After porting VLC on so many platforms, to be honest, working on Android applications is not too bad. Notably compared to other mobile platforms.
The tools and IDE are quite good (they need a lot of RAM though), the deployment is easy, the development workflow simple enough and the devices are easy (and cheap) to come by. Even the Play Store console is not catastrophic.
A contrario from Youtube, you can get questions answered by Google, and the dev communities are quite large.
The API changes are known 6 months in advance, which is good enough, for most cases. And you get them usually only when targeting the new SDK version (except for Android Q... why?!?)
What I don't like though, is their abysmal NDK support (notably compared to iOS), the removal of use-cases (just use SAF, right? wifi?), but mostly the APIs that are never finished and always buggy (Audio API for example), and the impossibility to send patches to fix those bugs.
Finally, the Play Store Console is so-so, but the user-facing part is quite nice.
> What I don't like though, is their abysmal NDK support (notably compared to iOS)
Yeah, this is my biggest gripe. The vast majority of popular apps in the Play Store are games, which all use the NDK. Yet Google refuses to give the NDK more resources.
You're the guy behind VLC for Android? Amazing job, it really is an essential app I couldn't live without! The only problem is years pass and I still can't find how to turn a directory into a playlist without hand-checking every single file in it (for me this usually means hundreds).
I quite like VLC on my cheap Android, and I'm glad the development experience has been reasonable! It's just the thing for my SD card full of ogg vorbis files.
Android's Storage Access Framework is really underrated. Just ask the user to choose a document (file or image or whatever) by firing an intent-- then Android's built-in file picker starts up and you don't have to deal with implementing any of that UI experience. After the user picks the file, a content:// URI is returned back.
Best part-- along with the URI, you get the permission to access the document/file/image/audio/whatever "for free" without ever having to request it! Because you kind of just did-- the act of the user picking the file auto-gives you the read permission, which can be kept ("persisted") across system/app restarts.
This file may not even be on the actual device. It could be on some cloud service or a file server or something else you've never even heard of. Android handles it all for you. An example of this is Google Drive. If they've installed the Google Drive app and it's linked to their account, the Storage Access Framework will let the user pick stuff from there just as easily as their own external storage.
You can also use the picker to create/save a new file or even choose a whole (directory/folder) tree.
Reading from the content:// URI is a little different than from a file:// , and I know there are some situations where this won't cut it. But starting in Q you'll be kind of limited in where those files can be accessed.
But in most situations involving External Storage, the SAF is really what you want to use anyway.
> But in most situations involving External Storage, the SAF is really what you want to use anyway.
Or not. A File Picker does not work for playlists, linked MKV/MOV files, subtitles autodetection (subfolders and such), and so many other multimedia cases.
Also, it is a pain to use from the NDK... And incorrectly documented.
And then, the UI to allow people to give you access to the folders is extremely confusing, hard to explain to users, not customizable, and changes from version of Android to another, so very hard to document.
So how would a file manager work then? I have used several file managers over the years that allowed me to conveniently manage files locally and remotely. E.g. extract the downloaded zip file locally, edit ome of them, copy these 20 selected extracted files via SCP and delete these three folders.
Granted, I only do that on a phome in a pinch but having these features saved me more than once. I dom't want Android to become as restrictive and underpowered as iOS feels to me.
The SAF APIs are cumbersome garbage up there with Account Manager and ContentProviders. Its missing important providers like DropBox, and even Google Drive doesn't implement it completely.
> Reading from the content:// URI is a little different than from a file://
I haven't found the reading part to be different, but getting the uri has changed from Uri.fromFile() to their FileProvider package. Which, requires quite a bit of setup in comparison.
To be fair, it's documented well on the Android developer site.
I don't really mind that some behaviors are being restricted. (Although I think removing the ability for apps to toggle WiFi is nonsense.)
The problem is that Google wants to break API compatibility without actually calling it what it is. Your app, which worked for years, is now broken and as far as the user is concerned it's your fault. I've been tempted to set the "max API level" property on my apps so that I don't have to deal with this anymore. (Oh, wait, Google changed Android to no longer enforce that property.)
If Google wants to make breaking changes to the API then give developers a reasonable deprecation timeline and don't let users install apps that target old API levels.
Each new Android version starts with a beta which previews and advertises the behavior changes, how is that not a reasonable deprecation timeline ? (real question, not trying to be cute)
> don't let users install apps that target old API levels
Google has been less active on that front that I would like but the play store is starting to at least enforce that new apps and update must target a recent API level.
Didn't they do some of this kind of storage crap back on 4.x? And for that matter, isn't this pretty much exactly what Microsoft was doing with Windows Phone?
My annoying use case for those was ebook readers - I have a pretty massive library of epubs (Thanks Baen Webscriptions!) and have tended to just dump a ton of them into a folder in storage on a device. I can then pull those up in CoolReader, Moon+ Reader (position sync!) or FBReader as I desire. On Windows Phone every reader app (not that there were many) had to have its own independent download because god forbid you have shared freaking storage.
Somehow I feel that this is also going to end up hitting things like third-party gallery apps such as ones that allow tagging, along with the multimedia stuff that other folks are concerned with. Oh, and music. The death of MP3s saved locally to a device and used by multiple apps?
So much of what Google has been doing with Android (turning it into a minimal platform for running the massive Google Play where all functionality lives) seems like they're heading down the walled-garden that Apple has always been, but with creepy monitoring and ad-driven revenues layered on top.
I always dismissed iOS as an option because I didn't like how locked-down it was and I really liked swipe-based input, but now that iOS allows keyboards and the locked-down aspect is happening everywhere perhaps it's time to reconsider.
I do think sandboxing the file system makes sense. I recall on early Androids just seeing an arbitrary dumpster of files on the SD card for different apps and uses, and tons of apps had access to all of them. That's concerning.
But ideally, the user should be able to create an arbitrary storage location (say, a folder), and then permit specific apps to access it, without granting the app "file system access" as a whole.
Capability-based systems with a powerbox/picker UI are designed this way, so my guess is Fuchsia will work a bit more like this.
That you can still do. The future notion is that that storage directory is yours, and apps don't have total access ("write anywhere, read anything, delete whatever"). FBReader cannot dump some more ebooks in that directory.
FBReader has a directory of its own, and can provide other apps with access to ebooks or other files in that directory, mediated by its own code, access-controlled as it pleases.
It doesn't sound bad to my ears, except that the APIs involved need love and attention, and their documentation even more so.
(Edit: Not picking on FBReader, just using it as an example.)
I think the point you make about walled gardens needs to be addressed more than it is. It seems to have become normalized across all platforms and that is disturbing.
I fundamentally disagree with the premise of a walled garden when there are no other options to install on a device.
The web is the only freedom devs have left and even that is starting to erode - article 13, neutrality etc.
> On Windows Phone every reader app (not that there were many) had to have its own independent download because god forbid you have shared freaking storage.
That's not entirely accurate, even for Windows Phone at its most restrictive (7.x). The reader app would ask for storage apps and the storage apps would provide the files. It was quite common that the storage apps seemed like they would download multiple copies each file separately for each reader app, but that wasn't always the case. Unsurprisingly, some storage apps were just dumber than others.
Windows Phone 8.x and 10 opened up more direct file system access without going through an intermediary storage app, though of course possibly too late for the impression of stupid storage apps to linger.
ETA: Not that any of this currently matters given the current state of Windows on mobile devices. :(
I got a little caught up in the argument about clipboard apps suddenly being broken as if there was no thought put into the impact it would have. Clipboard apps on Android are currently very dangerous since an app can access the clipboard without asking for permission so the user can unknowingly share anything in the clipboard with malicious apps. That's insane and Google is right to fix this even if it breaks things for well behaved apps. There is a lot of solid information in this article but starting with that argument set a poor tone.
Second, makes you wonder if Google as an organization wants to push you towards web apps / PWAs. Google has always seemed to think that getting people to abandon the app model benefits them and hurts Apple and maybe these changes are in search of that end result.
I agree with you on the clipboard thing, but as with every other API that gives access to sensitive information, they could have put it behind a permission prompt. It wouldn't make the situation worse than it is now, and wouldn't annoy users and developers nearly as much.
The constant API changes has been a huge PITA for me both as a developer and as a user.
As a developer, I am forced to take time out of developing my new app to update my older apps. This year, I spent 3 months updating my 2 older apps to the newest API. My app/game that will be released soon is targeting an API that will be banned from further updates later this year. The problem is that the game framework that I use does not support the newer API yet, and development has slowed considerably on it, so I may be stuck with the (possibly monumental) task of updating the game framework myself.
My two older apps should be left alone. My users tend to stick with them because they want to use a familiar interface, and most other competitors change interfaces on a regular basis. But I have had to occasionally remove features because of API changes.
And that brings me to my gripes as an Android user - most of my favorite old apps from just a few years back with either no longer work, or have completely changed so that they aren't really the same app that I used to love.
I am really rooting for a Linux-based phone to eek out some type of commercial viability. I am willing to pay much more for a device with much lower specs and polish, so that I can have a device that respects me as a user.
> "Note that all of these things that they are removing for “security”, could simply be gated around a permission prompt you’d have to accept, as with the contact list, or location."
I think letting the user decide on permissions works in practice only if (i) There is a good chance that an average user would understand the tradeoffs of giving different permissions to different apps (ii) A large majority of users are expected to give that permission to the app under reasonable circumstances.
If an average user does not understand the tradeoffs of giving permissions to an app, then the operating system may as well do it on behalf of the user. I think this is a common problem since an average user probably clicks arbitrarily on the permissions dialog.
Similarly, if a permission is perceived to be not useful enough by most of the users, then there is no point in even having that in the ecosystem.
This is the crux of the problem that gbl08ma isn't realizing.
"User choice is what all of this boils down to, really. Android used to give me the choice of being slightly insecure in exchange for having more powerful and innovative features in the apps I install..."
You're dead on about the average user. Watch someone install and app, and less than a second is spent looking at the permissions.
Google's solution makes sense for their platform, not for power users. Leaving security up to users will result in insecure devices, increasing support costs as well as denigrating the brand.
If people are going to do things like financial transactions shudder on their phone, then the platform has to be rock-solid secure. That leaves those who might know and do better with their devices with less options.
Lile the article says, the Google Play Store makes it difficult for newer developers to get established. To get your app featured, you need to meet a whole host of design/accessibility/localization/etc requirements that pretty much make it impossible for small companies to get on the list--they simply don't have enough developer time to make sure that every button in their app has flashy touch feedback or to make sure their app is supported in Zimbabwe.
That said, I don't really feel that oppressed as an app developer. I think Google has done more good than bad here
Here people is complaining about Google bad policies..but have you ever seen/read/experienced changes in iOS ecosystem? All the new SDK versions must support newer devices while deprecating old versions of iOS.
At least, you pay a fee of 25$ and it's on you (or Google). Paying 99$/year and still experiencing some strong frustration at each newer release and change is much more for fetishism
Seeing that the newest phone that doesn’t support the latest version of iOS was released in 2012, I don’t see a problem with Apple deprecating older versions of iOS.
I compare that to Windows which has been around two decades longer than iOS and Android and which APIs have remained remarkably stable and backward compatible. It is possible to do it. It is just more work.
We are currently struggling with firebase messaging in a multi million user android app. Receiving lots of quota errors which are preventing push notifications to work properly. There is contact support with the firebase team, but there is no solution. I learned that the firebase infrastructure is shared with other developers. If one developer is maximizing load on the system it affects others.
The fact that you basically have no alternative to firebase fcm is really a pita. Each new version of Android makes it more restrictive. I wouldn't be surprised if in 2 years from now every app needs to have buttons with a predefined colour and fontsize
Security on Android is a joke. Google may shut down completely legitimate developers' accounts and remove useful permissions, yet they will still allow malicious apps like Cheetah Mobile's Ram Booster to be in top 10 most downloaded apps of the Play Store...
case in point: the MalwareBytes app is no longer allowed to access SMS message info, so it cannot examine links in SMS messages.
so there's a legit security app which can no longer function as effectively as it did before the Google Play Store eliminated its access to the SMS permission.
They can also blow you off overnight by mistake but whoops it's too late. At one time I had around 25,000 users on my app then a hiccup landed me back at 2 users. As a developer you have no rights. But at least they don't charge $100 a year like apple who can also randomly kill your app by mistake easily as well.
In fairness, access to features such as call logs and clipboard are too easily abused. I think that most users downloading apps from the Play Store have the expectation that Google is taking care of their privacy. As the author mentioned, advanced users can still sideload any non-approved apps they want, and as advanced users they should understand any security implications.
The point I do agree on is that the platform itself is becoming far too locked down, and the example of "Imagine if the online banking of my bank refused to open on my desktop because it knows I know the password for the administrator account" is a valid one and shows just how crazy it's getting.
Speaking of ridiculous, Android and banking, just yesterday I was browsing my transactions and wanted to send a screenshot of one to my wife. As it turns out, you cannot make screenshots of banking apps. Because "security".
Publishers often refer to copying they don't approve of as “piracy.” In this way, they imply that it is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them. Based on such propaganda, they have procured laws in most of the world to forbid copying in most (or sometimes all) circumstances. (They are still pressuring to make these prohibitions more complete.)
If you don't believe that copying not approved by the publisher is just like kidnapping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word “piracy” to describe it. Neutral terms such as “unauthorized copying” (or “prohibited copying” for the situation where it is illegal) are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as “sharing information with your neighbor.”
A US judge, presiding over a trial for copyright infringement, recognized that “piracy” and “theft” are smear words.
a GPS nit: the Google Play Store's "timed publishing" feature lets you accumulate changes to your app's store page hours or days in advance of an update and then click a "Go Live" when you actually want to publish that update and make those changes publicly visible.
but apparently it's not quite atomic. the Timed Publishing documentation notes say: If you ... add release notes to your app’s “What’s new in this release?” section while you're in timed publishing mode, they'll be published immediately.
that's so confusing! if I want to update release notes about a new release I'm going to make live soon, why would I want them to be published immediately? huh?
There are just so many apps demanding access to your clipboard, WiFi configuration and other stuff for no valid reason I'm actually glad to see Google is doing something. The only part that seems annoying is messing with what and how can apps access on the external storage. The μSD card and the OTG-attached thumb drive are exactly the places where I store content like audio, video, ebook, documents and other files, I use them the same way I use my laptop hard drive, having to grant root rights to an app every time I want to perform an operation on these files feels annoying and weird.
While I understand the complaint about google eliminating entire classes of apps, I have to say that I'm finding it extremely difficult to have any sympathy whatsoever for the OP: he's effectively complaining that software requires maintenance, which is something that has always been true and every single one of us learned about project lifecycle management in our engineering management or equivalent classes; as time goes on the effort towards maintaining any piece of software tends to overcome the effort of having it created in the first place.
Personally, I really hope that Librem 5 won't flop. While I don't see it going mainstream, at least it could provide a mobile platform for technically minded users.
I also think efforts like Fairphone are also promising. Android does provide a nice solid base to build on top of. What's missing is a community effort we see around Linux to build a completely open platform on top of what's already available.
Android becomes more hostile to power users with every update. That's why I will never buy a phone I can't root. The very fact users have to pick a particular phone and then jump through hoops for the privilege is ridiculous.
As an Android user it feels like Android is getting more and more IOS like with every new release. Seriously I wouldn't be surprised if they locked down the filesystem (like IOS) in the name of security.
Maybe they'll start mandating a half-decent device security update policy in the name of security. I've had a few too many two year old devices stop getting updates.
not disagreeing, but i'm skeptical android will ever attain iOS's level of fan-appreciation or polish. if becoming like iOS is their goal, Google is probably playing a losing game.
jbk|7 years ago
The tools and IDE are quite good (they need a lot of RAM though), the deployment is easy, the development workflow simple enough and the devices are easy (and cheap) to come by. Even the Play Store console is not catastrophic.
A contrario from Youtube, you can get questions answered by Google, and the dev communities are quite large.
The API changes are known 6 months in advance, which is good enough, for most cases. And you get them usually only when targeting the new SDK version (except for Android Q... why?!?)
What I don't like though, is their abysmal NDK support (notably compared to iOS), the removal of use-cases (just use SAF, right? wifi?), but mostly the APIs that are never finished and always buggy (Audio API for example), and the impossibility to send patches to fix those bugs.
Finally, the Play Store Console is so-so, but the user-facing part is quite nice.
pcwalton|7 years ago
Yeah, this is my biggest gripe. The vast majority of popular apps in the Play Store are games, which all use the NDK. Yet Google refuses to give the NDK more resources.
qwerty456127|7 years ago
sevensor|7 years ago
unknown|7 years ago
[deleted]
fattire|7 years ago
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/providers/documen...
Best part-- along with the URI, you get the permission to access the document/file/image/audio/whatever "for free" without ever having to request it! Because you kind of just did-- the act of the user picking the file auto-gives you the read permission, which can be kept ("persisted") across system/app restarts.
This file may not even be on the actual device. It could be on some cloud service or a file server or something else you've never even heard of. Android handles it all for you. An example of this is Google Drive. If they've installed the Google Drive app and it's linked to their account, the Storage Access Framework will let the user pick stuff from there just as easily as their own external storage.
You can also use the picker to create/save a new file or even choose a whole (directory/folder) tree.
Reading from the content:// URI is a little different than from a file:// , and I know there are some situations where this won't cut it. But starting in Q you'll be kind of limited in where those files can be accessed.
But in most situations involving External Storage, the SAF is really what you want to use anyway.
Watch this little-seen video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C28pvd2plBA
jbk|7 years ago
Or not. A File Picker does not work for playlists, linked MKV/MOV files, subtitles autodetection (subfolders and such), and so many other multimedia cases.
Also, it is a pain to use from the NDK... And incorrectly documented.
And then, the UI to allow people to give you access to the folders is extremely confusing, hard to explain to users, not customizable, and changes from version of Android to another, so very hard to document.
gmueckl|7 years ago
Granted, I only do that on a phome in a pinch but having these features saved me more than once. I dom't want Android to become as restrictive and underpowered as iOS feels to me.
clumsysmurf|7 years ago
H1Supreme|7 years ago
I haven't found the reading part to be different, but getting the uri has changed from Uri.fromFile() to their FileProvider package. Which, requires quite a bit of setup in comparison.
To be fair, it's documented well on the Android developer site.
chaisoftware|7 years ago
This is not a good thing for VR apps. Unless there's a VR system file picker in the works that I'm unaware of..
joelhaasnoot|7 years ago
Mindless2112|7 years ago
The problem is that Google wants to break API compatibility without actually calling it what it is. Your app, which worked for years, is now broken and as far as the user is concerned it's your fault. I've been tempted to set the "max API level" property on my apps so that I don't have to deal with this anymore. (Oh, wait, Google changed Android to no longer enforce that property.)
If Google wants to make breaking changes to the API then give developers a reasonable deprecation timeline and don't let users install apps that target old API levels.
on_and_off|7 years ago
Each new Android version starts with a beta which previews and advertises the behavior changes, how is that not a reasonable deprecation timeline ? (real question, not trying to be cute)
> don't let users install apps that target old API levels
Google has been less active on that front that I would like but the play store is starting to at least enforce that new apps and update must target a recent API level.
UncleMeat|7 years ago
fencepost|7 years ago
My annoying use case for those was ebook readers - I have a pretty massive library of epubs (Thanks Baen Webscriptions!) and have tended to just dump a ton of them into a folder in storage on a device. I can then pull those up in CoolReader, Moon+ Reader (position sync!) or FBReader as I desire. On Windows Phone every reader app (not that there were many) had to have its own independent download because god forbid you have shared freaking storage.
Somehow I feel that this is also going to end up hitting things like third-party gallery apps such as ones that allow tagging, along with the multimedia stuff that other folks are concerned with. Oh, and music. The death of MP3s saved locally to a device and used by multiple apps?
So much of what Google has been doing with Android (turning it into a minimal platform for running the massive Google Play where all functionality lives) seems like they're heading down the walled-garden that Apple has always been, but with creepy monitoring and ad-driven revenues layered on top.
I always dismissed iOS as an option because I didn't like how locked-down it was and I really liked swipe-based input, but now that iOS allows keyboards and the locked-down aspect is happening everywhere perhaps it's time to reconsider.
Edit: removed disparagement of Windows Phone apps
ocdtrekkie|7 years ago
But ideally, the user should be able to create an arbitrary storage location (say, a folder), and then permit specific apps to access it, without granting the app "file system access" as a whole.
Capability-based systems with a powerbox/picker UI are designed this way, so my guess is Fuchsia will work a bit more like this.
Arnt|7 years ago
FBReader has a directory of its own, and can provide other apps with access to ebooks or other files in that directory, mediated by its own code, access-controlled as it pleases.
It doesn't sound bad to my ears, except that the APIs involved need love and attention, and their documentation even more so.
(Edit: Not picking on FBReader, just using it as an example.)
fjabre|7 years ago
I fundamentally disagree with the premise of a walled garden when there are no other options to install on a device.
The web is the only freedom devs have left and even that is starting to erode - article 13, neutrality etc.
WorldMaker|7 years ago
That's not entirely accurate, even for Windows Phone at its most restrictive (7.x). The reader app would ask for storage apps and the storage apps would provide the files. It was quite common that the storage apps seemed like they would download multiple copies each file separately for each reader app, but that wasn't always the case. Unsurprisingly, some storage apps were just dumber than others.
Windows Phone 8.x and 10 opened up more direct file system access without going through an intermediary storage app, though of course possibly too late for the impression of stupid storage apps to linger.
ETA: Not that any of this currently matters given the current state of Windows on mobile devices. :(
xrd|7 years ago
I got a little caught up in the argument about clipboard apps suddenly being broken as if there was no thought put into the impact it would have. Clipboard apps on Android are currently very dangerous since an app can access the clipboard without asking for permission so the user can unknowingly share anything in the clipboard with malicious apps. That's insane and Google is right to fix this even if it breaks things for well behaved apps. There is a lot of solid information in this article but starting with that argument set a poor tone.
Second, makes you wonder if Google as an organization wants to push you towards web apps / PWAs. Google has always seemed to think that getting people to abandon the app model benefits them and hurts Apple and maybe these changes are in search of that end result.
gbl08ma|7 years ago
vgoh1|7 years ago
As a developer, I am forced to take time out of developing my new app to update my older apps. This year, I spent 3 months updating my 2 older apps to the newest API. My app/game that will be released soon is targeting an API that will be banned from further updates later this year. The problem is that the game framework that I use does not support the newer API yet, and development has slowed considerably on it, so I may be stuck with the (possibly monumental) task of updating the game framework myself.
My two older apps should be left alone. My users tend to stick with them because they want to use a familiar interface, and most other competitors change interfaces on a regular basis. But I have had to occasionally remove features because of API changes.
And that brings me to my gripes as an Android user - most of my favorite old apps from just a few years back with either no longer work, or have completely changed so that they aren't really the same app that I used to love.
I am really rooting for a Linux-based phone to eek out some type of commercial viability. I am willing to pay much more for a device with much lower specs and polish, so that I can have a device that respects me as a user.
eh78ssxv2f|7 years ago
I think letting the user decide on permissions works in practice only if (i) There is a good chance that an average user would understand the tradeoffs of giving different permissions to different apps (ii) A large majority of users are expected to give that permission to the app under reasonable circumstances.
If an average user does not understand the tradeoffs of giving permissions to an app, then the operating system may as well do it on behalf of the user. I think this is a common problem since an average user probably clicks arbitrarily on the permissions dialog.
Similarly, if a permission is perceived to be not useful enough by most of the users, then there is no point in even having that in the ecosystem.
redleggedfrog|7 years ago
"User choice is what all of this boils down to, really. Android used to give me the choice of being slightly insecure in exchange for having more powerful and innovative features in the apps I install..."
You're dead on about the average user. Watch someone install and app, and less than a second is spent looking at the permissions.
Google's solution makes sense for their platform, not for power users. Leaving security up to users will result in insecure devices, increasing support costs as well as denigrating the brand.
If people are going to do things like financial transactions shudder on their phone, then the platform has to be rock-solid secure. That leaves those who might know and do better with their devices with less options.
It's the price of maturity.
briga|7 years ago
That said, I don't really feel that oppressed as an app developer. I think Google has done more good than bad here
IloveHN84|7 years ago
At least, you pay a fee of 25$ and it's on you (or Google). Paying 99$/year and still experiencing some strong frustration at each newer release and change is much more for fetishism
scarface74|7 years ago
cm2187|7 years ago
holoduke|7 years ago
agluszak|7 years ago
HillaryBriss|7 years ago
so there's a legit security app which can no longer function as effectively as it did before the Google Play Store eliminated its access to the SMS permission.
shams93|7 years ago
iliketosleep|7 years ago
The point I do agree on is that the platform itself is becoming far too locked down, and the example of "Imagine if the online banking of my bank refused to open on my desktop because it knows I know the password for the administrator account" is a valid one and shows just how crazy it's getting.
TeMPOraL|7 years ago
sadris|7 years ago
random878|7 years ago
“Piracy”
Publishers often refer to copying they don't approve of as “piracy.” In this way, they imply that it is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them. Based on such propaganda, they have procured laws in most of the world to forbid copying in most (or sometimes all) circumstances. (They are still pressuring to make these prohibitions more complete.)
If you don't believe that copying not approved by the publisher is just like kidnapping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word “piracy” to describe it. Neutral terms such as “unauthorized copying” (or “prohibited copying” for the situation where it is illegal) are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as “sharing information with your neighbor.”
A US judge, presiding over a trial for copyright infringement, recognized that “piracy” and “theft” are smear words.
wetpaws|7 years ago
voltagex_|7 years ago
mike_kamau|7 years ago
nukeop|7 years ago
[deleted]
HillaryBriss|7 years ago
but apparently it's not quite atomic. the Timed Publishing documentation notes say: If you ... add release notes to your app’s “What’s new in this release?” section while you're in timed publishing mode, they'll be published immediately.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
that's so confusing! if I want to update release notes about a new release I'm going to make live soon, why would I want them to be published immediately? huh?
qwerty456127|7 years ago
lagadu|7 years ago
yogthos|7 years ago
I also think efforts like Fairphone are also promising. Android does provide a nice solid base to build on top of. What's missing is a community effort we see around Linux to build a completely open platform on top of what's already available.
alanh|7 years ago
https://alanhogan.com/arrogance-of-google
Causality1|7 years ago
bibyte|7 years ago
justryry|7 years ago
HillaryBriss|7 years ago
not disagreeing, but i'm skeptical android will ever attain iOS's level of fan-appreciation or polish. if becoming like iOS is their goal, Google is probably playing a losing game.
dhbradshaw|7 years ago