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Prisoners of Google Android development

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Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#141

Post by mvdtnz »

l72 wrote: post #51

I also got this email, but professionally and personally. Personally, I voluntarily built and run open source apps for 16 different cities for their transit system. This gave me two weeks to update 16 apps, for no benefit of anyone. My app is a PWA, and the Android version just uses cordova + a few plugins to add a few native options. Unfortunately, updating cordova to support the new target android api broke some of…

Your customers have been using websites for much longer than they have been using apps. I simply don't buy that they can't understand how to use a website. Stop underestimating your users.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#142

Post by david_allison »

cogman10 wrote: post #129
jeroenhd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stable and coherent APIs Google wanted to make all the way back in Android 4.4 was met with strong resistance by power users and data collection companies. Many API changes are either extremely minor ("set this flag if you want to keep the worse, legacy handling behaviour") or extremely important ("actually ask the user before you drain their battery tracking their location in the background"). The new handling o…

> Google hosts and distributes apps effectively for free Google rakes in money from all the in app sales, store sales, and subscriptions. Further, google is often the provider of in app ads. Not to mention all the money they get from advertising with google searches and adwords built into (practically) every android device. And, let's be frank here, a 1, 20, 100mb APK isn't exactly a huge amount of data to host. Espe…

> And, let's be frank here, a 1, 20, 100mb APK isn't exactly a huge amount of data to host.

It definitely can be with scale. Distributing a 33MB app: Google says they've served 70TB, and this would be 170TB without their optimizations

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#143

Post by pjmlp »

cogman10 wrote: post #140
pjmlp wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The JVM can still, today, execute and use classes targeting Java 1.0 (released in 1996 Only if you are lucky they don't depend on stuff that started being removed after Java 8, when deprecated for removal went into effect.

That stuff, to be clear, is stuff in `sun.misc.Unsafe`. Plenty of libraries from that era didn't require unsafe code to accomplish their tasks. I'm more than happy if google decides to break people who used non-public android apis.

No it isn't, educate yourself on everything that has been removed until the upcoming Java 21, including several public APIs.

Just browse the JEPs and release notes.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#145

Post by cogman10 »

david_allison wrote: post #142
cogman10 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google hosts and distributes apps effectively for free Google rakes in money from all the in app sales, store sales, and subscriptions. Further, google is often the provider of in app ads. Not to mention all the money they get from advertising with google searches and adwords built into (practically) every android device. And, let's be frank here, a 1, 20, 100mb APK isn't exactly a huge amount of data to host. Espe…

> And, let's be frank here, a 1, 20, 100mb APK isn't exactly a huge amount of data to host. It definitely can be with scale. Distributing a 33MB app: Google says they've served 70TB, and this would be 170TB without their optimizations

If you were paying google hosting fees, that'd be $700. I'm guessing the cost to them is far lower than that, though. ($0.01 per GiB)

That also equates to over 5 million downloads.

I'm guessing this app is likely pulling in a lot more than $700 for google.

https://cloud.google.com/vpc/network-pricing

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#146

Post by lrem »

IshKebab wrote: post #94
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, at least on the Android side of things (Apple has long been hostile to PWAs). Installing a PWA from a website is trivially easy on Android, it's just that most users really have separated in their minds (not surprising due to history) that apps come from app stores, and the browser is used for websites. Also, Google has made in much easier in recent years to submit plain PWAs to the Play Store: https://yo…

> it's just that most users really have separated in their minds (not surprising due to history) that apps come from app stores, and the browser is used for websites. Right, because for a very long time (and maybe still) PWAs have been much closer to terrible websites than good apps. They generally don't have the same UX properties as real apps. Remember when the iPhone first came out and web apps were the only optio…

Just looking through the apps I currently have open… Bank app, chat app, maps, Tile, YouTube and a weather app. Only one of them is actually doing anything that wouldn’t fit a PWA. So why are they apps, not a collection of links?

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#147

Post by wouldbecouldbe »

ElliotH wrote: post #121
wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #30

I’m still working on the updates. Was quite a lot of libraries to update for us. And only got the warnings last weekend. Anyone knows the impact of not updating on time? Google’s message seems conflicting.

If you target SDK If you target SDK Both have extensions available to Nov 1. Wear has different thresholds. Hopefully https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/thre... helps clarify too.

Ah, okay now I get it.

However out of 30 clients, we also have one app receiving no warning at all.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#148

Post by pixel_tracing »

I did both Android and iOS development professionally for years.

I fully switched to iOS due to unprofessionalism from Google. IMO Apple does a far better job of QA and backwards compatibility story than Android.

I can say this for sure since I’ve worked at both companies after being a consultant for both Android & iOS.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#149

Post by moron4hire »

Filligree wrote: post #86
moron4hire wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OSMAnd, offline maps and trop recording. Can't be web based. There's no reason this couldn't be browser based.

Offline maps. Browsers tend to delete PWA data without asking the user first, which can be as threat to life and limb in this case.

You can save files and load them from disk. You'll just have to have the user pick the file.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#150

Post by gnum4n »

IshKebab wrote: post #122
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if it's just a web site, why do you need to "install" it? A link is surely sufficient? Really? You don't understand the value in having the PWA appear as a native app icon alongside everything else on the device?

You can do that with a link. Just click the three dots then "Add to home screen".

Yes, "Add to home screen" is exactly how you install a PWA to your phone =)

It's a bit confusing, isn't it? "Add to home screen" makes it seem like you're just adding a link, but it's installing the PWA, possibly enabling notifications, and etc.

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