and well-supported in Safari. Safari’s tracking prevention extends far beyond anything Firefox has even with the be…

The discussion is indeed relevant to developers and developers can distribute apps outside of Play. How is that not relevant?

Also, having worked on an actual anti-ad-blocking platform I can tell you that Safari's content blockers are shit. They are the easiest to detect and circumvent and the reason for why many publishers still don't is because (1) they don't know it's possible, or (2) they are afraid of pissing visitors off, especially given growing GDPR concerns.

The most potent ad-blocker on the market is uBlock Origin. And Firefox on Android supports it, the only mobile browser that does. Soon to be the only desktop browser too, but that's another discussion.

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#184

Post by ajscanlan »

KenanSulayman wrote: post #161
Illniyar wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those things don't really matter, the only thing that matters is that you cannot sideload apps in iOS. As long as you can sideload apps in android, it will always have a better reputation than somewhere you cannot. But even those things you mention, they are all part of a scale, even if android becomes more closed-source it's still miles more open-source than iOS, even if it delays new app submissions it's still…

Just resign the app IPA file and you can literally drag and drop it through Xcode onto your iOS devices. Unless you mean pirating apps with sideloading...

To run an .ipa on a real device you need to sign it with an Apple developer account, costs $99 a year.

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#185

Post by reyqn »

KenanSulayman wrote: post #161
Illniyar wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those things don't really matter, the only thing that matters is that you cannot sideload apps in iOS. As long as you can sideload apps in android, it will always have a better reputation than somewhere you cannot. But even those things you mention, they are all part of a scale, even if android becomes more closed-source it's still miles more open-source than iOS, even if it delays new app submissions it's still…

Just resign the app IPA file and you can literally drag and drop it through Xcode onto your iOS devices. Unless you mean pirating apps with sideloading...

You need to have macOS though

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#186

Post by lotsofpulp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #139
topmonk wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this behavior is like killing the Golden goose to get at the golden eggs inside. It's extremely shortsighted.

Not really. As long as they control the app market on Android, users are captive audience. Golden goose is immortal.

Considering the proportion of Apple’s profit in the mobile phone and App Store market versus Google’s profit, I would say there is no golden goose period for Google.

Or, the golden goose is shoveling ads and obtaining data from all their users, but I’m not bullish on the value of that long term, especially if your users trend on the lower side of disposable income.

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#187

Post by lotsofpulp »

ajscanlan wrote: post #184
KenanSulayman wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just resign the app IPA file and you can literally drag and drop it through Xcode onto your iOS devices. Unless you mean pirating apps with sideloading...

To run an .ipa on a real device you need to sign it with an Apple developer account, costs $99 a year.

I thought it has been free for your own device for years:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2933052/apple-frees-casual-i...

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#188

Post by fauigerzigerk »

UncleMeat wrote: post #74
torben-friis wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the reason, the fact that you can have your livelihood taken away without an explanation or human contact is pretty worrying.

Having a system that tells malware authors precisely what behavior triggered an alarm is also not great. There is no solution.

There is a very simple solution. Have a competetent reviewer look at the code and decide whether the intent is malicious or not.

If the intent is clearly not malicious and no rules were broken, the reviewer should file a bug report to fix the virus scanner and reinstate the developer account. No further explanation required.

If rules were breached but it may have been done in good faith, issue a warning to the developer and explain in general terms how to fix the problem. Charge a review fee high enough to deter any abuse of the review system.

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#189

Post by bad_user »

ninedays wrote: post #164
bad_user wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an iPhone user currently, have been for some time. However all of the points you mentioned are still true. There is no open source in iOS and the entire platform has an anti open source culture. Android has a lot of open source apps available, including an app store meant just for open source ( https://www.f-droid.org/ ). If you don't like Google Play, at the very least you can distribute your app independently w…

> There is no open source in iOS and the entire platform has an anti open source culture. People really have short memory and unfortunately have too much biais to even make a simple Google Search to get some informations. Trying to define this as "one is better than the others related to X" is childish at best. https://developer.apple.com/opensource/ Warm vibes,

WebKit, you mean the source code that was forked from KHTML and because it was GPL, Apple would then do incomprehensible code dumps to comply with the law? WebKit that was forked by Google because they couldn't collaborate with Apple?

I'm glad that they ended up releasing it, but to show that as an example of open source from Apple ... indeed shows that people have short memories ;-)

Re: Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

#190

Post by realusername »

noarchy wrote: post #9
jarym wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google’s dominant position in the market is enabling it to abuse its position by treating customers unfairly and not as one might be treated if there was more competition. I don’t think it’s spiteful or childish to suggest breaking up a monopoly in these circumstances although I would say less drastic options should be tried first.

>I don’t think it’s spiteful or childish to suggest breaking up a monopoly in these circumstances although I would say less drastic options should be tried first. You've shown your hand here, in a way, by suggesting that Google is a monopoly in this instance. Android devices can install apps via other sources, like F-Droid or Amazon, or even just by side loading. There's no denying that out of the box , most Android…

> There's no denying that out of the box, most Android devices are setup to favour Google's Play Store, just as Amazon's Kindle devices are setup to favour Amazon's own store

They don't just "flavour" Google's Play Store, they make it non-removable. Same for Google apps, services, search, accounts... At that point the so-called "openness" of Android is just marketing talk.

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