Developer Calls Amazon Appstore a 'Disaster' 241
An anonymous reader writes "The developer of the current #2 Top App on Android Market has written a very interesting article giving six reasons why they decided to pull their game from Amazon Appstore. From the article: 'If you are a small indie development team, or possibly even alone, don't bother with Amazon Appstore. Create a great app, publish it on Android Market, and provide great customer support. You will never succeed on Amazon Appstore without a big wallet, or at least an established reputation so that Amazon puts value behind their promises.'"
HTTP vs HTTPS (Score:5, Insightful)
I almost wanted to stop reading after the first point the developer made. Amazon rejected his application because it used an insecure communication channel over the internet. Cry me a river. I actually applaud Amazon for doing that. But instead he goes on to whine that his server can't handle the additional load caused by using HTTPS. While I can understand his frustration based on the other points he makes, the very first one really doesn't help his case.
Re:HTTP vs HTTPS (Score:5, Interesting)
I almost wanted to stop reading after the first point the developer made. Amazon rejected his application because it used an insecure communication channel over the internet. Cry me a river. I actually applaud Amazon for doing that.
You realize that slashdot uses an insecure communication channel over the internet? The developer used http to deliver game levels to the customer. No personal data, no need for security.
Re:HTTP vs HTTPS (Score:5, Funny)
This "slashdot" of which you talk, can't be very secure, can it ?
I actually heard they have "Anonymous Cowards" in this system, no doubt agents for this "Anonymous" hacker group.
Re:HTTP vs HTTPS (Score:5, Insightful)
"The developer used http to deliver game levels to the customer. No personal data, no need for security."
Actually, according to the fine article, Amazon's complaint was about the session cookie, not the levels, as near as I can tell. That might not strike you as important, but it might be that from Amazon's standpoint, that session cookie might be re-used for something else more important, or might be necessary to keep people from making unpaid copies, etc.
It might not, it's just hard to tell - there's not enough information from the article to tell how important that session cookie is (or is not), from a security standpoint.
I tend to agree with the Grandparent - the very first point was the weakest of all the developer's complaints (and if it weren't for the other issues, I suspect that developer himself would still be using Amazon Appstore).
His first item was actually really 3 or 4 items that he lumped together, and I think I disagree with him on just about everything.
Subclaims:
A) It takes a long time for them to review your code:
The whole premise of the Amazon Appstore, that they use as a differentiating feature from the Market, is that Amazon promises to review submissions. Of course that will take time. 2 weeks doesn't sound like an unreasonable time span for such a review, at least to me.
B) The complaint about SSL which we've already discussed above.
C) Amazon told him the App was live, but he couldn't find it - OK, that sounds like a legitimate complaint, but I suspect it might just take a day or two to show up in the system. Not sure how that works, but I agree that once the dev is notified the app has been accepted, it seems like it should quickly show up in the listings.
D) Updates also have to be reviewed - well DUH! I mean, wth good is it to review the original app submission, but not updates? That's just an invitation for someone who wants to peddle malware to submit a "clean" version 1.0, then after acceptance, submit a "dirty" version 1.1 update a few days later.
If you are going to do security reviews, you've got to review everything. I'm sorry, that's just common sense.
Firesheep and Botnets (Score:2)
I almost wanted to stop reading after the first point the developer made. Amazon rejected his application because it used an insecure communication channel over the internet. Cry me a river. I actually applaud Amazon for doing that.
You realize that slashdot uses an insecure communication channel over the internet? The developer used http to deliver game levels to the customer. No personal data, no need for security.
You do realize that Facebook uses an insecure communication channel over Wifi, which has allowed users of FireSheep [codebutler.com] to hijack any public wifi users session and steal their account? And you do realize that the store is for a device that relies entirely on wireless (3G/LTE/WiFi) technology? Demanding that all apps use only secure communication channels to protect devices most likely on unpassworded wifi is a good thing. A man-in-the-middle attack could easily hit a popular game like Angry Birds, corrupting
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Amazon rejected his application because it used an insecure communication channel over the internet. Cry me a river.
You're making a lot of assumptions about the nature of the app. In my opinion it's incredibly hypocritical. I mean when I go to Amazon they don't immediately redirect me to an HTTPS site either. If you're handling credit cards, logins, passwords, personal details then sure, but if not does it mean that the flickr app also gets rejected because it is using an insecure connection?
In other related news I also don't wear a balaclava in public, and I don't go around whispering everything to everyone in case some
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My opinion is that encryption is (or, should be) so easy that to do it universally would substantially improve the usefulness of encrypting the parts that do need it. Yeah, I don't go around whispering all the time, but I would if whispering were as "cheap" as data encryption.
And yet, here I am, not encrypting (most of) my web sessions. Still, I would if it were made as easy as it could be.
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The Google 2% number was (1) for web serving, and (2) after making an insane bunch of optimizations -- that's not out-of-the-box performance. But they published those optimizations, so you can do them too.
That said -- my employer runs a large group of web sites doing
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I think the point was that it took them two weeks to arrive at that conclusion. I know I'd have been frustrated in his situation.
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You could use a self-signed cert and distribute it with the app, you don't need to pay any "tax."
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This doesn't mitigate the cost of doing encryption on the server though.
If you ship signed levels, and provide keys in your app for the client to verify them, the cost is at the client.
If you have to use SSL, the cost is at the server. Instead of just caching a single response, or even deferring the request to local content caches (a lot of ISPs use transparent caching proxies, for example), every request has to be individually encrypted, server side.
In a situation where the content is signed anyway, SSL is
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In this case it was because Amazon felt access to the community site around the game should have required HTTPS access. I think that's perhaps being a little anal.
In the general case, where games download their own levels and updates, if game levels and upgrades are code signed and validated then it's not an issue at all. If this was a multi-player game for example (I don't believe that it is), malicious players could supply their own hacked levels and upgrades using MITM methods potentially giving them an
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Huh? Set up your phone to proxy or VPN through your personal workstation. Run one of the many available man-in-the-middle proxies to replace the levels your phone downloads with easier ones, or ones that award you points for nothing.
Now, what part of intercepting YOUR communi
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Amazon Appstore's biggest sin (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway I think the appstore will succeed when Amazon unleash whatever tablet devices they're cooking up. Doubtless these devices will be locked down so that Amazon's services will be the only thing users can use. The store makes zero sense in any other context than that since I doubt even 0.01% of non Amazon devices would be bothered to manually install another marketplace app when the one they have installed by default does the job.
For Live Burial There Is Sourceforge (Score:2)
Amazon wants developers to cough up $100 for the privilege of being listed on their site. Of course they're graciously waive the fee the first year but to me this seems like a deliberate barrier to stop all those scumbags with their free apps and open source ports from bothering listing on the service at all.
If you want your product placed where people can find it, expect to cough up some dough,
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It would for me. Pay $100 to get listed, only get 25% of application sale proceeds? You can keep your store.
The most annoying part is realising that the normal marketplace costs $25 ever and some other marketplaces like appslib & B&Ns are free. I think Amazon did this simply to filter out undesirable (i.e. free) apps by raising the bar.
I'd also have a severe mistrust of the legal agreement. Biggest red flag for me would be that developers get 70% of sale price or 20% of list price, whichever is greater. This implies to me that Amazon intends to discount apps any amount they like all the way down to 20%
Appstore replies ? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Can you not just post up reviews saying that his response was full of crap? Might not be ethical but it sounds like justice to me.
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Angry Birds 2 was a fail too. (Score:5, Interesting)
The originally Amazon "exclusive" Angry Birds 2, just made fans of the game world wide Angry. Do you know when you get an error message saying that only US customers are allowed to purchase from the Amazon app store (for some ludicrously stupid reason, given how I purchase other things from Amazon all the time). It's not when I log in. It's not when I enter my one-click details. It's not when after I click buy it directs me to download the Amazon App Store App, it's not when I install the App, It's not even when I login and search for an app again. It's only after I SPENT HALF A FUCKING HOUR getting to the stage where I could click to download Angry Birds that I got the error message.
Well a big fuck you to Amazon, and while I was heated I sent a nasty email to the developers too. Fortunately a week later things reverted and the game appeared (to the surprise of everyone) on the Market.
Using Amazon from a user perspective is also an incredible mission. I don't have any desire to ever go back there again, even if they would serve me.
+1 (Score:2)
This.
As a fellow non-USian, one would think they'd post that information somewhere up-front, that it's not very useful outside their borders. One is left to wonder if they are designing such "user experiences" on purpose, or if they really are that dumb. Not that I am a huge Amazon customer, but still, it's plainly bad business.
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I vote for dumb. Right now I find myself in Spain and it's very difficult to determine beforehand what is available here and what isn't. I can click and get a list of stores with an item but even if it lists international shipping rates, it may not be available to ship to me. Most of the time the only thing I can do is try and buy it and see if it errors out on my shipping address.
They *really* need an "exclude if not available in my area" search option, or failing that a warning on the product page that
US Only (Score:2)
Of couse it is a disaster. The store is US only for starters. Android developers have a hard enough time making money without purposefully isolating yourself to some 5% or 10% of the global Android market. I don't know why anyone would publish anything exclusively on the Amazon appstore. They better bet getting huge payoffs from Amazon to do s.
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Its a standard US company thing. I think Apple got one office covering the whole or Europe and Middle-east...
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So? Yes, it's hard (very hard) to launch in multiple continents simultaneously... however they're trying to compete with a marketplace that's global, so they either have to roll out to the rest of the world, or get left behind.
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I am just saying it seems like just about every US company approach a global reach as if US == World. Consider that the one Apple office covers a whole lot of nations with differing languages, cultures and laws.
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I _think_ the office you're referring to is the one that would have oversight of the Apple companies in those countries. Apple have a huge setup in Ireland that covers much of their UK operations (distribution and support at the very least, last time I checked), and a wide variety of Apple stores throughout the UK: http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/storelist/ [apple.com]
I would presume they have similar setups for many countries.
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You mis-read what i said. I said the US is 5% - 10% of the Android ecosystem.
For me, there's a single good reason (Score:5, Informative)
There is a single reason not to use the Amazon app store to publish your app:
1) Customers willing to pay money living outside of the US cannot purchase from the store. I can publish my app from Australia, but I cannot purchase my own app without some circumnavigation of their block.
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And dont forget you cant buy their MP3s, TV shows, streaming video, and most of the kindle catalog outside of the US either. Go fuck yourselves Amazon!
I'm sure they would be happy to make money off of you, but they'd have to but licensing rights for all that stuff from the copyright owners--separately for each national market.
IGDA (Score:2)
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RTFA, whelps! (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything about this story suggests that the author is an honest, underselling, competitive and straight dealer. I can't BELIEVE the fuckups here who are badmouthing him, who obviously didn't even RTFA.
I had a post prepared where I point out the problems but why reproduce TFA? Anyways I hit a stray key and it got lost. I'll try to do a decent job of a synapsis, again, anyway.
1. The review process took two weeks. He was told he would have to use HTTPS. He grumbles about server load but that isn't the point: he put the extra god damn byte in and put the app back in for review. AND WAITED ANOTHER TWO GOD DAMN WEEKS. Over an "S". Meanwhile, where in the fuck was the policy statement: "make sure your app is secure or you'll have to spend two weeks wishing we'd told you about it beforehand". Because obviously the author had no problem with the security policy; he made the change. So people applauding Amazon for their security policy ought to think about how they go about enforcing it, and whether it's worth the extra review time when they could have said to each other "oh, I have the app open right here mister author, and we'll need to type S right here in order for it to be okay to publish. Agreed?"
2. Here's the author's main point of contention as far as "costing too much": he can't write the app for every device on the market because he can't go out and buy every fucking device on the market for testing. Why, you ask, would he even want to? Why, you wonder, would he bother caring about every device on the market? Because Amazon doesn't filter. He included a manifest that says what devices to reject or accept when users come to download the app, and Amazon ignored it, letting hundreds and hundreds of people download the app -- free or otherwise (oh, yeah, they made him spend a day giving it away free in exchange for it being visible in the app store) -- and plenty were pissed when it wouldn't work or their screen was too small to see it. The author had already thought about all this, he uses a manifest through another service that properly filters the customer base. Not Amazon. So to be successful through Amazon he'd need to go out and buy all these devices, write and test the app on the devices, and then launch. He'd no doubt need to hire a household of people to aid in the effort so it wouldn't take him four years of full time work to complete. Now do you get the fucking point?
3. He's used to getting feedback email. He gets plenty of these every day. He uses it to tailor the app to the customer base's wishes. He uses it to launch bugfixes. After his "free day" that Amazon made him go through, wherein the app was downloaded 180,000 times, he got 2 emails. Despite dozens of no doubt unhappy customers. He feels that Amazon isn't doing enough to help customers contact authors.
4. Part of his business practice is to refund unhappy customers. So people saying he's some kind of greedy person need to talk a walk. Well, Amazon doesn't let you refund your product which is a major "helloooo" point for me. WTF, Amazon!
5. One customer left a really shitty review that made unjust claims about the game and was rife with paranoia. It was written by an actual paranoiac who claimed the app was "tracking" him. This review became "the most helpful" review and is now at the top of the page when you go to the app. The author was unable to comment-back to the comment. Guess why? Amazon doesn't let authors have free access to their review page. You might feel "secure" about that, but consider the liberties that users can take such as the paranoiac above. The author would have to purchase his own app in order to comment on the reviews. He can't: he's in Sweden, Amazon services only to U.S. customers. He's fucked! Amazon won't do squat about it.
6. Oh, no, that's right. Amazon did do something: they cut his price in half AGAIN. Without asking him. Now he's the author of a one-dollar app that the top "most helpful" review claims is tied to an ad service and is a tracking device (both lies) with othe
Amazon also fiddles with search results (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a book author. I have three books published by traditional publishers, but my fourth book I published through my own company and sell it through Amazon. Yet, if one searches for the book by its exact name, the search results list fifteen other books of other names before listing mine. Clearly these results are being rigged. I don't care about "popularity" of these other titles: if someone enters the exact name of my book, my book should come up first.
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Why?
If people search for Armagedon do you think they want the directly matching misspelled song title (or whatever) or Armageddon the best selling movie?
There's endless cases like this, direct matching leads to worse user experience than trying to infer intent. Apparently, amazon believes those other books are better matches than your own book for the search phrase. Nothing is rigged, you're just bitter at not being popular.
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And yet the only case you listed was a ridiculous corner case. Chances are the GP's books' titles are not just single letter misspellings of highly well-known and popular books, and he probably should be the top result. I have definitely seen this with
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You make a good point, but the name of my book is not a general term. It is very specific. If someone enters exactly that phrase, the odds are extremely high (probably 99%) that they are looking for my book, not for a general search category.
If my book were named "Armageddon", or some other general topic, I would agree. But in this case it makes no sense.
And it has been a success for customers (Score:2)
Amazon App store is in beta (Score:2)
Perhaps not officially... but its new.
There are going to be bugs.
I'm hesitant to actually purchase much (Score:2)
Of the other apps I've gotten (or considered),
* I'm likely to purchase one (Pocket Casts) on the Android Market instead of keeping the Amazon version I have if an update due Thursday addresses the issues I've seen (it's not expensive),
* I'm likely to purchase another (Enhanced Email) on the Android market for full price instead of 50% off
Re:Droid is not a monoculture... (Score:4, Insightful)
it seems like amazon should fire couple of guys though and hire some people with experience in mobile apps. there's a lot to see here, like being unable to comment on your app yourself without creating fake accounts.. it does seem like the store is just hastily done contract job and they hired amaterus to do the dev and customer relations. that's actually like 55% of the mobile sw stores which have existed over the years(since 2002 or so, you think apple invented this shit?). also, the amazon ceo would be wise to not let his store employees run favorites game and thus choose which games get bought, it's ridiculous that "popular games" are hand chosen, that gives enermous power(££€€€$$$) to those who pick 'em and "friendly" corruption, their personal taste and such start to affect the store way too much.
Re:Droid is not a monoculture... (Score:4, Insightful)
Wut?
Did you read the article? This guy is telling about his experiences dealing with Amazon, and explaining why he believes that small developers shouldn't bother with it, and why it's inferior to Google's offering. This is great, useful information.
Re:Droid is not a monoculture... (Score:5, Funny)
So Slashdot motto is now "News for pandrijeczko, stuff that matters"?
There are plenty of mobile developers here, they are interested.
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If the topic at hand had been things that are of importance to a consumer of applications you might have a point.
But it wasn't. You went out of your way to point out you are not qualified or even interested enough in the topic to have an opinion. People are naturally going to discount it.
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It's even more interesting considering how "nothing to see here" became popularized.
Police doing crowd control (and, to an extent, spin control) at a crime scene would say "Nothing to see here", despite the fact that it 1) is a crime scene, and 2) by merit of a crime scene, something interesting most certainly happened there.
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On the other hand, there's also plenty of normal users reading Slashdot. They likely decide that t
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Why does that concern me? Apart from a bit of work/hobbyist related shell/Perl/Python scripter, I'm not a developer - as a Droid user, I'm just a potential purchaser of the app...
I'm a geek, I'm interested in how things work technically and like nice shiny things - but I couldn't give a toss about what's negotiated between a producer and a supplier for products, that's up to them.
If Slashdot is supplying the wrong kind of content, then you are perfectly free to go and find another site that does. So what are you complaining about? Nothing to see here.
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As a consumer, you now know that the Amazon store is probably not the best place to shop because developers are avoiding selling their wares there.
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And also because you can pay money for an app that Amazon knows doesn't work on your device yet offers anyway because they fail to filter on that, and then you won't be able to get a refund.
For a consumer, it's pretty fucking important to know that a shop will rip you off.
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More importantly, as a consumer, I now know there's no refunds if you buy an app through the appstore - even if the developer is willing to give you one!
That's pretty useful to me to know, as a consumer (since the Help Pages at the Amazon Appstore website don't even talk about whether you can get a refund or not).
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As long as no children/kittens are strangled in the product's production, what do I care how much the developer got paid for it?
How do you feel about puppies?
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Why does that concern me? Apart from a bit of work/hobbyist related shell/Perl/Python scripter, I'm not a developer
Maybe if the story wasn't on developers.slashdot.org, your bitching and moaning might have a bit more credibility.
But I doubt it.
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Why does that concern me?
Here's some news for you: you're not the only person in the world that matters. This matters to a lot of people. It matters to Android developers, and by extension, it matters to Android customers, because Amazon Appstore will serve you apps that don't work on your phone, you won't be able to receive a refund for that, and informed developers will avoid Amazon Appstore like the plague.
Of course if you don't use Android at all, this isn't relevant for you. If you do use Android but never considered using Ama
So why... (Score:2)
So why are you reading this thread and posting to it?
If you're not interested fine, but don't be a dick about it.
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You may not have noticed, but this is mostly a technology site. I'm not primarily a developer either, but lots of people here are. This is a pretty useful and interesting article to them I'm sure. Maybe the next article will be of interest to you. Dismissing the entire article out of hand as irrelevant ignores a huge chunk of the site's user base as irrelevant. You are either remarkably self centered or a complete troll.
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So you're a "geek" but you don't actually make your livelyhood at it? so your opinion matters HOW MOCH exactly?
This is news because, unlike you, a fair portion of the /. Readership makes their living at some stage in the technology cycle. Either we are paid to support devices "users" like you buy. Or we manage departments and make decisions which products to buy. Or we write programs that our boss has to get money from even if we "just work there". So at some point our jobs are affected by this type of sit
Re:Droid is not a monoculture... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does that concern me?
Are you an Android developer? If so, then yes, it concerns you.
If you are not an Android developer, then shut the hell up. This story is not for you.
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Are you really that dumb?
It couldn't be that other people who read slashdot are in fact developers, and hence interested in such articles?
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What an incredibly hypocritical jackass you are. Go on posting, but don't think that you are immune from other people's opinion, Mr. Special Flower.
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Then comment somewhere else.
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Thanks for using your first post to turn an article critical of Amazon's app store into yet another Android vs Apple fanboy bullshitting contest.
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The thing is that right now the Amazon app store is essentially 2nd out of 2 appstores for the Android platform, there are other places to get apps from, but Amazon got to be number two more or less by opening up shop.
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Actually, even though it is basically a whine, I found TFA very informative and insightful. The pitfalls he encounters are not evident at first glance (contrary to most "I deserve more $$$ !" rants), his tone is reasonable... if I were Amazon, I'd take notice and try to fix his issues.
Re:He did ok... 72k worth of ok! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:He did ok... 72k worth of ok! (Score:4)
You're saying Amazon gives away free money? I think you need to do a bit of research...
Re:One very good point and a lot of bitching (Score:5, Insightful)
But apart from that?
4. Impossible to send refund?
5. Amazon Appstore is a disaster...
When attempting to reply to a comment, the system replied with "You must purchase products before you can post comments." (i.e. where's you dialog with your customers?)
6. What's with the price?
A short time after the above review arrived, Amazon changed the price of Apparatus to $0.99. We never discussed this change.
I still find the above compelling enough.
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Really, only the 2 weeks and the https thing were lame complaints. The rest of TFA was extremely valuable information.
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Re there being no way for publishers who can't buy to comment on the app page, I think that's an excellent idea. I am quite frustrated with all the canned mfr replies I see on sites like Newegg. On some other stores, I've seen the customer being insulted and abused in a way that would have the police coming if this was a brick-and-mortar store.
And given what this developer wrote in the TFA, this would almost certainly have been of the latter type. Calling the customer paranoid and a liar is [b]not[/b] g
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If I see insulting replies by a store/developer in a comments section, that's pretty revealing in itself: I'm probably not going to do business with them. This dev actually sounds as if he wants to work with customers to work out any incompatibilities and problems, to the point of refunding people without being asked to do so. In fact, that's one of the things Amazon doesn't easily let him do.
I agree that the app should test for device compatibility and offer a way out (as a nerd, I'd prefer a way to force
Re:One very good point and a lot of bitching (Score:5, Insightful)
From my read of the article, it sounds like the developer would have been perfectly reasonable. I can understand his frustration with the situation since the information was incorrect and he couldn't respond to it, but he never attacked the reviewer in his article, just said that the claims were untrue and paranoid (both accurate statements). Based on his other statements about customer service and the fact that he said repeatedly that he didn't blame the reviewer make me think your view of the developer is unwarranted.
You are ignoring the fact that Amazon was ignoring filters for devices that were not supported. He was going to get a ton of bad reviews and completely inaccurate reviews are a part of life as well. If you can not respond to reviews like this to reassure your customers that the concerns are being addressed or are an issue with the store, then your sales will tank, just like his did. I would expect that it would have failed gracefully since his manifest didn't match the device unless amazon somehow is stripping it. It sounds like he was relying on Android's in-built functionality which isn't necessarily a bad thing. He probably could do more to mitigate it, but from my experience Amazon has never been particularly good at letting vendors actually do good business.
Also, just a side point, "the customer is always right" is a bullshit statement. Good customer service should try to help the customer at all times if at all possible, but some customers will wish to abuse the vendor and so the customer isn't always right. It's an over-simplified statement designed to try to avoid losing sales because of some nit-wit CSR that doesn't understand the customer. A good CSR should be able to point out that the customer is wrong, if they can determine for sure the customer is wrong without being offensive and offer the best resolution that is fair.
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You are ignoring the fact that Amazon was ignoring filters for devices that were not supported.
No, I'm not. You're ignoring that I say "As for Amazon not vetting compatible devices, yes, it should".
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Dear seller: [b]The customer is always right[/b].
I went through your first lines of misinterpretations of TFA, but then I stopped there. This doctrine is ridiculously outdated. If you constantly listen to the unwashed masses, you get non-sense most of the time.
And yes, that review was wrong and paranoid with far reaching consequences. Another example of an idiot who will be trusted by others. That is way too much power to leave it to a "customer" - who thinks "is always right".
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The guy complained that he had no way to communicate with the customer in order to work with the customer on explaining/addressing the issues the customer had. So his complain was that he wanted to do exactly what you are telling him he must learn to do (patronize much?) but couldn't due to the app stores suckiness.
I see no indication that he even investigated the problem, but started tossing out words like "paranoid" and "lying". In that case, yes, it's a good thing that he can't communicate back to the customer, cause what he's after clearly isn't a dialogue.
And dialogues don't belong in public anyhow - Amazon should provide means for the seller to contact the reviewer through e-mail or other private communication. But not for the dev to call a customer a paranoid liar in public.
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When attempting to reply to a comment, the system replied with "You must purchase products before you can post comments." (i.e. where's you dialog with your customers?)
To be fair, if you haven't purchased anything, you're not a customer.
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When attempting to reply to a comment, the system replied with "You must purchase products before you can post comments." (i.e. where's you dialog with your customers?)
AFAIK, none of the app stores (Apple, Google, etc) let you respond to comments. Most things I see on the Android market specifically request that you submit bug reports and ask for support via the "Email the developer" link in the market.
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Re:One very good point and a lot of bitching (Score:5, Informative)
After one angry mail his app got a sprecial promotion and he got 180,000 donwloads in a single day,
180,000 free downloads - which damaged his reputation because thanks to the lack of compatibility checks it didn't actually run on many downloaders' phones.
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It also seems valid to expect that a device checks the minimum requirements when starting, and provide useful
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The above information really needs to be in the description. Phrased in a way that's more useful to the customer, of course.
But most people don't know the specs of their Android phones, especially the details of the innards. So using the manifest system is probably the best way to filter incompatible devices out, and it does work for ordinary purchases (though I've found some apps that I can get from Amazon but not from the Android Market).
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Adding checks in the code just waste time and will still piss off customers who will still leave bad reviews. Specifying all the requirements in the user description will confuse most people out there and just adds clutter. People side loading apps can't leave reviews and are probably doing something illegal anyways, so there is little incentive to support them.
The Android Market already has a mechanism to filter out devices on a market level specified in the manifest file and it works. It provides an e
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That is not the complaint. There is no info if Amazon does compatibility checks at all.
The author himself specified compatibility in a spec file ("Manifest file") in the app package. The Android Market uses that information to automatically not show the app to incompatible devices. Amazon ignores that information and either does not do any testing at all, or does a bad work on it.
Re:One very good point and a lot of bitching (Score:5, Insightful)
Android applications have a manifest. The manifest indicates which phones it's compatible with. The Android Market checks the manifest and only displays applications to users with compatible phones. The Amazon Appstore doesn't.
In what way is this not Amazon's fault? If you're using a part of the Android API that promises to do filtering, anything that claims to be an Amazon application repository should fulfill its part of that contract and... filter! He was doing device compatibility checks in exactly the way that the Android documentation tells developers to do.
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After one angry mail his app got a sprecial promotion and he got 180,000 donwloads in a single day,
180,000 downloads, many of them going to people who most definitely couldn't use the app which Amazon should have known. That's a lot of people annoyed with his app, giving him tons of undeserved bad reviews, destroying his chances of making decent money with the app.
As you said: "What shit treatment they give him, bastards!". Only I am not sarcastic here.
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I don't understand your post. Do you imply he should sell only one copy of his game and then start giving it for free?
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I'd be delighted to sell a product exactly once, if you can find a customer willing to pay the full development costs.
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Personally, if a project needs hosting I would arrange for the customer to have an account directly with the hosting company, is that unusual? It seems like a hell of a lot easier all around - I don't have to deal with handling accounts, to start with.
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Wait... you realise they're paid per sale via the marketplace, rather than any sort of lump sum, right?
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Actually, publishing ebooks directly on Amazon can be pretty profitable. It's the major publishers that are ruining that market, but for writers it can be a pretty sweet deal.
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