Google "not happy" with slow Android app sales - Page 2

I don't know how long this nonsense will continue to be voiced. You don't code to a device. You code to an API. One single version of my app works on 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2. I haven't tested this on 2.3 yet, but I expect it to continue working. With every new release, I had to tweak it a bit (permissions, display size agnostic from 1.5-1.6) etc. If apps are coded properly without using absolute layouts and device independent pixels work just fine.

There is fragmentation in the Android world, but it's not from the developer's perspective. It's from the users' perspective when they can't upgrade to the latest OS version. This is definitely a problem and something that Google needs to fix - and fix soon.

The Android Market is indeed pretty sorry for app discovery and there are various problems with purchasing apps (lack of worldwide ability to pay, payment options etc). Reducing the return policy from 24 hours to 15 minutes hasn't helped. But the AppStore is no great shakes either. It also sucks, albeit a little less.

People are now seeing that an "open" uncurated app store system doesn't work in the real world. You end up with lots of junk apps, stolen apps and malware. I don't understand the logic of those that worship at the alter of "open" app stores.

Funny cause I have a NYTimes app on my iPhone that has never crashed and has one line of ads.

Very interesting comments from folks! Malware software, useless software, etc. etc. Now you know why Apple was putting some strict guidelines for their their app developers. Not only they were looking out for their own reputations, but their customers and app developers.

Who cares about Google - Developers and Consumers are the ones who should be furious about the scam they have been victims of.

The Android phones are the "poor mans iPhones." They are the equivalent to the Hyundai, sION, Pontiac, Saturn and Ford wannabe sports cars compared to the real deals - cheap imitations for those who want to look like they belong, but really don't. The only difference is that the car manufacturers don't claim their hunks of tin and plastic are better than the legitimate sports cars - they are honest in their claim that they are the budget sports cars.

Not so with the Ego that is Google - they are so delusional that they may actually believe what they are telling people - that the Android devices are better than iPhones. They will tout the fact that it contains a bloated and buggy Flash plugin (they will fail to tell you how horrible the experience is however), they will prance around the Google Apps (designed for the Android) and show how cool it is, and they will always market the latest greatest build (which the handset manufacturers will not make available as upgrades because their customers keep their phones FOREVER otherwise).

In fact, these consumers don't BUY stuff - they proudly chant "if it's free, it's for me." And so they will download all the "free" crap from the Marketplace, complain about the quality, complain about the spam, identity theft and complain about their pirated ringtones. What they won't do is buy... anything... more.

But it goes well beyond the content of the Marketplace - it goes all the way back to the Android itself. The Android market is fractured. No two phones are alike. There is no consistency among devices to promote a ecosystem necessary to support an application Marketplace (let alone a good one).

If Google were to demand that the UI be consistent across devices, that the "default apps" be identical and that they all function identically from one device to another - then you would begin to have a device that could support a real app ecosystem.

In the end Googles Android is nothing more than a Mobile version of the Linux desktop - too Open for it to ever be successful as anything other than a cheap imitation of the real deal.

It's not that bad but you do want a Sense and Blur phone at the target revs (1.6, 2.2). And stock but your can root one of those and the emulator is good enough for that. The emulator will give you a good idea of what will make your UI look like ass at the different rez.

Sense has a borked up soft keyboard that doesn't respond the same way as stock. As in some of the freaking events are ignored which makes for some ugly code and hacks to work around the inability of some idiot at HTC to read a frigging spec.

If you aren't testing with Sense and Blur the first time you hear about something getting broken is annoyed comments that your app sucks because of XYZ. Then you test stock and XYZ works just ducky and until you realize they have a HTC phone.

Coding to the API rev works just fine...or at least nothing has bitten me on the ass but I work in a benign environment (enterprise). All the phones we support are 2.2. I dropped 1.6 support because...I could.

Priceless.

Darwin is also open source.

As a developer with apps on both stores I completely agree.

I don't see issues with the wild west on the android market place, but biggest issue is everyone android phone should have google marketplace on it. If phone resellers want a slice of that profit then they can create an agreement with Google with a percentage of the 30% that google takes for each app sale then you have one store that everyone will use. Developers then only have to upload to one location and their apps will be available for all users instead having to upload to 20 different stores for android user.

The google marketplace is awesome that I can upload an app and have it available to users instant. Another downside is I can't give users a link to my app info in market place like you can in iTunes -- you need to be on the device to browse the android marketplace.

vBulletin is not open source. What? Can't scroll down to the bottom of the page?


Could be. In this case it is according to netcraft but it could have been IIS/Windows as opposed to Apache/CentOS and no one would notice the difference.

I wonder if part of the reason is because with Andriod market you can delete a payed app within 24hrs and you are not charged.

I'm getting the Iphone when it comes out with Verizon. If I have read this right, Iphone apps are not easy to get a refund with. Is this true that you have to email a request to the developer? I would have a lot more apps if i had not been able to get refunds.

VBulletin is not open source.

oops nht beat me

Google has used the "open" mantra to suggest there is more freedom on the platform (which is debatable from the end-user standpoint) but what they have really done is created and extended a culture of "free" where people are devaluing their personal information to receive "free" services. Social graph should be a real eye-opener.

I don't either.

I just got to the point of paying and realized i could'nt use something like pay pal. I would have to set myself up for google checkout and decided - forget it. I'll live without. So it might be better to say, in the first instance it was too much. But that might be enough to avoid the issue altogether.


so it is.

The point I was trying to make was that open source is not necessarily rubbish as strongly intimated by the poster i replied to.

Here I thought I was the only one to spot that! Are health apps selling in any great quantity on the iPhone?

Gee, have you ever heard Apple say they're even remotely disappointed with any part of their App Store(s)?

Amen.

Another tip: get Meerkat or learn ssh tunnels and disguise your IP address.

Create a SOCKS proxy tunnel on your Mac (Meerkat shows you how) and tunnel all your web traffic through another machine, in effect changing your IP address, and making Google, and other privacy abominations, think you are coming from that IP address, frustrating their attempts to profile your behavior and preferences, etc.

It's harder to describe than it is to do.

has he turned the phone on yet? One of the initial setup options of an Andriod phone is to attach it to your google account

No one knows how to 'root' an app. (whatever that means)

Actually, that's a very good point. When you take the Desktop and Server Linux market (by opposition to phones), you'll essentially see distributions. The software is "open source", which essentially means for you as a user that you can compile it yourself, and modify it if need be. However, most users of Linux want things that "just work". In order to get this, you need a compatible computer (which is actually often the case "out of the box", given Linux's huge driver base) and a reliable distribution.

What this means is, Linux users delegate curation of their software to people. When, for example, you aptitude install software on your Debian, what happens is your computer goes to the Debian App Store (a very revolutionnary concept of the 90's), which is called a repository, and asks it for a curated version of that software, precompiled for your computer.

Yeah, that's sweet. And it runs just fine under the amazing Mac hardware.


However, when your try to take that metaphor to the telephone, you hit a brick wall. The main problem is that reinstalling your computer is easy. I installed my first Debian with floppies! "Reinstalling" a mobile phone is not for the faint of heart. Resinstalling a computer, simple as it is, is already complicated enough for the base user, imagine the act of reinstalling his/her phone...

Hence, it becomes extremely hard to have a "Ubuntu" of mobile phones, that anyone could install and that would have a curated repository of apps.

Google could have gone the route of curation, of course, with Android, but it would have undermined its position with the hardware vendors, as well as with the service companies, since it would have given Google way too much control over the phones. Android would have failed from the start, where it actually has a healthy market share right now.

In the end, if you want real open source, Debian Style, you need OpenMoko or some sort of Debian Android. If you want complete peace of mind, and are ready to sacrifice a bit of freedom, you need an iPhone. And if you want something in the middle, you can get an Android phone.

There is, however, yet another solution. You can get an iPhone, get a Apple (cheap) developper license, and find the open source software you want on the Internet. Then you can compile it on your iPhone, and do the curation yourself, the way Linux users did it "in the days"... and since that solution is available, maybe, just maybe, the real open source platform is the iPhone (when you only consider the software that runs on it, and not the OS...)

Very true, and very sad. I am a Mac OS X user, as well as a Linux user. I have an iPhone. I never download anything illegally, because I believe that anything that is worth dowloading is worth buying. I do download free stuff though, at places such as Jamendo... I also use iTunes and the App Store. My iPhone is NOT jailbroken. And I despise people who go cheating, downloading, stealing, and complaining about their (bad) experience. But, as you said, Google has done something very unhealthy for our society, making information look like it's without value.
Information is power. Giving you anything for "free" against a tiny bit of "information" translates to "selling you something for power". That's quite different.

I believe in Open Source, and Mac OS X benefited tremendously from Open Source. Just look at Safari.

But I think Android is, at the moment, a tool for Google's information harvesting business.There is no way I'm getting one, and I find sad that so many people will get one for the "cheapness" reasons.

I guess you work for Microsoft's PR?

Android is based on Linux, it is far from being a "mobile version of the Linux Desktop" (see my above post why). The linux Desktop, anyway, is rather successful, and would be even more if not for the might of the Redmond giant and its well known, unethical business practices, for which it has been hilighed quite a few times. I suppose you'll deny this fact. I will not mention the numerous times where rules have been bended in international committees to make Microsoft keep that position, though you might look into (yes, I know you won't) the comedy that was the Microsoft XML document standardization. My point is, openness is not the issue, and "success" seems to be measured in different units by you and me. Given the incredible power Microsoft had, the market share of Linux is a huge success. That's a fact. Yes, Linux doesn't have a 80% market share. What it has is however impressive.

But I know I won't succeed in changing your mind. Keep your Windows mobile "real deal". I'll keep my UNIX iPhone, based on an opensource Darwin OS, using open standards.

Edit: Since Open sucks that much, why don't you write to Steve Jobs to suggest he takes those parts of Apple's Site down? http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/ http://images.apple.com/macosx/techn...UNIX_TB_FF.pdf http://www.apple.com/opensource/ Yes, that's horrible, Mac OS X is Open Source - based. That's a cheap imitation of the real deal, your Windows Vista, right?

I have seen the "Marketplace" ads (sort-of), but Google doesn't run them. Verizon runs them, and all they say is "thousands of apps from the ever-expanding Android universe" or something like that. Not much of an ad really, since it is an ad for the phone hardware (Droid) not the Google Marketplace.

App did more to promote their App Store than Google has ever done. Hell, Google apparently thinks nobody watches TV. When was the last time you saw a Google ad on TV?

10 BILLION downloads would seem to suggest ..... you're wrong!!! ....

I think this is something the Register highlighted recently. iPhone buyers buy an iPhone. Android buyers buy a Smartphone. The fact that the iPhone is an iPhone is the key part of the iPhone purchase, but the fact than an Android is an Android is by the by to your average android buyers - it could be WinMob, Linux, or even a port of AmigaOS for all they care.

No, he's right. The App store is hard to find what you're looking for. The entire iTunes store is well overdue for a resdesign. It might have worked okay when there were less items in it, but its just a mess now.

Can you provide some specifics on what the problem is? I just checked my app on my friend's EVO and I couldn't find any problems. Used text, numbers and special characters.

I used to browse the Android market daily when I got my G1. Having few apps made it possible. After a couple of months I couldn't keep up. Now, I almost never browse the market. AppBrain on the other hand is excellent. Before the Froyo update, I could also install the apps OTA directly from the web on to my phone. I expect that when Google releases the web app they showed last year at I/O, app discovery and installation will be as good as mail, contacts, calendar etc. seamless syncing is today.

For a company that has spent the last decade steering people towards the web, not having a web based Market and a hopeless search in the Market app is a complete head scratcher.

Millions of people used Windows worldwide. It wasn't that great of an OS until Windows 7 came out and changed everything. For me, I had just about enough of iTunes. In the end, before I sold my iPod Touch and iPad 2 weeks ago, I used the devices to search for and download software. I can go on an on about how much the experience sucked for me. But it doesn't matter. As you said, millions of people use the App Store and if they are happy with it, good for them.

This is outrageous, and a violation of any rational privacy rules. This should be investigated by Congress and the FCC. Being in someone's address book does not mean I have agreed that my information can go out to Google or any developers. This is criminal.

well let's see .... on one hand is the opinion of the 2 of you .... otoh is the opinion of 10 FREAKIN' BILLION .... hmmmm 2 of yo .... 10 billion .... I dunno .. tough call ....

As anyone who reads my posts will know I am not a windows fan by any stretch of the imagination .... but even I might have to say that windows 95 and XP were a pretty good OS for their time ... not better than Mac OS, imho, ... but still good.

Having said that I have to recognize the fact that no matter how many billions of any thing are used they may not be a fit for everyone.

I would be interested in knowing what version of iTunes you're using. I absolutely love iTunes ... but I run it on an intel iMac and am still using version 9.2.1 (4) .... that might be the difference between our two experiences.

But it isn't 10 billion opinions, is it?

First of all, several dozen of those purchases are mine. You need to first establish how many purchasers your average purchaser makes. Yeah, its still a lot of buyers, but its not 10 billion.

None of those purchases I've made can be taken as an "Endorsement" that I think its well designed - it means on this occasion I managed to find something I want.. But how much could I want that I simply don't know is there?

Just like when I buy a Big Mac, it doesnt mean I like the way the McDonalds outlet is designed (the green colour they seem to be painting them now is awful)... it means I want a Hamburger.

None of the other purchasers are an endoresement of the store's design. It again means someone found a product in there... But again, if it was better designed, how many more items could have been sold?

If you want to use the sales figures as a barometer as to how well its designed (which is still ridiculous), then I'm afraid you're going to need to head into a parallel reality where it is better designed, and compare the sales figures. I'm going to go ahead and guess your name isn't Quinn Malaroy

But I'd be willing to bet it's still bigger than TWO.

Then the "design" must be working for you, or else you wouldn't be bothered using it for those "several dozen of purchases" would you?

Haven't you ever "Googled" something only to find there were several 1000s, even 10s of 1000s of suggestions? ... do you look at them all ... do you feel "left out" because you don't know what the rest of the suggestions are? Probably not, so what's so different about searching for apps or googling? As long as you're finding something that works for you .... it's working.

That's just a ridiculous statement to make. What other criteria are you going to use, other than downloads. Clearly, if it was such a lousy design it wouldn't be as popular as it is ... and 10 billion downloads tells me, and any other unbiased observer, that it is indeed, very popular.
PS ... Nice "Sliders" reference ..... I used to really enjoy that show .... the whole "time travel" thing is one of my favorite things to watch.

Dude, the OS is free and it has a 1%-2% desktop market share. That's not successful at all.

Given the massive failure of Linux in Munich, Vienna, and Soluturn it wasn't MS ebilness that killed Linux in those cities but that the OS just sucks as a desktop OS.


No more of a comedy than ODF. IBM, Sun, Novell, et al pushed ODF though with the intent of shafting MS in selling Office to the government markets. Too bad all of those initiatives are pretty much dead eh? Too bad that Sun and Novell are dead as well.

That's a cynical use of standards to screw over a competitor. I much prefer the tack that Apple tends to take: create a product that blows the competition away.

Something that FreetardOffice, IBM, Sun, Novell, et al were completely unable to do. Attempting to legislate an "open standard" that excluded MS Office was simply an admission that they simply could not compete on a technical level with MS.

Which is pretty damn sad. Apple created Keynote which if they ever ported over to Windows would give Powerpoint a real run for the money.


If Linux had 8% share that would be impressive. Linux on the desktop has been a decade of failtrain. Instead it trails behind an OS that is tied to expensive hardware.


There's a lot of open source stuff at MS as well. This is such a bizzaro post...Apple is not the poster child for Open. It might be the poster child for being Open in a smart way. Sun would be the poster child for being Open in the stupid way. Google the poster child for being open in the cynical way. IBM the poster child for being open in the evil way.

It's been a few months but I'm guessing you're not using imeOptions. Sense doesn't honor the Done key behavior. You can't use IME_ACTION_DONE but are stuck with needing to trap KeyEvent.KEYCODE_ENTER via an OnKeyListener as well. And the behavior doesn't work quite right either so I have one screen that's slightly broken on HTC phones. On stock you can set an OnEditorActionListener and trigger behavior on IME_ACTION_DONE.

I also ran into this weird behavior with OnEditorActionListener with Sense:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4...nseui-keyboard

Technically, softkeyboards don't have to honor imeOptions. In practice it's a mess when they don't. Okay, I understand when something like Swipe might not but the base keyboard for Sense really should.

So my Android code is littered with hacks for various stuff that I've labeled with FIXME in the hopes I can make them go away in the future.

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