51–60 of 129 posts
Meanwhile developers complain that the app store cut is too high for small devs. Heads up. If a big tech co is not going to make back money from you - the amount of careful human review by well paid folks is going to be minimal because the scale of cheap / free users is so high.
I don't complain about the fee, I just don't want to hear about the app store at all and distribute my software freely without unwanted middleware which don't add value.
As a user, I wouldn’t want Google to continue to distribute an app that doesn’t fulfill all their privacy requirements. As a developer, it’s mildly annoying to have to resubmit. But it’s not exactly the end of the world, is it? I’m reasonably certain the app stores as middlemen have made life easier for small developers by several orders of magnitude. And part of the reason is that customers trust them. Being rather…
I woke up at 7AM this morning to an "App removed" alert
Convert these private markets into open markets. Tort, fair and impartial judiciary, right to sue, transparency and accountability, etc. Reforming (reinventing) these private markets is notably absent from the current efforts to reign in Big Tech. A weird omission.
Getting more lawyers involved might make things more fair.
It'll definitely take longer than 7 days, and certainly cost a LOT more! :D
I first heard those words on a TV commercial sometime in 2010. For the decade prior, it would have been "visit site dot com to learn more".
Since 2010 I wonder how many hours worth of ads have aired that drill into consumers' heads the idea that applications live exclusively on app stores. The web may as well not exist, because it's outside the walled garden.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not a lawyer and don't know how wide "3rd parties" can refer to. Is my cloud provider a 3rd party? If there is a lawyer here who can advise that it is safe to do I will remove it
Probably shouldn't be running a public service with a privacy policy and no lawyer.
I don’t see this as too much an issue. Sure, you have a privacy policy accessible in your app, but A) Google doesn’t know that B) People in the Play store can’t read it before downloading. All Google is asking is that you put the privacy policy in the store page. Seems reasonable.
Are we expected to sympathize with an app that's siphoning off sensitive user data from phones without informing the user? Seems shady. Your main website says: * Data is never kept online * No ads, no affiliate marketers, and no creepy tracking * No phone number is required; No need to share your phone book. Only need an email address (can be masked) But your privacy policy says: * For a better experience while using…
It also doesn't say who the agreement is with. It says it's a company, but there's no company number or registered address. In the UK (which is the claimed jurisdiction) this is a legal requirement for websites.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why should you expect different treatment from Google than Twitter et al.? Well, because you aren't twitter. Expecting google to treat indie dev the same as multibillion dollar corporations would be stupid. World isn't fair place and crying after fairness is often waste of time. This kind of blog post might affect the situation and I think it makes sense to make it in polite way. However my default assumption would…
Please sir can I have some more? Demanding some level of fairness in specific well thought out regulation is exactly the solution to a lot of these problems. It's a tried and true method of reeling in bad actors and imposing some checks and balances. Realistically, no you can't expect to get the attention of Twitter, but officially it must be the case that they have to at least give real effort to maintaining some me…
Because they have spent untold millions since 2008 buying ads telling consumers that apps are the only way. Flash is dangerous. PWAs are dangerous. Never mind that our app uses Facebook SDK, requires GPS, mic and camera access for 'essential services'.
> App stores should review apps at set frequencies. Developers should know the expected date for their next review so that they can prepare for unexpected consequences that require direct action. I guarantee bad actors would remove unpermitted functionality right before the review, and put it back after. There's a reason even restaurant food safety inspectors don't tell the restaurant when they're coming. But on the…
> I guarantee bad actors would remove unpermitted functionality right before the review, and put it back after. Outside of a dynamic feature flag setup, this would be trivial to detect as Google and Apple completely control the submission process.
Go one small step further and disable the offending feature during review only for the next build version and you don't even disrupt existing users.