The author of this tweet is really making fun of indie gratis software, which is pretty rude, since that software is hard to use because the authors don't have many resources and are volunteers.
Is Firefox hard to use? Does the author struggle to use Twitter, built on libre software as a base? Is the Android kernel free as in piano?
> Many developers have hated the platforms they have developed on but do so because the platform allows them to make money.
The hate isn't the hypocrisy. Plenty of people, for example, hate Windows and develop for it without being hypocrites.
The hypocrisy is extensively claiming that the platform in question isn't profitable ("terrible development economics", "unlikely to recover those costs" [referring to development costs"), etc.), playing up issues like fragmentation and generally arguing in almost every way possible to other developers that you shouldn't be on this platform... and then turning around and jumping on board anyway.
In fact, given the timeframe Marco talked about (last winter), it is entirely possible he was publicly arguing against Android development while Instapaper for Android was being developed. I can understand why he'd do that from a business perspective: Marco wouldn't want to tip off competitors to his change in thinking (note that Readability launched on Android and ReadItLater had gone radio-silent before relaunching as Pocket during the period in question), but that doesn't make him less of a hypocrite.
The hypocrisy at the end of the article is astounding: "Right now, we’re not planning on it. [rebuilding their app]. Our APIs make it easy for anyone else to build one, though. (Our old app is open source if you’d like an example to build upon. Just respect our license and don’t put ads in it.)"
They blatantly violated the agreement for obtaining the pre-release hardware, and then expect people to honor their own license terms?
IMHO, they are extremely lucky the worst thing that happened was their developer account getting pulled.
“I may disagree with what you say, but I will not write a critical Hacker News comment, since you are a pathological crybaby who interprets any negative remark as an act of censorship.”
Nowhere did I say that the app should be “shut down.” I said it shouldn’t be supported.
> The same people calling for everyone to always remember what Microsoft did 20 years ago log out of HN and go work on their Facebook React app with no apparent sense of irony.
Speak for yourself, that's a lot of false assumptions and gross over judging. I have no social media accounts (and this account on THN will likely last less than 6 months). The only thing above is that I do have an Android phone, which is using LineageOS with most of my apps coming from the F-Droid appstore. The only remaining non-FDroid app is Spotify which I'm migrating away from.
I use Linux exclusively. I do not do App development or any other FarmVille based development, I do open-source development. My organization is very pro open-source.
My only hypocracy comes from using Google Voice. I do not even use Google Search, Mail, etc and haven't for 5 years. If I want to use Javascript, I use Javascript (these frameworks are stupid and more complicated than plain-jane JS... every time I roll out a web application people don't understand how it's so "fast" and want to look at the code, then can't understand how I'm not using a framework... it's silly).
> even if you are willfully ignoring the same and worse behavior by many, many companies today.
Regardless of what people want to believe, the whataboutism here is ridiculous. It is 100% possible to dislike all of these corporations and their anti-competitive, anti-capitalistic mindsets.
> Zero sympathy. Well done to Google on taking down one of the many people spamming the Play store with junk.
Yes, also, I find it highly amusing how his long-winded whine about 'programmer freedom' makes me appreciate the walled-garden approach of iOS just a tiny bit more. Sure, it's not perfect, and it's not 'freedom', but at the very least it does make it very explicit to 'developers' like the author that they should take their spammy app tactics (and free-riding on someone else's content, using a free service and its users as your beta testing platform) somewhere else.
Funny thing is I'm pretty sure he would get banned from the Windows Phone store pretty quickly as well (and rightly so)
> The amount of derogatory references to the web and Android also make it really hard for me not to question the motivation behind this letter.
A lot of people and developers feel the same way about these technologies as the author. They are just opinions, and yours is obviously different, but I wouldn't say it is pitiful.
>Sure, the developer name "Develop App" sounds strange and should I have looked better, the developgameonline@gmail.com developer email and com.acazira.tforbusiness package name would have definitely raised some concerns.
Come on, dude.
I will say that even the most experienced techies among us sometimes become complacent and let our guard down. It's exhausting having to constantly second-guess every application you want to run.
(Not interested in starting another platform flame war, but this is the main reason I don't use Android. I deal with enough paranoia running Windows daily. Maybe I'm misinformed, but I'm also probably not unique in this respect)
I'm curious if this fake TikTok app would probably have been blocked at the outset in the Apple App Store review process because it's trying to masquerade as another business ?
> "They made an attempt to not only kill the app, but to actually destroy the entire company. And it’s not just these three companies. Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day."
If everybody else is an asshole, maybe you're the asshole.
>but it’s insanity that a tech company think it’s reasonable for indie devs to operate under that constraint.
I don't like being that pessimist "fuck capitalism" sort of user but... between the high cost, low deadlines, and unanswered responses from devs, it's pretty clear what the true intent here is. And I don't think it was a due to a lack of competence. It was very carefully planned (maybe not the scale of the reaction, but overall planned).
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And from other devs on the AMA, It's not like devs didn't know before the public announcement. One app developer mentioned trying for 3 months to get contact:
>I am the developer of a third party app (Now for Reddit) which has been happily using the API for 10 years. I don't want to close down and have been considering using the paid API. However, I have been trying to contact Reddit over the last 3 months and have been completely ignored.
>I have sent many emails (devapps@reddit.com) and have used the online contact form which reddit themselves have asked developers to use. Each and every time I hear nothing.
>What am I supposed to do? The deadline is approaching fast, my app will be rate limited by Reddit and it will stop working. Please, reply to developers who contact you.
>I feel completely powerless to do anything right now and I want to try and save the app I've been working on for the last 10 years.
>I know I'm not the only developer who is being ignored, it's extremely unfair and a horrible way to be treated.
(yes, as you can predict, this question did not get an answer despite being the 2ns or 3rd top comment)
Now for Reddit isn't the most popular app, but 500k downloads on android alone show this wasn't just some small toy. They give a deadline of almost two months but ignore 3 months of email support. They don't want 3rd party apps.
This whole thing is ridiculous. What does the fact that a tweet from Android's head was deleted (presumably because the instructions are not valid and possibly point at a server that has been compromised- but really, who cares why it was deleted) have to do with the open-source nature of Android?
This type of frothing-at-the-mouth commentary is why people call them fanboys.
> Everything about these nags is idiotic to the point of insulting the user's intelligence. The randomness, the timing, and the messages themselves.
Mine says "come to the app, it has more cats/dogs". Some "UX engineer" ab/testing usage patterns, maybe?
It annoys me to the point of sadness. Some of the greatest minds, the most capable programmers of our time spending their meager existance using their skills to make people "install our app". Disgusting.
it was a tongue-in-cheek statement about how nicer it is for the developer to have control of the publishing methods as in the android market opposed to iStore.
The amount of abuse she got on Twitter after the FF Android launch was hard to believe. I don't understand how somebody thinks that disliking an update to a piece of free software justifies shouting abuse at an engineer who worked on it.
Or for the users of those apps.
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