71–80 of 165 posts
I use f-droid as much as possible, but there are a few things not available there.
Good? What's the alternative? Have a crappy, paid-for, add filled, bloated app promote itself as "Cauliflower Cooker Lite - the #1 free cauliflower app. 100% ad-free". Metadata like file size, whether there are in-app ads or purchases, etc, should be part of the store's listing - not the title.
But Google can do as they wish: another reason alternative app stores have an important role to play.
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> should be part of the store's listing - not the title. How long has Google store been operating (under various names)? Over a decade I think. Do they know people would love to choose between apps with and without ads? Of course. Why they decided not to implement it in the listing? Because they live from ads. There is exactly zero chance they will do it as you propose.
They've shown whether an app has ads for over five years: https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/04/28/the-play-store-star...
It would be so easy to implement, it seems scornful not to. When I want a needle, they hand me a haystack and say "we etched 'this is a needle' into the needles for you so you'll know when you find one. Good luck."
I admit I haven't used android for three or four years so maybe they have this capability now, would love to be corrected if so.
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> Metadata like file size, whether there are in-app ads or purchases, etc, should be part of the store's listing - not the title. ???? Did I miss the part where Google announced they were adding searchable metadata at the same time they eliminated adding this info to the title? If not, seems like a clearly anti-consumer move.
Listings show whether they have ads, in-app purchases etc. on a separate screen
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"No ads" isn't editorializing, though. Unlike "best" or "#1", it's a statement of fact, and a fact that is probably useful to shoppers.
Could this be in response to apps indicating that they don't have ads even though they do?
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Buy Uncle Miller’s Corn Flakes — 100% arsenic free!
Exactly. Another textbook example is the language describing meat as coming from pork with “no hormones added” even though it’s unlawful to add hormones to pork grown for human consumption. Sure, it’s a fact; but the choice to include it is made to provide a marketing boost over competing brands that might not have the language on the packaging.
It should be illegal to advertise you're not doing something that is illegal in the first place if the intent is to imply others are in fact doing it.
All that said, for those of you who have de-Googled your phone, how much friction was there? Is there a leader of the pack for alternate app stores (if necessary), and/or do you load APKs directly?
One of my wife's favorite apps, Instagram's Boomerang, has been broken on Android 12 since release. No sign of fixing it. The app store has been flooded with 1 and 2 star reviews as a result. I went digging for an alternative. It's just playing a 5 second loop forwards and backwards, so it can't be hard to re-implement, right? Someone's gotta have an alternative.
You have now entered the Clone Wars. Dozens of imitation apps that claim to do the same, with similar names, touting similar features. Except they are riddled with ads and often don't even do what's advertised without some big watermark or outright paying for it. I'd love to find the one that's ad-free and just does what it should but I'm wading through what looks like aisles of a dollar store. The curation has gone to hell and this isn't helping. We need better ways of sorting and filtering on the app store.
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the problem i faced is that aurora store is disliked by google and my account was terminated. would recommend though.
Your google account was terminated because you installed a different app store on your phone?
Good? What's the alternative? Have a crappy, paid-for, add filled, bloated app promote itself as "Cauliflower Cooker Lite - the #1 free cauliflower app. 100% ad-free". Metadata like file size, whether there are in-app ads or purchases, etc, should be part of the store's listing - not the title.
> Metadata like file size, whether there are in-app ads or purchases, etc, should be part of the store's listing - not the title. ???? Did I miss the part where Google announced they were adding searchable metadata at the same time they eliminated adding this info to the title? If not, seems like a clearly anti-consumer move.
"It is what it says on the tin"