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Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

danq.me

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Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#301

Post by chrisweekly »

c0nsumer wrote: post #185
Grombobulous wrote: post #53

I recently decided to publish an app on the App Store just so I could say I accomplished that, and maybe even make a little bit of beer money on the side. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my actual app is pretty much garbage. I don’t expect it to be popular. It’s basically a worse version of stuff that is already available. I expected this to be a learning exercise about the process of getting stuff published. Lo…

I like making maps, and I wanted to do a certain bend on a very specific kind of online map, filling a gap I noticed in existing maps. The idea of an app really appealed to me (at first), but the more I thought about it the more I didn't want to deal with iOS and then Android and then maintaining parallel functionality on the web and all that mess just for a fairly-local hobby project that I make no money off of. So,…

cool project!

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#303

Post by dirkc »

Grombobulous wrote: post #53

I recently decided to publish an app on the App Store just so I could say I accomplished that, and maybe even make a little bit of beer money on the side. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my actual app is pretty much garbage. I don’t expect it to be popular. It’s basically a worse version of stuff that is already available. I expected this to be a learning exercise about the process of getting stuff published. Lo…

I did something similar, for similar reasons. In the end I just did whatever to get it published. If you show up at my door, I'll pour you your choice of beer/coffee. But I agree, it feels very invasive!

On the web side of things DNS only recently started being more private - 10+ years ago it was common to have your phone + postal address on whois.

Two take aways from my experience 1. I'm happy that I invested more in the web 2. The app store gives you distribution - I have a few websites with almost 0 traffic, but the app I wrote gets a handful of downloads a week almost 2 years later?

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#305

Post by kokanee »

pixl97 wrote: post #292
nolok wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mid 80s, grew up watching dad playing around with his atari st and was lucky enough to be able to toy around on his 386 and then 486, feeling like a god because I managed to get those config.sys and co to start games he couldn't. For me mobile website was something "tacked on" the real website and I have never been able to shake that feeling away somehow.

Yes, you are part of the generation that 'buys things' on an actual computer. Get much older or much younger and they'll use apps instead.

Am I the only person who buys things on mobile websites? I feel like most apps are just websites rendered in webviews with a bunch of background tracking added, and websites create a bit of a firewall between my OS/filesystem and the application.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#306

Post by ValentineC »

Rohansi wrote: post #177
afavour wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no interest in installing a web app that could look innocuous today and be entirely different every time I hit F5. That's been the case with native apps for a long time now too.

It's against the App Store rules but if you build an app with React Native/Expo you can OTA update it to do something completely different without going through another review. Enforcement is minimal, especially since you can selectively roll out updates to make it unlikely that a reviewer gets it. It's such a weird thing to be concerned about though. Your phone automatically updates apps by default so they can sudde…

> Enforcement is minimal, especially since you can selectively roll out updates to make it unlikely that a reviewer gets it.

What's worse is that there's practically no process to report any sort of rulebreaking, so someone could be mining crypto or running a residential proxy [1] through the mobile game I've been playing, and I'd be none the wiser.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48864252

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#307

Post by demosthanos »

Telaneo wrote: post #275
david422 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For something free I can get why this would seem unreasonable (modulo scams, for which this is a hoop I would rather have than not), but if money's involved, a consumer should be able to contact a human and be made whole, and having the money be handled by a company (even if that company is just a one-man-show) honestly does not seem unreasonable. You're buying a digital good. You can already get refunds. An email…

I don't need a physical address nor a phone number to get a refund from my local electronics store either, but I do believe they should be available.

Apple is the analog to the local electronics store. They're the ones with the direct relationship with you, they're the ones you paid, they took a 30% cut off the app developer's top line explicitly under the pretext that they handle the whole store arrangement.

And sure enough, they are in fact the ones who can issue a refund if you need one. The developer cannot. By design.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#308

Post by swiftcoder »

Grombobulous wrote: post #155
Telaneo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I might be misremembering or misinterpreting, but it seems like you really need an LLC with a mail forwarding service and a cheap second phone line just to avoid the App Store sending the whole internet to your personal phone and address. For something free I can get why this would seem unreasonable (modulo scams, for which this is a hoop I would rather have than not), but if money's involved, a consumer should be…

Yes, you’re right that much of this only comes up when you’re trying to charge money for an app. However, if you’re running your own website you can make those decisions on your own without being forced into most of them. Plenty of very large “reputable” companies obfuscate their physical address and phone number, and don’t even offer an email address for contact. I’d also say that this shouldn’t be as necessary when…

> However, if you’re running your own website you can make those decisions on your own without being forced into most of them.

You will however pay for that privilege - a lot of people don't seem to realise their home address is in the WHOIS data, because they didn't pay the protection money to redact it

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#309

Post by Telaneo »

demosthanos wrote: post #307
Telaneo wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need a physical address nor a phone number to get a refund from my local electronics store either, but I do believe they should be available.

Apple is the analog to the local electronics store. They're the ones with the direct relationship with you, they're the ones you paid, they took a 30% cut off the app developer's top line explicitly under the pretext that they handle the whole store arrangement. And sure enough, they are in fact the ones who can issue a refund if you need one. The developer cannot. By design.

> Apple is the analog to the local electronics store. They're the ones with the direct relationship with you, they're the ones you paid, they took a 30% cut off the app developer's top line explicitly under the pretext that they handle the whole store arrangement.

Yet I can also ask Dell for a refund despite buying my Dell at my local electronics store. Both should be reachable and both should be able to give me a refund if my item is broken.

> And sure enough, they are in fact the ones who can issue a refund if you need one. The developer cannot. By design.

And Apple should fix that.

Re: Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)

#310

Post by plagiarist »

hbn wrote: post #134
inigyou wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a very general European mindset thing. They have a very different approach to privacy there - they basically expect everyone's identity to be public, and then protect those identities from abuse, rather than the more US approach of letting you hide your identity so it can't be abused. You see supermarkets with the owner's full name plastered across the storefront underneath the franchise logo. "This store i…

A store is more reasonable to put your name on because generally if you want to meet the person running it you could just walk into it regardless of whether you know their name. The internet has created a culture of deranged harassment that makes posting your identity online alongside anything you publish more insane than ever. And your market is more or less the entire world rather than your local community.

Occasionally mobs of hateful psychos will target individuals with harassment. There is absolutely not enough protection from unwanted messages, unwanted phone calls, false reports to SWAT teams, identity theft, who knows what else.
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