On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Mark Murphy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
> > > Does this mean that the downloading app (in this case an application > > manager) needs to be signed with the same key as the application it is to > > install? Because I need to be able to install anyone's application, not > > just my own. > > Why? > > I admit to not being totally in tune with the whole OTA space, but when I > read hackbod's initial contribution on this thread, my thought was "Damn! > The Android team just simplified Mr. Isbell's life!". > > If an HTTP download is sufficient to trigger an app install, why isn't > SlideME just an awesome mobile-friendly Web site serving as an apps > directory (with integrated ecommerce and all that)? Why go through the > headache of somehow getting people to install your client component? This is how it's handled for a lot of portals in the Java ME space: Verizon, T-Mobile. They have an xHTML site, you surf around and then download. The application manager has registered itself to handle the download of that mime-type, preempting the browser from handling it. But in the Java ME case, the application manager has install-notifies and other other events that post back to the server, a critical piece of functionality to be able to determine billing and to diagnose problems for the user. It doesn't sound like the Android app manager has this, so my guess is that T-Mobile will just look and see if their proxy delivered all the bytes to the network element in front of it (doesn't mean it reached the device though) but they will just have to deal with it. With a custom app manager, we can do this by downloading a descriptor (in this case OMA OTA descriptor) and do these post-backs ourselves, handling billing much more reliably. In fact, under the current Android app manager, you have now way of knowing when to bill for a download if you were to just use an xHTML site, as you would only know if the application was transferred from your node to the T-Mobile proxy. So SAM is more than just a catalog displayer and makes up for some of the deficiencies that are in the current Android provided one. Besides the user experience can be much richer on a fat-client than it could ever be using xHTML, allowing leveraging of the full platform. 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
