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The Amazon Appstore for Android devices will be discontinued on August 20, 2025

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Re: The Amazon Appstore for Android devices will be discontinued on August 20, 2025

#131

Post by jorvi »

dylan604 wrote: post #128
michaelt wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they'd gone bankrupt, the employees had all lost their jobs, the shareholders got wiped out, the CEO's stock options were worthless, and burly men were carting the office's aeron chairs to the auction house - that would be a different matter. Wiping out customers' purchases when you've got $100 billion in the bank, though? Kinda a dick move.

> Wiping out customers' purchases when you've got $100 billion in the bank, though? Kinda a dick move. What you call a dick move might actually have made sense financially for a business. If MS Music was losing money with no hopes of ever turning a profit, why should they continue to operate a charity music service subsidized by all of the other MS businesses that are making money? Same thing for Amazon. If it is som…

> If MS Music was losing money with no hopes of ever turning a profit, why should they continue to operate a charity music service subsidized by all of the other MS businesses that are making money?

Microsoft could make a deal with, say, Apple. They check each Microsoft Music (Xbox Music? Zune Music?) account for total spend, and give people an iTunes gift card for nearest total amount. Negotiate a bulk pricing deal with Apple.

Microsoft gets to look good, Apple gets to look good. But it'd cost 0.001% of total Microsoft profit and the shareholders can't have that.

Compare that to some other businesses that will happily recommend you to a competitor if it is a better fit, or if they shut down go out of their way to write a tool or help you with off- and onboarding to an alternative.

Re: The Amazon Appstore for Android devices will be discontinued on August 20, 2025

#132

Post by rerdavies »

eschulz wrote: post #54
SapporoChris wrote: post #5

"What happens to my apps after the discontinuation of the Amazon Appstore on Android?" "Starting August 20, 2025, any apps downloaded from the Amazon Appstore will not be guaranteed to operate on Android devices. Amazon Appstore will continue to be available elsewhere, including on Fire TV and Fire Tablet devices. " --------- So for people that purchased apps through Amazon Appstore, what are their options for apps t…

Yeah, don't have high expectations for things you pay for but don't own. It's a sad truth, but I've accepted it (I also bought some dvds in 2024 which is something I never thought I'd do again).

Not sure about DVDs, but CDs weren't designed to last longer than 10 years. Most of my CD collection has physically rotted. Because I was using Windows Media Player and iTunes, I ripped most of collection in M4A format, which, at the time, was better than MP3. A couple of years ago, I decided that I wanted to re-rip my CD collection (some 200 odd CDs) in FLAC format instead of m4a format (don't ask). And some significant portion (50%?) of the new FLAC rips were missing tracks due to physical read errors on the original CD media.

Re: The Amazon Appstore for Android devices will be discontinued on August 20, 2025

#133

Post by mattmaroon »

bambax wrote: post #25
mattmaroon wrote: post #11

All 6 people who used Amazon app store on a non-Fire tablet must be very upset!

I'm one of them. DJI "pro" remotes are Android devices that for some reason are completely un-googled but can run the Amazon app store; if you want to run, say, Litchy on such a device (an alternative to DJI Fly app), Amazon is (was) the only option. Now there appears to be no option left.

Oh wow! Hopefully DJI will address this.

Re: The Amazon Appstore for Android devices will be discontinued on August 20, 2025

#134

Post by rerdavies »

bambax wrote: post #25
mattmaroon wrote: post #11

All 6 people who used Amazon app store on a non-Fire tablet must be very upset!

I'm one of them. DJI "pro" remotes are Android devices that for some reason are completely un-googled but can run the Amazon app store; if you want to run, say, Litchy on such a device (an alternative to DJI Fly app), Amazon is (was) the only option. Now there appears to be no option left.

Now all we need to do is find the OTHER five people. :-P

Re: The Amazon Appstore for Android devices will be discontinued on August 20, 2025

#135

Post by inetknght »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #118
b112 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With well defined and documented file formats, and with OSS applications supporting them, they can be read for all eternity. You don't need binary compatibility. You can load a gif on any computer today, and it's old. I can view aiff image files from my Amiga still. We're already 50 years in on many formats. Where it becomes uncertain, it DRM laden, closed source applications with bespoke file formats.

1) Survivorship bias How many image formats CAN'T you read today that you could read 50 years ago? 2) Images are much much much more ubiquitous than book formats

> Survivorship bias

GIF, JPEG, MP3... these are all patented technologies whose patents have expired into the public domain. That they're still used and useful today is a very strong indication that they'll be available in another 50 years. I think that having public patents for image and audio formats helps to demonstrate that it's more than just survivorship bias.

Re: The Amazon Appstore for Android devices will be discontinued on August 20, 2025

#136

Post by kyleee »

syntheticnature wrote: post #85
c0wb0yc0d3r wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is different though, isn’t it? Amazon still exists. The whole platform is shutting down. Individual devs aren’t taking down their apps.

I had a Google Play app whose dev died. It was just a simple local app -- no network server usage. When I last upgraded my phone (due to imminent failure of the previous one) it refused to copy the app over -- and the app was no longer in the Play store.

More evidence of the sad state of general purpose computing

Re: The Amazon Appstore for Android devices will be discontinued on August 20, 2025

#137

Post by michaelt »

jorvi wrote: post #131
dylan604 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wiping out customers' purchases when you've got $100 billion in the bank, though? Kinda a dick move. What you call a dick move might actually have made sense financially for a business. If MS Music was losing money with no hopes of ever turning a profit, why should they continue to operate a charity music service subsidized by all of the other MS businesses that are making money? Same thing for Amazon. If it is som…

> If MS Music was losing money with no hopes of ever turning a profit, why should they continue to operate a charity music service subsidized by all of the other MS businesses that are making money? Microsoft could make a deal with, say, Apple. They check each Microsoft Music (Xbox Music? Zune Music?) account for total spend, and give people an iTunes gift card for nearest total amount. Negotiate a bulk pricing deal…

Exactly.

When Google shut down Stadia they refunded all purchases - both games and hardware.

Re: The Amazon Appstore for Android devices will be discontinued on August 20, 2025

#138

Post by TomMasz »

The Amazon Appstore is a steaming puddle of absolute crap for the most part. I have a Fire tablet I play some simple games on, they're all chock-full of ads. Very few mainstream apps are available, though plenty of cheap knockoffs of those apps are. If you want something good, it's easiest to grab the .apk and sideload it. There are ways to install the Play Store but they're likely beyond most of the Fire's userbase. Regular Android users won't notice or miss this nor should they.

If I needed a tablet for anything serious, I'd buy an iPad or Pixel Tablet, both of which come with a real app store.

Re: The Amazon Appstore for Android devices will be discontinued on August 20, 2025

#139

Post by ryandrake »

malfist wrote: post #23
SapporoChris wrote: post #5

"What happens to my apps after the discontinuation of the Amazon Appstore on Android?" "Starting August 20, 2025, any apps downloaded from the Amazon Appstore will not be guaranteed to operate on Android devices. Amazon Appstore will continue to be available elsewhere, including on Fire TV and Fire Tablet devices. " --------- So for people that purchased apps through Amazon Appstore, what are their options for apps t…

There needs to be some recourse here. Amazon isn't going bankrupt and closing business. They need to honor their customer commitments. After all, earn trust and customer obsession are two of their leadership principles

Even if they did go bankrupt, it's ridiculous that apps bought through that store would suddenly stop working. The mobile software industry way too closely ties applications to these "stores." Imagine if Ace Hardware went out of business and then suddenly my drill and hammers disappeared or stopped working!

Re: The Amazon Appstore for Android devices will be discontinued on August 20, 2025

#140

Post by password4321 »

gruez wrote: post #91
rob74 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it'd better continue to be available, seeing that Amazon's devices don't support the Google Play store...

It might not be "supported", but I thought you could easily sideload play store and play services? You don't even need to muck around with rooting or even adb.

I wouldn't call sideloading the play store and services "easy", especially for Kindle Kids/FreeTime profiles.
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