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

gultsch.social

181–190 of 355 posts

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

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but one week to wait for your app is nothing to complain about.

You should want higher speed and quality of service from your vendors. In this case, apple is paid wonderfully for it.

Apple has some “trust” for vetting things, and with the wave of slop-apps it fine with a slight delay so the App Store doesn’t become riddled with slop like the android store.

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

#182
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…

Finding 12 testers was a struggle for my app [1]. Had to use a mix of LinkedIn begging, work colleagues, friends, and people from random Whatsapp groups I was in.

Once you get over that hurdle for your first release, at least you don't have to do it for every update.

The Play Console is a bit fiddly and I'm always getting random warnings that I need to comply with some new rule by an arbitrary date or my app will get delisted.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gads.hamil...

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

#183
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.

How about treating people like adults for a start? How about starting public awareness campaigns about proper digital hygiene. Not everything has to be nanny state garbage.

I've worked with dozens of businesses over the years and you can't even get businesses with real money and consequences on the line to follow basic security practices. My current project is updating dozens of windows domain controllers that are still on 2012 R2. Aka critical infrastructure that hasn't been getting updates for years.

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

#184
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

let's say you have a bug that makes your app unusable. If you can't get an update our for a week - people are going to just stop using your app.

You shouldn't have shipped that bug in the first place, I would say. If the bug comes from an Android update, I assume that developers have had access to betas long before the system update is rolled out.

And you know 100% all the bugs are visible at all times.

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

#185
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have to successfully get through a state exam in order to drive cars in first place, can be jailed, get fined when not driving them safely, or forbidden for life to ever drive again. People that accidentality cut their fingers in lawnmowers due to lack of safety features are allowed to sue the lawnmower company. What I would agree is that it is about time computing gets the same liability laws that the rest of…

>People that accidentality cut their fingers in lawnmowers due to lack of safety features are allowed to sue the lawnmower company. Anyone is allowed to sue the lawnmower company. Did they win?

The amount of "Do not put hands here" labels I've seen on lawnmowers would suggest that, yes, someone did sue and win (or at the least got a settlement) and thus the lawyers forced the companies to put disclaimers and warnings on the lawnmower, directly on the top of the deck in plain sight.

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

#186

I just pulled a PWA app off the app store and I am going to keep it a pure PWA. It's installable, offline-first. I know I feel like I'm swimming against the current but I would love people to try to push for awareness of PWA installs more.

I'd love to see people distribute their apks directly.

Itch.io is an option for people who don't want to set up a site or handle payments. While they focus on games, they're cool with distributing non-games:

https://itch.io/blog/32835/itchio-isnt-just-for-games-check-...

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

#187
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.

People accidentally hurt themselves with kitchen knives every day. They are also very often used for violent crimes. Clearly we need to regulate the kitchen knife industry more. There should be a central authority that sells authorized kitchen knives with at max 6cm length and all other knives should only be available to certified chefs. Once we have outlawed the longer knives and strong restrictions on ordinary kitc…

> People accidentally hurt themselves with kitchen knives every day. They are also very often used for violent crimes

People are rightfully nervous when they see someone walking down the street swinging a knife i.e openly misusing it or treating it casually

People don't realize how much software is being misused or treated too casually. They might be similarly bothered by lax security on databases and data leaks if they realized that it represented a threat to them

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

#188
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

let's say you have a bug that makes your app unusable. If you can't get an update our for a week - people are going to just stop using your app.

You shouldn't have shipped that bug in the first place, I would say. If the bug comes from an Android update, I assume that developers have had access to betas long before the system update is rolled out.

Why do you think apple has point releases that fix... Bugs every time? Not necessarily new features but bugs.

Lesson in there.

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

#189
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F-droid is the biggest one

Check out droidify or neo store for a better front end to f-droid

I use Foxy Droid.

It's unfortunate the official f-droid client is an unusable mess. (I stopped using it years ago, maybe they fixed it.)

There's also f-droid classic, can't remember why I use foxy droid over it.

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

#190

The Google Play review process has been slower and more painful than the App Store review process for 5+ years at this point. At least you get to communicate with real people at Apple; it’s all bot-driven with Google.

What are bots doing for two weeks
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