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The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

gultsch.social

211–220 of 354 posts

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#211
My tool is used by 1 million people a day https://www.photopea.com

This is the reason I never made a mobile version and all mobile users use it in a browser.

The biggest problem (bug) with this approach is that iOS limits the RAM usage to 2 GB per website. I have to tell many of my users to ditch their $1000 iPads and get a used $150 Macbook for better experience.

I think Apple does it on purpose https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=268816

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#212
post #157

I just released a game [1] on both iOS and Android. The Google Play process is more thorough. There are a lot of steps and you need to clear them one by one. This means waiting several days between each step. The Play Console dashboard is quite well documented to be honest but can be overwhelming. The main obstacle is that you need to find at least 12 testers to play your game for 2 weeks straight. I ended up paying…

> but can be overwhelming

That's an understatement and a half. It's massively over engineered and complicated, especially when compared with (say) the dashboard on Itch.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#213
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you hate open source and want only projects where their authors can afford liability insurance and are willing to put themselves in the firing line of a legal system that can be both arbitrary and capricious? Because that’s what you seem to want.

Even people selling on the street or doing charity work have to account for liability of their actions. Lets stop talking about open source as special snowflakes where everything is excused.

And that’s how you prevent bake sales, lemonade stands, and more. You create a barrier to entry that gets raised little by little until only the biggest players can afford the game. Software liability would end all small open source projects.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#214
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you hate open source and want only projects where their authors can afford liability insurance and are willing to put themselves in the firing line of a legal system that can be both arbitrary and capricious? Because that’s what you seem to want.

Even people selling on the street or doing charity work have to account for liability of their actions. Lets stop talking about open source as special snowflakes where everything is excused.

The problem is it's literally speech. Selling something isn't speech, you do not have the right to do charity work or run a business. It goes even beyond speech, it's closer to pure math/logic and I feel very uncomfortable about regulating that. I also think it's literally impossible.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#215
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that Alex Russell is a Blink partisan, currently supporting Blink at Microsoft and formerly having done so at Google. Folks like that don't take kindly to the idea that a Blink monoculture might not be a great thing, and definitely do not share the opinion that it's critical to the open web that Apple not cede the open web to Blink. Remember, Blink began as Google's 2013 fork of WebKit. They've embraced and exte…

The fact that your "argument" rests upon baseless ad hominem, I'm mostly inclined to not even respond. I'll simply say that if you bothered reading anything (let alone objectively), you'd clearly see that no one is arguing for a blink monoculture. They're arguing for allowing everyone to choose whichever browser and browser engine that you want. Safari included. The math isnt mathing on that site... And, no, safari i…

True that. Apple has strong economic incentives to nerf PWAs, and I don't share their privacy concerns about web bluetooth. If anything, forcing users who need bluetooth to install shady third-party browsers creates way more risk. Based on beacio's download numbers, quite a few people would rather have web bluetooth available in their default browser.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point computers need to stop being treated as magical boxes that no reasonable person can learn how to use safely. We expect people who use cars to learn how to use them safely, we expect people who use lawnmowers to not stick their fingers in them. Computers have been a part of daily life for normies for decades at this point, it's infantilizing to suggest that average, non-tech savvy people can't learn to u…

Using a computer wrong doesn't kill people.

I'm sure you can think of many examples where it does though.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#217
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what should we do about apps' getting hacked, sending out malicious updates that get auto-updated and thereby infecting tens of millions or billions of phones simultaneously? I'm not saying we have the perfect system but anything that slants the system towards "easier downloads" or "less gatekeeping" brings large, obvious risks. I don't see how regulation would address them.

We already had enough proof of vulnerabilities in the OS code and Manufacturers (eg. Samsung/Lenovo/etc privileged apps), there were enough reviewed apps that were used for fraud or access as bad actors. My banking works in my 'unprotected' computer browser. So I'd expect giving anyone equivalent freedom. I don't mind if there's a default for gate-keepers as long as they allow competition. but I would expect to have…

Do people not remember the days of viruses destroying computers?

They were a massive issue before, and now they're barely a thought for most people.

These review processes have been good for the general population.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#218
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that Alex Russell is a Blink partisan, currently supporting Blink at Microsoft and formerly having done so at Google. Folks like that don't take kindly to the idea that a Blink monoculture might not be a great thing, and definitely do not share the opinion that it's critical to the open web that Apple not cede the open web to Blink. Remember, Blink began as Google's 2013 fork of WebKit. They've embraced and exte…

The fact that your "argument" rests upon baseless ad hominem, I'm mostly inclined to not even respond. I'll simply say that if you bothered reading anything (let alone objectively), you'd clearly see that no one is arguing for a blink monoculture. They're arguing for allowing everyone to choose whichever browser and browser engine that you want. Safari included. The math isnt mathing on that site... And, no, safari i…

It's not ad hominem since I'm critiquing their position, not their character. Their positions are public and well-documented, which is why it's important to point out the bias of what you linked to.

> And, no, safari is NOT capable of PWAs…

Incorrect, see my link. PWA installation on iOS is simple and idiomatic, and the same as it is for all websites: Share > Add to Home Screen.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a tangential issue. 1. don't force auto-updates 2. still review apps uploaded to Google Play, but don't force users to use Google Play If the concern is what if users use an alternate source for apps and those have viruses, then.... okay. If the user wants to stay with strictly Google-vetted apps, they can. If desired, you could have an option on setup that users could choose to select that would put the devic…

> If the concern is what if users use an alternate source for apps and those have viruses, then.... okay. If the user wants to stay with strictly Google-vetted apps, they can. If desired, you could have an option on setup that users could choose to select that would put the device in a restricted mode that can only use apps installed from Google Play. So this doesn't solve the issue pointed in the OP. > don't force a…

> I'm sure everyone would love non-technical people to stay behind dozens of security patches for apps they may use everyday because they forgot to press update.

this is identifying the tension yeah, but if a review process regularly takes weeks or months, then the security patches are still missing

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#220
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even people selling on the street or doing charity work have to account for liability of their actions. Lets stop talking about open source as special snowflakes where everything is excused.

And that’s how you prevent bake sales, lemonade stands, and more. You create a barrier to entry that gets raised little by little until only the biggest players can afford the game. Software liability would end all small open source projects.

Bake sales and lemonade stands are perfectly fine as long as people don't land on hospital urgency, due to careless work on preparing them with spoiled ingredients or lack of hygiene.

Lets strive for quality in software.

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