Shane, I feel for you with the need to do testing. My hat comes off to you guys at SlideME for being willing to take the financial responsibility for other peoples apps, as you know already the financial implications of reselling are one of the main reasons why I went the route of direct to developer payments on AndAppStore.com.
I don't think establishing a generic community testing groups is the best way to go because testers will always thrash the apps they like more than those they don't, and hence testing will be patchy. I think that what we're more likely to see is direct to developer feedback where those who have an interest in the app will help it's development, which is a model that many open source projects seem to follow. Al. Shane Isbell wrote: > The models are a bit different here between SlideME and AndAppStore. > Just due to pure economics, at SlideME we are going to have to do some > testing on the paid applications before they are published, the refund > and chargeback costs being too high for us to eat on a bad app. When > it comes to dollars out of my pocket, I have to agree with hackbod > about device testing (weird, me agreeing with Google on something). > > But if it's an unpaid app, anything goes; if they are crappy, they > will eventually get one star and either nobody will be able to find > them or the comments alone will scare away others from doing further > downloads. If they are good, they will get a lot of downloads, device > tested or not. At SlideME, we associate the apps closely with the > developer, so if they have a history of good apps, people will likely > buy more of their apps, but with a history of bad untested apps, their > reputation suffers. So there is an incentive to have good quality apps > and to seek out testers on actual devices. > > Even for those inside of carriers and their favored vendors, getting > test devices is a big pain so providing third-party devs with devices > seems unlikely to me. As I have proposed on the list before, we need > to get a group of guys with devices willing to volunteer some time and > test apps. I'm pretty sure that with enough community participation, > we can get better coverage than the carriers and aggregators on testing. > > As for there being mutliple devices, in the early days of J2ME, there > was an idea to have 10,000 apps in a portal and to do device > capability to content requirement matching. Carriers were a bit > paranoid and squashed this idea pretty quickly (I think a little too > quickly) and began hardcoding apps to device ids. This practice > filtered over to more than a few big aggregators. The maintence costs > on this are a killer and I think people got stuck in this box. The > problem is there is no way to have an open system, with tens of > thousands of apps tested on every device. This is where ratings and > comments become crucial to getting high quality apps. > > Shane > > On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 12:55 AM, Al Sutton <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > > Lets get one thing clear, Android is the platform, not the G1. The > G1 is > an implementation of the platform, but there are going to be more > implementations of Android, and some users are already running Android > on things other than the G1 (see http://elinux.org/Android_on_OMAP for > some of them). > > Every developer would love to test their app on all the potential > hardware first, but HTC/T-Mobile/Google did not make any arrangements > for developers to get their hands on the hardware ahead of launch, and > the three of them have made it easier for a random man on the > street in > the USA to get a G1 than it is for a developer who months invested in > designing and developing an app in another part of the world, so > I'm not > sure why it's so difficult for people to understand why developers are > releasing apps that they have significant time investment in despite > HTC, T-Mobile, and Googles lack of support for them. > > AndAppStore.com exists to allow ALL Android developers to make their > apps available to users (which is something that HTC, T-Mobile, and > Google have so far failed to do). Yes there are going to be some > comments about UIs and other issues fed back to developers, but > this is > inherent in any platform with multiple implementations on different > hardware, and as more Android devices are released your going to see > more applications which haven't been tested on every platform rather > than every app being tested on every 'phone prior to release. > > It may be the case that Googles Market place eventually fits > everyone's > needs, but as history has shown, there is rarely a one size fits all > solution to a technical problem. > > I know Google have tried the "don't look at us" argument when it comes > to hardware availability, but I find it extremely hard to believe > that a > company that consistently feeds the public applications labelled > as Beta > couldn't manage to run a developer programme offering units at cost > worldwide. I was at the London Developers Conference where Mike > Jennings > was talking about the agreements that T-Mobile and HTC had to > sign-up to > in order to keep the platform open, so I'd love an explanation as > to why > two companies (T-Mobile & HTC) who have significant worldwide > experience > in distribution couldn't sign up to worldwide availability even if it > was limited to developer who produce an .apk capable of running on the > emulator. > > Al. > > > > hackbod wrote: > > On Oct 10, 3:18 am, Al Sutton <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote: > > > >> There isn't much information at the moment. Hence why other > solutions > >> are being made available (such as mine athttp://andappstore.com > <http://andappstore.com>). > >> > > > > Hopefully there not being much information about the market is > not the > > only reason for doing an app distribution site. :} > > > > Note that it in my opinion it wouldn't make any sense to have the > > market available at this point, because nobody should be publishing > > their apps without first actually running them on a real phone, and > > since no phones are yet available, that is kind-of a hard hurdle to > > jump over. I also think that anyone else doing an app store should > > think long and hard about this as well: publishing a bunch of > > applications that have never actually run on a real phone is > going to > > give you a store full of a bunch of crummy applications. Not > because > > the developers are bad, but just because running an app on the > > emulator is very rarely enough to be able to make an app that works > > well on the real phone. > > > > I can already see likely problems on apps in your store: for example > > Android Location seems to have these custom menus with small text, > > which are going to be impossible to press with your finger. A > lot of > > people have complained about how big the UI is in the emulator, > > without understanding that when you have that screen on a phone > it is > > a significantly smaller and trying to interact with the UI with a > > finger requires fairly large hit regions. > > > > > > > > > > -- > Al Sutton > > W: www.alsutton.com <http://www.alsutton.com> > B: alsutton.wordpress.com <http://alsutton.wordpress.com> > T: twitter.com/alsutton <http://twitter.com/alsutton> > > > > > > > -- Al Sutton W: www.alsutton.com B: alsutton.wordpress.com T: twitter.com/alsutton --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
