“Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps • Hacker News Board

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#241

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Sat, May 03, 2025, 8:41 PM UTC

justoreply wrote: post #221

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The email made it pretty clear that Google wants developers to continuously push new versions to customers." Why. It is not Google's software. Shouldn't that decision be left to the software author.

Because they want developers to use the latest version of their API. And as a user it is a good thing, as the API is getting more restrictive and privacy focused

"Because they want developers to use the latest version of their API."

But the parent commenter's company software did not need to be updated to be useful to the company. Its only purpose was to control hardware made by the company.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#242

Post by fluidcruft » Sat, May 03, 2025, 9:32 PM UTC

areyourllySorry wrote: post #233

fluidcruft wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get warnings when you install apps from Microsoft Store? Play Store isn't a web browser.

edge exe/msi downloads, not store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_of_the_Web

That's my point. The apples to apples comparisons are Microsoft Store vs Play Store vs App Store... or Chrome vs Edge vs Safari. NOT Play Store vs Edge and Safari.

Play Store is NOT a web browser. It downloads from one place and one place only.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#243

Post by areyourllySorry » Sun, May 04, 2025, 3:26 AM UTC

fluidcruft wrote: post #242

areyourllySorry wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edge exe/msi downloads, not store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_of_the_Web

That's my point. The apples to apples comparisons are Microsoft Store vs Play Store vs App Store... or Chrome vs Edge vs Safari. NOT Play Store vs Edge and Safari. Play Store is NOT a web browser. It downloads from one place and one place only.

my bad, i get you now. i still believe warnings should either be everywhere, or nowhere.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#244

Post by godelski » Sun, May 04, 2025, 3:33 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #212

godelski wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if we talked about other computers like we talked about phones. It's just so weird - you can only install programs from our approved package manager - if you make any transactions through your program, we'll take a 30% cut - you can't be access those files, you're not root - you got root?! We're going to fucking sue you (yeah, I know about the PS3...) - you can't change these settings - you can't access that…

We do, game consoles, video players, blue ray players, before phones, PDAs were already like that. Also during the 8 and 16 bit days, all home computers were vertical integrated, outside external expansion ports the only way to upgrade either the software or hardware was to buy a new computer. Sounds familiar? An improved experience required a whole new package. The only exception was the PC clones market, that only…

  > We do, game consoles, video players, blue ray players, before phones, PDAs were already like that.

For videogames I seem to remember a pretty big lawsuit... [0]. I seem to remember this being a thing and a few times.

While I agree with video players (including blue ray), and PDAs, these weren't ever general purpose machines. People could hack them to do more things, but that was much more in the true sense of the word "making it do what it was never designed to do". Nor were many game consoles, though they are now. There really weren't that many protections in them either tbh. Definitely not on the scale today. I don't like it, but I also don't think we should act like these things are perfectly equal.

But, so what? Does that change my point? I don't think my argument only applies to phones. The reason I used phones as the talking point was because the article we're in a thread talking about and a phone is a general purpose computer that now everyone has in their pockets. I do think we should be careful to not undermine ourselves. How can we get things to change if we're also just saying "that's the way it is"?

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/06/if-you-used-to-r...

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#245

Post by immibis » Sun, May 04, 2025, 7:13 AM UTC

izacus wrote: post #240

immibis wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should ban - and file criminal charges against - the developer who uploads a Bank of America app but isn't Bank of America. They should not do that against developers who upload their own non-fraudulent apps. Why is this concept difficult to understand? Asking seriously. I don't get why these types of questions even come up. Google already claims to manually review all apps, so they know the Bank of America app…

Quite simply: Because you can't have one without the other and you're living in a dream world if you think that your kind of outcome is even possible with a setup where a private megacorporation takes over the role of prosecutor, court and police. No matter how you scream, if you demand Google play the cop, they'll play the cop in the easiest, cheapest possible way in situations where anything is unclear. The situati…

You mean, the measures they claim are anti fraud which somehow magically don't stop fraud but do prevent you not giving your money to Google.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#246

Post by Marsymars » Sun, May 04, 2025, 4:47 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #214

Marsymars wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> App stores need better search and filtering. I used to think this, but then I just abandoned their search and now use Kagi. (I use the !gp bang for the Play Store, no App Store bang seems to exist.) I can't imagine ever going back to native store searches now that they're full of ads.

Can Kagi filter apps by things like what permissions they require or by their monetisation model? We need more than a search engine. We should be able to query the app store database using _all_ the properties that the app store knows. On top of that we should be able to ask LLM style questions about the functionality of the app.

Sure, could be a neat feature, but practically, 95% of the time that I’m searching for an app I know the specific app I need already and am just searching by name. The !gp bang doesn’t search Kagi, it directs to the app with the matching name on the Play Store, but skips having to wade through ads to get there.

The other 5% of the time where I’m looking for an app for a particular function, there usually don’t exist enough apps that perform that function for filtering on search results to be worthwhile.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#247

Post by immibis » Sun, May 04, 2025, 5:13 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #201

vineyardmike wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we don't need any new apps that do similar things to existing apps" I’m not a “Googler who may be responsible”, but my understanding is that Apple does this too… and Google App Store has a reputation for being lower quality. I assume it’s because unoriginal apps at some point are just “polluting” the market and making it harder to find higher quality products. Which is generally what users want. Some things are red…

I don’t get how FDroid can be so much better. I’ve given up on Android, but when I used it, I always checked FDroid first.

Maybe because it's not owned by a revenue-maximizing advertising company.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#248

Post by immibis » Sun, May 04, 2025, 5:14 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #239

immibis wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be the "government is either big or small" false-dilemma argument, applied to Google. That (wrong and stupid) argument goes like this: "We can't make it illegal to poison the water, because that would make the government big, and big governments do bad things like eugenics/Mao's Great Leap Forward/the Holocaust. Better to leave the water being poisoned, to avoid any risk of that happening!" In this case i…

I love your comparison becuase it aptly shows how you demand Google to do the job of government which is utterly abhorrent to me. Just without oversight a government has. (Usually while also complaining how Google can't be trusted too :P)

Google is to Android apps what the government is to businesses, yes.

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#249

Post by const_cast » Mon, May 05, 2025, 9:14 AM UTC

izacus wrote: post #240

immibis wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should ban - and file criminal charges against - the developer who uploads a Bank of America app but isn't Bank of America. They should not do that against developers who upload their own non-fraudulent apps. Why is this concept difficult to understand? Asking seriously. I don't get why these types of questions even come up. Google already claims to manually review all apps, so they know the Bank of America app…

Quite simply: Because you can't have one without the other and you're living in a dream world if you think that your kind of outcome is even possible with a setup where a private megacorporation takes over the role of prosecutor, court and police. No matter how you scream, if you demand Google play the cop, they'll play the cop in the easiest, cheapest possible way in situations where anything is unclear. The situati…

We can, and we do. We already do this for not-digital stores. We've just gotten so greedy that we just throw our hands up and say "nope! Impossible!" when it comes to internet stores.

Guess what, I can go to Walmart and buy just about fucking anything and I can be very certain:

1. It won't kill me or seriously harm me if used in a manner consistent with it's instructions.

2. The product is what it says it is.

3. The product will do what it says it will do, to a reasonable expectation.

How did they do it? Did they burn the company to the ground with all this anti-fraud? No. And, I will give you this, they do get some help from consumer protection agencies like the FDA. But they put in effort, too. For example, the above does not apply to Amazon!

Re: “Fewer Users” Warning Hurting Specialized and New Apps

#250

Post by justoreply » Mon, May 05, 2025, 11:20 AM UTC

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #241

justoreply wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they want developers to use the latest version of their API. And as a user it is a good thing, as the API is getting more restrictive and privacy focused

"Because they want developers to use the latest version of their API." But the parent commenter's company software did not need to be updated to be useful to the company. Its only purpose was to control hardware made by the company.

As I said, it is useful for the users to have software that is complying with the latest version of the API, and it is good that Google is enforcing it