Comment by xeromal
7 months ago
Google's app process requires active developers and just makes it plain impossible to make an app and have it work with minimal updates. You're not allowed to "feature complete" an app and just exist. Every few months they threaten me to upgrade this, upgrade that, fill out this form, submit this info and I eventually gave up this year and they've already deleted my developer account and removed the app from search.
I feel like theyr'e doing this just to minimize storage costs or something lol. Android dev sucks for a hobbyist
It sucks for small software entrepreneurs too, as the cost of keeping a trustworthy developer on retainer for that kind of maintenance work can easily eat the modest revenue for a good niche app. And iOS is fundamentally no better.
It's why both App Stores are now dominated by corporatized growth chasers compromising their UX with endless feature treadmills and pushing for subscription IAP to fund it all.
Building a personal/family lifestyle business from the long tail on a few good niche apps, sold at a modest and respectful upfront cost, is pretty much a thing of the past now; and all the software we loved has been delisted or sold to those corporatized growth chasers.
Exactly and in my opinion, this is (in parts) what kills the value proposition of Apple hardware recently. If you are going to have to pay a lot for software, why bother with a platform that was supposed to simplify development to make it less expensive to dev small software? People have forgotten what the Mac and its UI/framework were all about.
As for the mobile platforms I just don't care for it much anymore. I think Jobs was right from the get go with the iPhone: the functionality that was first announced is the most important, every else is just not very necessary. Most apps are a wrapper for a web app for some smart caching anyway. In any case the small screen size and obligatory use of fingers for input make it a slow imprecise tool for any doing stuff and I believe this is why the smartphone is such a content consumption addiction machine, there is just not much else that it does well...
Yeah, I'm sure it can. The app I was talking about was an app that handled appointments for my mom's business. 80% of her customers used the mobile website but a few liked the app for notifications and just liked apps but I eventually gave up as I'm not a fulltime android dev, just a backend engineer that can hunt and peck my way through an android app. It was fine for many years but the past 2 have been horrible and I eventually told my mom I give up
have you considered publishing on f-droid ?
I could definitely do that but my mom's customers are usually older and already struggling with technology and I feel like this is one step too far.