Its sad but it is what happen when you depend on a thirty party. I have always hated this software monopolies. If you can, host the app on your own web and tell your clients to download it from there
Two weeks of dealing with Google as a developer
271–280 of 340 posts
Re: Two weeks of dealing with Google as a developer
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why its the ethical responsibility of every dev to use Firefox when they can.
For some reason Firefox has horrendous issues on older devices. On my Win7 company-issued laptop a fresh window from a fresh FF install grabs 3.2 out of 4GB of RAM. On my phone (2GB RAM) it gets into a crash loop where trying to type into the address bar or load a new page crashes the browser. Data loss due to crashes is less frequent than when I was running Chrome, but spending 10 minutes every few days repeatedly r…
Do you have an SSD on that machine?
Could it be an extension you installed?
Re: Two weeks of dealing with Google as a developer
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not an Android user, but aren't third party app stores allowed on Android? https://www.androidauthority.com/best-app-stores-936652/ They're probably not great places to try and grow your userbase based on the number of users compared to the Play Store, but they exist.
> They're probably not great places to try and grow your userbase based on the number of users Cca 2012 there were thriving, competing stores then Google shut that shit down. They got sued and lost, but the competing stores were dead, never to recover.
F-Droid is still around, as is Amazon's thing.
Re: Two weeks of dealing with Google as a developer
#274If the future of customer-service is full of AI like “Anthony”, I’m moving to the woods.
If "Anthony" is an AI, why does he take days to reply? Surely a sufficiently capable developer relations AI could handle dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of developer queries simultaneously!
Rate limiting. They wouldnt like to make the conversation too fast for them. And also to keep the conversation more “realistic”.
Re: Two weeks of dealing with Google as a developer
#275I can understand the anger. If you don't want to be dependent on Apple or Google App reviews, maybe start developing Web apps instead? That would actually be doing something about the problem.
Re: Two weeks of dealing with Google as a developer
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are just embracing the dystopia at this point.
Being angry at what is essentially a front line customer service rep will do absolutely nothing at all to end the dystopia and just make one human’s day worse. If you’re not mad at the person who actually has the power to fix the problem then you’re wasting your breath. And to get out ahead of it, your anger doesn’t “go up the chain” either. Like all service workers, dealing with angry customers is a standard workpla…
But the service worker here (Anthony) has the power to approve the app, he is just incompetent or hostile to the author. The anger is warranted (though the statements are harmless), this is targeted sabotage.
Maybe time to sue?
Re: Two weeks of dealing with Google as a developer
#277And this is why we need to cherish the web. I see no reason why a yoga app can't be done on the web. I do know that apps tend to convert better, if only we could bridge that gap. It's in particular troubling how much of this madness we've internalized to just accept. The idea that you need to resubmit a 100 apps because Google decided you need to target a different internal version number is insane. It would be very…
Cos users want mobile apps. When Roam research and Obsidian launched, one of the biggest thing people were ranting about was that their lack of mobile apps. Simple. Google also is dominating the browser market. Not to mention, I see Manifest v3 as something in this direction. They just don't have the exact amount of control they do in Play store is all. So my question is, how long are you gonna run?
The problem with Obsidian was that you couldn't use it on your phone at all. If they had had a hosted version with a mobile friendly web interface, i don't think a mobile app would have been neccessary
Re: Two weeks of dealing with Google as a developer
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
When Google loses an app developer, maybe they lose .1% of revenue. When an app developer loses Google, they might lose 100% of their revenue (if they only develop for Android). This fundamental mismatch in bargaining power is why unions are needed for fair resource allocation.
This fundamentally mis-represents the players involved. Organizing might be a valid response but a labor union completely misses the root of the issue and would not serve a constructive purpose in this situation. A trade organization would seem a more appropriate fit than a union.
You are right. I thought the word "union" is more general than it is.
But you also probably mean "trade association" instead.
Re: Two weeks of dealing with Google as a developer
#279Re: Two weeks of dealing with Google as a developer
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's insane enough that we even allow corporations to own platforms and users. Software development should be free. They should not be able to reject anything. We should reject that notion entirely instead of playing the game they made up.
It may be hard to believe, but free software development stacks are a relatively new thing. When I was growing up, you had to buy the compiler, and the documentation for how to use the tools, and the language. (Though I think most 70s and 80s era computers came with BASIC) While I sympathize with the idea that this should be open and free and easy, there are too many bad actors out there, so we can’t have nice things…
The tooling wasn't free because it costs money to develop - that is sensible. But it didn't limit what you could do with the stuff that you made with said tooling. You didn't have to pay all OS vendors for the privilege of them allowing your code onto user's devices. I think that's really what OP refers to, not the cost of tooling.
And, yes, most computers from at least 1980s onwards came with something. DOS had BASICA first, then GW-BASIC, then QBasic - and these all were quite adequate for plenty of tasks, even games. By the 90s, we even had free 32-bit C++ compilers (DJGPP 1.03, 1991).