If you're going to put your stuff into one of the proprietary phone/tablet app stores today, it is important to make sure you can look yourself in the mirror and say, "I know this is probably a bad way for society, but I think I can get more money this way, at least in the short term." So at least you know what you're doing.
The longer that people sell out, the harder it will be for society to dig itself out.
> Winkelmann Jr. claimed the company was a parody of The North Face, an American outdoor product company.[4] In August 2008, The North Face sent a cease and desist letter to Winkelmann threatening to sue him if he did not "cease all promotion and sales of South Butt products and abandon his trademark registration application."
In actual fact, it does have function. I have personally asked "is it Tuesday?" more than zero times in my life. This app functions perfectly in helping answer that question.
Seems no different than a weather app in terms of its function - it communicates real time information about the day.
I categorically erased developing mobile apps from my work/dreams after my bad experience:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37903489#37911184
I also advise against it to people around me with my limited ability.
What does this mean?
Two we can translate, I think:
"stable user experience" = "doesn't crash"
"responsive user experience" = "isn't laggy or slow"
It'd be nice if they just said what they meant like normal human beings, but both of those are reasonable requirements
(We can pick apart why they talk like that -- it's about implying that everything stems from their "care" for users; it's to seize moral high ground, but of course the "care" is Focaultian. I digress.)
But what's the third one? "engaging user experience" = "not boring" = "holds users attention" = "entertains users". That doesn't seem like a reasonable expectation, and in fact could be called the problem with smartphones -- everything is designed to be addictive. Is a hammer engaging? That's not the point; it's useful sometimes.
1. What does "You should ensure your app provides a stable [...] user experience" mean?
2. What does "You should ensure your app provides [an] [...] engaging [...] user experience" mean?
3. What does "You should ensure your app provides a [...] responsive user experience" mean?
And when "apps" have obviously been pushed to largely supplant the open Internet, why is a single company entitled to gatekeep on the above criteria, for whether you can participate?
If you make apps for Google, they get to ruin your day at any point in the future. If you put up a website, you own it. You control it. It will work as long as the code still runs, and you never need to update a “manifest number” or whatever.
If you want it to be an icon, create a bookmark and drag it onto your phone’s Home Screen. In fact I do this anyways with some websites that do have apps because the website works and that’s good enough.
The same goes for Twitter vs the Fediverse. Do you know what already is a network of media servers that connect over a common protocol? The internet. Create a blog. It works forever.
But, yeah, I miss the old Google too.
