I'd assume they would have a record of the user in their database. How else would they earn money from the data harvesting their app is a cover for? For the small number of apps that aren't solely data harvesting, surely they still have records of their users in a database as well? This question almost reads as if you're assuming the only record of an app would be through the store and not by the app developers themselves. I would find that truly shocking and quite comically sad if true.
It seems like it would be trivial for a user to login to the app acquired from a different store to be able to display a "welcome back" or even something along the lines of a "restore purchases" type of thing.
This can't be reinventing the wheel kind of a thing.
Using android.content.SharedPreferences, set one singaling the user purchased a license from the Amazon copy of the app, read it from the Google Play app.
It is doable, the main issues is:
1. Getting users to redownload the app from the Play store
2. Maintaining this registration transfer mechanism
That's on the dev of the app. They should absolutely have the ability to see that you download the app, and allow full access again.
This isn't any different from a user switching to a new device and having to download apps again. Not everyone restores from backup and prefers clean installs. Downloading an app again should not be the point of friction
What I actually get: a list of completely anonymized per-transaction data that contains the country in which the purchase was made, the time and date, the currency in which the transaction was made, and the .. something to do with exchange rate, and... about 12 columns of data in total, none of which remotely resemble an email or a credit card number or a globally unique account ID. Actually, multiple records for each transaction -- there's a separate record for various stages of clearing of the payment (or failure to clear as the case may be).
I suppose I could analyze that data, although I can't think of an actual good reason to do so. I have no idea whether those records are real or fabricated. So no real way to verify that google is paying me the correct amount. Since you asked.
Thanks for taking the time. I figure if you run a non-hosted app that costs money (i dunno, a flashlight or camera app for instance.) there's no way to know for sure if google is being honest. I guess if you run a hosted app they would almost certainly have to be honest otherwise a user that paid wouldn't have access to your service.
It was an idle curiosity. If i ever make an app, it'll have a trivial authenticated hosted back end, just to keep google honest!
Roger Penrose wrote about this decades ago, arguing that computers cannot contain consciousness and neither can anything in currently understood physics.
It becomes everyones user experience when every big company only offers their software on their own app store so they don't have to pay anyone else a cut.
Yes, but is that inevitable? Facebook tried to take advantage of Android's open nature in the past and failed outright, and that wasn't even an app store but an app launcher (Facebook Home). The Amazon Appstore is mostly used for their Fire Tablets anyway. Ditto Samsung Galaxy Store is specifically for their own devices. Epic's attempts at building their own mobile app store hasn't gotten anywhere. So what other phantom third party app store are we so afraid of? Steam?
Here's a small but more poignant reason: F-Droid exists on Android, not as a huge app store, but a nice FOSS-only community with its own standards of app quality and screening for malware. Surely as hackers we can at least appreciate an analogous community being made feasible on iOS, and not in a slightly more shady unofficial capacity like the jailbroken-only Cydia.
And surely, as hackers, we can appreciate having the freedom to not be unilaterally subject to the whims of a single corporation's dictates.
Android has had alternate app stores for years. I don't recall any of them being a panacea for poor struggling devs held captive by Google Play. I stopped offering my apps on any of them as it was never worth the bother.
What problem is this trying to solve for who exactly? I don't see any way this ends up as a win for small devs.
Thought experiment: I have 7 subscriptions. 4 of those are through the App Store. My credit card expires or get lost. What are the chances I enter new credit card information on your site as opposed to App Store?
And let’s not pretend that Apple is making a lot of money off of Indy developers. Most of the App Store revenue is coming from pay to win games and loot boxes.
Oh goody. I get to manage my own payment system. And have to worry about being tax compliant in every country and state. And deal with logins, and refunds and fraud and uptime and customer support.
Or just integrate other third party payment systems like Stripe, Square or PayPal. I'm pretty sure that they will almost immediately make their systems available on both Android and iOS when the bill passes.
Because a market is suddenly opened for business, alternative payment processors can now start offering systems that take care of this, and with different terms from Apple's. You wouldn't have to handle all of it yourself, you could simply sign on with one that provides you with service you like.
This is the free market competition that tech is supposedly in favor of.
The 15% pay cut is an industry convention, but is that actually justified by any financial reasoning? With actual competition in this space, business models can be discovered that could potentially lower costs. Not to mention, given the VC effect, there will likely be newcomers that try to undercut Apple/Google and each other with lower prices by burning investor capital, for a time.
People are already upset that their digital purchases are controlled by Apple. Wait until the startup that they bought stacks of software from goes bust and all of their app purchases are gone.
This current situation already exists with the App Store. There are apps that have been removed from the store that are simply gone forever, such as Flappy Bird, which was at least free. So how does this change anything? Just because Apple will outlive third party stores doesn't mean the situation you're describing doesn't already happen.
Maybe there will end up being a single app store for both Android and Apple? As a small dev, you'd only have to deal with 1 upload, a single review process, one set of user reviews, etc.
The legislation would require Google/Apple to "step aside" and allow side-loading/alternative app stores, so yes?
Google and Apple would still be welcome to operate their own stores. A 3rd-party cross-platform store would compete with them, hence no monopoly.
Edit: I guess you read my comment to mean "Apple's app store would come to Android" or vice versa? That's a possibility. I'd prefer that to the current state of affairs where no direct competition is possible
I still end up with one more app store to deal with. Unless this 3rd party becomes a de-facto monopoly, there's no way you could afford to leave money on the table by not also dealing with Apple and Google.
It doesn't at all. You can continue to just publish your apps to the App Store and the Play Store, much as the vast majority of users will continue using those.
I think a large chunk of the problem is that we've been concentrating on improving the rendering, which is clearly now phenomenal, and seemingly totally ignoring the animation, which is still abysmal.
CGI characters still move too smoothly. It's all spline curves and jelly physics. CGI is instantly recognisably unreal due to the overly fluid motions and it seems remarkable to me how little progress has been made on this.
Animated characters still look animated, except they dive straight into the uncanny valley because of the incredible rendering. I guess mo-cap only gets you so far before you have to smooth out the noise of the motion signal.
Anyone with actual knowledge of CGI got anything to say about this? It seems weird that everything else moved on while this got neglected.
Do we? Or is that just nostalgia. I'm in the younger generation but as a kid watching Star Wars, it didn't care. Now watching it I see janky models on sticks and wires and a puppet for yoda barely moving his arms.
I think it's the suspension of disbelief. Star Wars at its time was phenomenal for its VFX and SFX, but CGI in movies nowadays is saturated, so it feels less impactful to us
I don't think there's anything wrong with how he looks but the subtle over-fluidity of his movement. It's especially bad in the first shot when he's just swaying around most unnaturally. He's completely out of focus so there's nothing the rendering is doing wrong but the motion immediately alerts the brain that this isn't real.
If we're being nerdy about this then there are other considerations to worry about apart from just not pressing buttons.
For example, if the elevator is going down the passenger weight could increase the speed of descent marginally. This would mean the light indicating the floor number would change quicker than it would have done without the passenger being there. Therefore some authorities will only permit the Sabbath Elevator if it shuts off all indicator lights also.
I once heard that because of this one should make an hydraulic elevator, so the passenger weight would not affect the energy used, not sure if this holds true or if it is even practical
I don’t think that’s true. Hydraulics are just a way of transferring/multiplying force, like gears or belts (but much more powerful). The amount of weight to be moved will certainly modulate the energy consumption of the motor.
