You can already find in the SDK that you can install an application from any web page by simply downloading an .apk file that has the MIME type "application/vnd.android.package-archive" associated with it. This will be opened by the system's Package Installer app, allowing the user to see what it is and decide if they want to install it.
You can likewise use the installer yourself by launching an Intent pointing to local .apk file and supplying the same MIME type. This is a standard part of the platform, so yes it will be available on the G1. Note that we do NOT allow applications to directly call the internal API for installing packages, and thus bypassing the normal UI, for security reasons: this effectively means that an application granted permission to do this has been granted permission to do anything, which is obviously pretty dangerous. (This is the same reason why we only allow an application to inject key events into its own UI.) So you will have to ultimately go through the system UI for installing a package. As far as opening the app market it the developer community before the first devices ship... I don't know what the exact plans for this are, but I would honestly question the point. NOBODY should be uploading an app that they haven't tested on real hardware. You would be crazy to rely on just the emulator to determine if your application behaves well. From that perspective, I think it would be a big mistake to allow people to upload apps before they have access to hardware, since it would encourage the uploading a lot of apps that are going to give the actual users a poor experience. Our situation is very different from the iPhone, where phones were being sold for almost a year before they even allowed third party developers on them. We are releasing our first phone at the same time that we are supporting third party developers, so I think it is to be expected that initially there won't be a ton of applications on the market, as developers will still need to do the final work to get them running well on the phones. Android is just getting started... we still won't have any phones actually being sold until next month! On Sep 24, 9:55 am, "Shane Isbell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 9:40 AM, jtaylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Maybe there's not many killer apps. :) > > It's hard to say at this point but if T-Mobile doesn't open it's App Market > to the general developer community before the October launch, I'm quiet sure > there won't be any killer apps. I'd move slideme for operation if I had any > indication that the G1 would allow third-party apps (like our sam manager) > to install other applications. At this point, I still don't know. T-Mobile > is also not providing me any info on how to do third-party billing. Still > looking for that openness that everyone is talking about...but if the > general community can't provision apps before launch, what's the point? > Between Google and T-Mobile, this is really frustrating. > > Shane --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
