Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Prisoners of Google Android development

solutional.ee

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–318 of 318 posts

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#311

Post by sofixa »

scarface_74 wrote: post #305
sofixa wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or do you think places are making apps that no one uses? Of course, because apps are "modern". You've never seen an app that should have been a website? I know of multiple places that had shitty apps built for extremely narrow use cases that had close to zero use outside of the team that ordered it (while it was meant for a wider audience). And yes, I'm genuinely baffled people will bother downloading an app for a…

Could it possibly be that people on HN are out of touch with how most users use technology? https://youappi.com/european-app-trends-2022/

Which part of that could possibly make you think users regularly download apps for a single or limited use?

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#312

Post by scarface_74 »

sofixa wrote: post #311
scarface_74 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it possibly be that people on HN are out of touch with how most users use technology? https://youappi.com/european-app-trends-2022/

Which part of that could possibly make you think users regularly download apps for a single or limited use?

What makes you think that companies continue to build and support apps that no one uses? Maybe they have more insight about their usage then a random person on HN?

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#313

Post by olgeni »

One has to wonder if these “review” mechanisms are not really engineered like a Skinner box, where the developer is the pigeon.

I honestly cannot decide which is worse: app development, or the web ecosystem as a whole. But at least on “the web” you can push fixes at a resonable speed.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#314

Post by sofixa »

scarface_74 wrote: post #312
sofixa wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of that could possibly make you think users regularly download apps for a single or limited use?

What makes you think that companies continue to build and support apps that no one uses? Maybe they have more insight about their usage then a random person on HN?

All the apps mentioned in that page are ones that are used regularly. You can surely appreciate Tinder and Spotify are wildly different than a random resort town's transit times app? In the same way that there are useless apps nobody uses, there are many that are used for hours daily.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#315

Post by MrDresden »

brokenbyclouds wrote: post #269
dan-0 wrote: post #111

There's plenty of reasons to complain about the things Google does, but this isn't one. This failure is purely on the author. 1. Google had been mentioning this change for a while 2. Target SDK update is a big deal, especially if you don't know what legacy stuff the app was built on, and surprise, can impact OS versions differently. 3. The emulator is not a good gauge of reality. I get this for a constrained team, bu…

100% rollout is the default for me when submitting an app. You're saying it's not for you?

Never do a 100% rollout.

Partially release to your users and monitor the health of the release as it trickles out. If everything is fine then increase the percentage.

Only very late increase to 100% as then there is no going back.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#316

Post by grodriguez100 »

sofixa wrote: post #158
l72 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that many of my users are temporary. For example, I have an app for the public transit system for a resort town in Colorado. The town has a decent, albeit small bus system. They technically have an app from their vendor, although it is not very good and is difficult to find. If you search for "$town_name transit app", it won't show up anywhere, where as my app does. And I think my app is much more user…

> If you search for "$town_name transit app" Do people really search for entirely temporary/short-term/single-use use apps, like for a resort town's transit or a restaurant? For me it's a last resort thing, if there's no website or it's unusable.

Yes. I spent a week in Rome last month (first time visit) and ended up downloading four different apps for public transport and city guides, all of which were useful. This is on top of Google Maps, Trip Advisor and everything else.

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#317

Post by iggldiggl »

izacus wrote: post #155
lubesGordi wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The middle ground that I think helps everyone is, change your api and break compilation. Let devs fix the compile errors and use the api correctly, etc. But don't change the behavior of existing functions with the same signatures. As an api provider, do your best to make compilation mean something.

This is exactly how Android works. But because API changes bring privacy and security improvements, scummy software used old compilation targets to abuse backwards compatibility to avoid complying with privacy and security practices. This is why Play slowly enforces apps to raise their compilation target and implement safer APIs. It's lagging for YEARS after API changes, so there's plenty of time to fix apps. The OP…

> But because API changes bring privacy and security improvements, scummy software used old compilation targets to abuse backwards compatibility to avoid complying with privacy and security practices.

Though unfortunately from time to time they also do break power user use cases…

Re: Prisoners of Google Android development

#318

Post by dep_b »

kramerger wrote: post #286
dep_b wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Google breaks the framework I built, I still blame Google.

Why? Should Android be bloated with compatibility layers for every buggy framework ever existed? Including third part stuff such as Cordova and Ionic that have more or less stopped development? And it's not like Google is randomly breaking things. And even when there are breaking changes they provide support libraries and explain very clearly what has changed and why it needed to be changed. Still, no sympathy for ap…

"Compatibility layers": it was a setting that is still a valid setting but you need special permissions for it nowadays. The code was compiling perfectly.
Post reply on HN