Comment by numpad0
2 days ago
Not that it's okay, but App Store/Play Store do the same. They don't refund for apps that have become unavailable.
2 days ago
Not that it's okay, but App Store/Play Store do the same. They don't refund for apps that have become unavailable.
This is different though, isn’t it? Amazon still exists. The whole platform is shutting down. Individual devs aren’t taking down their apps.
I had a Google Play app whose dev died. It was just a simple local app -- no network server usage. When I last upgraded my phone (due to imminent failure of the previous one) it refused to copy the app over -- and the app was no longer in the Play store.
I still have the APK for one called "Backitude" and have kept migrating it for years since the disappearance of the developer.
It's nothing special, just a location tracker that logs to a file every so often based on time and/or distance moved (could also ping a URL with encoded location info instead). Basically the underlying data for location history without relying on Google. Its notable feature years ago was that it would do location 'steals' - instead of just triggering a then-expensive location check, it would grab the most current available location info as triggered by some other application and only force an update if that information was too old.
a more distant example is VLC on apple devices. I don't remember what happened anymore and any guesses would be speculation, but at one point on iphones you could not get VLC unless you had already gotten VLC.
More evidence of the sad state of general purpose computing
The Amazon store will remain open for Fire tablets if I'm reading right, and those are AOSP-based. So it's kind of similar. Again, not that I'm fine with it, but that I think it's technically not unprecedented.
It's not even remotely similar. The app store vanishes from your phone, with no recourse.
Don't make excuses for Amazon, please.
I thought most apps sell per-year subscriptions that then expire. Isn't that correct?
I don't know if it's "most" but there are (still) a lot of apps with one-time purchase. You never saw that in an Appstore?
THE top paid app in iOS App Store where I am (which isn't US nor EU) was an ad blocker built by one guy, for past two straight years. I think it's an unspoken open secret that App Store has been dead for a while, with apps that use App Store as mere payment processor e.g. freemium lootbox and subscription apps, notwithstanding.
I bought quite a few around 2012, sure, but it tapered off. I don't think I've bought any apps as one-time purchases in the past five years, it's all yearly subscriptions now. All the ones I see on my main phone screen right now are subscription-based or free.
What are some well-known apps sold as one-time purchases now?
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