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I'm quite surprised that RIM is making Android apps that run inside the "player" have to be manually ported and then submitted to their own store and signed. I

by zmmmmm 16y ago

I'm quite surprised that RIM is making Android apps that run inside the "player" have to be manually ported and then submitted to their own store and signed. I know that personally the chance of me investing the time and effort to do that is pretty small, especially from what I've heard about their signup process. To me the entire point of having an Android player is to ensure there is a large pool of apps on day one. It seems like they've done all the technical work to achieve this and then killed it stone dead with dumb bureaucratic hurdles.

gonzo 16y ago
Why are you surprised? RIM wants to retain control of their platform, and having the developer re-sign the app enables that. This way RIM can decide what does, and does not run on it's phones.
- cabalamat 16y ago
  In which case, fuck 'em. They're not the only game in town any more. Maybe they need a few quarters of losses to get off their high horse.
  - ianhawes 16y ago
    Couldn't agree more. I've developed for the Blackberry platform for several years now, and they've gotten slightly better the past few months but compared to Android or iOS, we're treated like dogshit.
- sambeau 16y ago
  If they want complete control of their apps they shouldn't be making virtual machines to run other people's apps. As stated above - the vm route only makes sense if it immediately taps into the large pool of apps existing for other devices. It's a compromise to provide convenience to users. As soon as developers have to expend effort to get a worse version of their app running on these devices the plan falls apart. Good developers will shun the device until they can be sure than they can create a great user experience and that the effort of doing so will be worth the effort.
Stormbringer 16y ago
Again with the signing. sigh The purpose of the signing is so that they can identify the developers of any rogue apps. That way they can crack open the sandbox and (theoretically) offer you a little bit more freedom, since they know if you misbehave they can track you down (or possibly revoke your keys so that your apps stop working? <- so far as I am aware your apps on their phiones will still work even without network access, so probably not this) There's lots of reasons to get stroppy at RIM, but code signing is the very least of them, and if you squint hard enough and look sideways it's actually a good thing.
- zmmmmm 16y ago
  I'm not complaining about signing per se. I'm complaining that I'll have to re-sign applications that are already perfectly well signed, using a process that I'm sure will involve lots of obscure, poorly documented and error prone tools that I have no other reason to want to install or use, all to give some faceless RIM executives a power trip. There is nothing to stop RIM from tracking me via the certificate I already use for my Android APKs. They should just import them and verify them the way any Android phone does.

by zmmmmm 16y ago

gonzo 16y ago

Why are you surprised? RIM wants to retain control of their platform, and having the developer re-sign the app enables that. This way RIM can decide what does, and does not run on it's phones.

cabalamat 16y ago
In which case, fuck 'em. They're not the only game in town any more. Maybe they need a few quarters of losses to get off their high horse.
- ianhawes 16y ago
  Couldn't agree more. I've developed for the Blackberry platform for several years now, and they've gotten slightly better the past few months but compared to Android or iOS, we're treated like dogshit.
sambeau 16y ago
If they want complete control of their apps they shouldn't be making virtual machines to run other people's apps. As stated above - the vm route only makes sense if it immediately taps into the large pool of apps existing for other devices. It's a compromise to provide convenience to users. As soon as developers have to expend effort to get a worse version of their app running on these devices the plan falls apart. Good developers will shun the device until they can be sure than they can create a great user experience and that the effort of doing so will be worth the effort.

Stormbringer 16y ago

Again with the signing. sigh The purpose of the signing is so that they can identify the developers of any rogue apps. That way they can crack open the sandbox and (theoretically) offer you a little bit more freedom, since they know if you misbehave they can track you down (or possibly revoke your keys so that your apps stop working? <- so far as I am aware your apps on their phiones will still work even without network access, so probably not this) There's lots of reasons to get stroppy at RIM, but code signing is the very least of them, and if you squint hard enough and look sideways it's actually a good thing.

zmmmmm 16y ago
I'm not complaining about signing per se. I'm complaining that I'll have to re-sign applications that are already perfectly well signed, using a process that I'm sure will involve lots of obscure, poorly documented and error prone tools that I have no other reason to want to install or use, all to give some faceless RIM executives a power trip. There is nothing to stop RIM from tracking me via the certificate I already use for my Android APKs. They should just import them and verify them the way any Android phone does.