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I also got this email, but professionally and personally. Personally, I voluntarily built and run open source apps for 16 different cities for their transit sy

by l72 3y ago

I also got this email, but professionally and personally. Personally, I voluntarily built and run open source apps for 16 different cities for their transit system. This gave me two weeks to update 16 apps, for no benefit of anyone. My app is a PWA, and the Android version just uses cordova + a few plugins to add a few native options. Unfortunately, updating cordova to support the new target android api broke some of the plugins, which haven't been updated yet, so it ended up being a full weekend of work and testing. Truthfully, I'd prefer to get rid of the app and just have users go to the website and install the PWA, but the average user still doesn't know how to do this. And the Play Store is still the first place users go to find apps. If google would just allow submitting a PWA directly to the app store, that'd be nice... I am not looking forward to doing this yearly. Professionally, we are also scrambling. We have a legacy app that some supported customers are still using until the end of the year. The app is a fairly complex application, and basic testing has already shown that just changing the target api version has broken quite a few things. We have gotten the extension, but we know this will take 1-2 weeks of developer time + 1-2 weeks of QA's time, for an update that does nothing but appease Google. All for an app we are going to officially remove from the store at the end of the year, once all customers transition to the new app is complete.

lutarezj 3y ago
Not sure if it helps, but if I was in your situation I’d provide a few app updates with a screen to train users on how to install the PWA version and gracefully run away from these problems. Maybe also provide a some sort of a form to get some feedback over the difficulties encountered by users to get there. Good luck!
- l72 3y ago
  The problem is that many of my users are temporary. For example, I have an app for the public transit system for a resort town in Colorado. The town has a decent, albeit small bus system. They technically have an app from their vendor, although it is not very good and is difficult to find. If you search for "$town_name transit app", it won't show up anywhere, where as my app does. And I think my app is much more user friendly. I wrote it because I visit this area a lot and hated the vendor app. My users are visiting this town for a few days, and are most likely going to open the app/play store and search for an app, use it for a few days, then leave the town and forget about it. The least amount of friction I can provide the better. My only goal is to support public transit and make it a smoother experience.
  - sofixa 3y ago
    > If you search for "$town_name transit app" Do people really search for entirely temporary/short-term/single-use use apps, like for a resort town's transit or a restaurant? For me it's a last resort thing, if there's no website or it's unusable.
    - callalex 3y ago
      Or just use the built-in Maps app…
    - kergonath 3y ago
      I got Citymapper, and that was the end of me looking for transit apps when going abroad. But true, these days the built-in map apps in all platforms are also decent at dealing with public transport options.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      Yes and people still watch TV even though you “haven’t owned one in 10 years”. Or do you think places are making apps that no one uses?
      - sofixa 3y ago
        > Or do you think places are making apps that no one uses? Of course, because apps are "modern". You've never seen an app that should have been a website? I know of multiple places that had shitty apps built for extremely narrow use cases that had close to zero use outside of the team that ordered it (while it was meant for a wider audience). And yes, I'm genuinely baffled people will bother downloading an app for a very limited use, like the transit of a place they'll visit once for a few days at most (especially considering there's Google/Apple Maps, Citymapper Transit; unless you can buy tickets through the app it's a waste on top of a waste). Has it been ingrained to such an extent that phone == app? Or is that an iOS thing, or maybe an American thing?
        scarface_74 3y ago
carstenhag 3y ago
I have compassion with you, some of my private apps were also affected. But we were being told this deadline for many months now. It was clear that at some point they would show it more in your face. I also disliked the way it was formulated, also, even if everything was fine in production, it complained when testing versions didn't comply (doesn't make sense). Also, it was always only about pushing new updates (it's ever year like that). You could still keep the app live for some time. Saying you only had two weeks is not correct.
- l72 3y ago
  My understanding from earlier notifications was that updates would not be accepted unless you targeted a new api version. That is fine, since I haven't updated the Google Play "app" since I first released it. This is because the real app is a PWA that I update through the web, and the Play Store app is just a shell around that. The first time I was aware that the app would be delisted in the Play Store for new devices was in the August 18th email.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  This email was the first I'd ever heard of it.
  - izacus 3y ago
    Play has raised it's tarter API requirements several years now and repeatedly warns a full year ahead of next change. If you never heard of it you've been deliberately playing dumb.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      In my case, I was hired to work on an update to a legacy app ~8 months ago. So this is my first round of bs. Been writing software for 20 years and I’ve never seen this before… I wouldn’t consider it playing dumb, I’ve just never had cause to care or receive an email like this.
      - 3y ago
TexanFeller 3y ago
> I'd prefer to get rid of the app and just have users go to the website and install the PWA, but the average user still doesn't know how to do this I think you misunderstood users, it's not just ignorance. I want apps to go back in the direction of real(not cordova) apps, not some low effort web thing. Basically zero web apps match the experience of a well crafted actual app.
- l72 3y ago
  I agree with you in many cases. At my professional company, we've made the decision to write native apps for Android, iOS, Windows, and the web, because we have pretty deep integration into each platform and want the best native experience for our users. But, for my personal apps (which is what I am talking about in this thread), I can't support that. Writing it once and maintaining it takes up enough of my free time. This app also doesn't have any integration with the system, and has a minimal interface, so it works quite well as a web app.
  - zaat 3y ago
    The app my accountant provide me - a white-label finance app with the firm logo on it - used to be native. The developers had issues with updating the app to support a change in the camera API and I couldn't scan papers. They sent me get web app instead. Now whenever I use phone's native back button/gesture the app quits instead of going back within the app, there's a functional in-app back button, but my instincts will never disappear selectivity when I'm using their app. I have quit their app million times half-way of filling forms. Terrible UX.
    - themerone 3y ago
      In a properly coded single page application, the back button works as expected.
      - FridgeSeal 3y ago
        As keeps getting pointed out, every. Time. This. Gets. Raised: evidently most SPA’s are not written properly, because “back button not working properly” is easily one of the most common complaints.
BaseballPhysics 3y ago
> Truthfully, I'd prefer to get rid of the app and just have users go to the website and install the PWA, but the average user still doesn't know how to do this. Let's be clear: that's not because users don't know how to do it. It's because Google and Apple haven't made it as easy as installing an app from their app store. That's a choice, and it's a deliberate one.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  I disagree, at least on the Android side of things (Apple has long been hostile to PWAs). Installing a PWA from a website is trivially easy on Android, it's just that most users really have separated in their minds (not surprising due to history) that apps come from app stores, and the browser is used for websites. Also, Google has made in much easier in recent years to submit plain PWAs to the Play Store: https://youtu.be/ddbHp8tGBwQ https://youtu.be/ddbHp8tGBwQ
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    > it's just that most users really have separated in their minds (not surprising due to history) that apps come from app stores, and the browser is used for websites. Right, because for a very long time (and maybe still) PWAs have been much closer to terrible websites than good apps. They generally don't have the same UX properties as real apps. Remember when the iPhone first came out and web apps were the only option and they sucked balls? That never really changed. People still find mobile sites with maps that are impossible to use. They don't expect that from app store apps. And if it's just a web site, why do you need to "install" it? A link is surely sufficient?
    - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
      > And if it's just a web site, why do you need to "install" it? A link is surely sufficient? Really? You don't understand the value in having the PWA appear as a native app icon alongside everything else on the device?
es7 3y ago
I love cordova for my personal apps, but once every year or two when I’m forced to update Android and iOS they become such a nightmare. I spend days or weeks getting unblocked because I don’t have unlimited time to maintain these apps alongside everything else in my life.
- izacus 3y ago
  The amount of time you have won't change how many security issues you ship with your browser wrapper though.
themacguffinman 3y ago
> Truthfully, I'd prefer to get rid of the app and just have users go to the website and install the PWA, but the average user still doesn't know how to do this. And the Play Store is still the first place users go to find apps. If google would just allow submitting a PWA directly to the app store, that'd be nice... I am not looking forward to doing this yearly. This is what Trusted Web Activities (TWA) are for, you can use it to list PWAs in the Play Store without frameworks like Cordova https://rangle.io/blog/publishing-a-web-app-to-the-play-store-using-trusted-web-activities-twa https://rangle.io/blog/publishing-a-web-app-to-the-play-stor... https://developers.google.com/codelabs/pwa-in-play#0 https://developers.google.com/codelabs/pwa-in-play#0
- modeless 3y ago
  My TWA app still got hit with this mandatory update requirement. I'll have to rebuild the wrapper app for the first time in years. I don't even remember how I did it last time but I do remember that Android makes it nowhere near as trivial as it ought to be. I can practically guarantee that something will break if I try to do all this busywork. I'm probably not going to bother, it's just a free app that I made as a side project and a large majority of users visit the website in a browser. If Google actually cared about getting PWAs into the store, the process would be as simple as submitting the URL of your PWA manifest to the Play Console.
  - sexy_seedbox 3y ago
    > If Google actually cared... Oh, I can say that about a LOT of other Google products.
mvdtnz 3y ago
Your customers have been using websites for much longer than they have been using apps. I simply don't buy that they can't understand how to use a website. Stop underestimating your users.
- zaat 3y ago
  It's amusing that you are certain that you know his customers better than he does. I believe that you are utterly wrong, and if not most than certainly many people who use public transport and smartphones have never or nearly never been using websites on their phones, many of them haven't been using websites on a computer two - this is very typical of the non-technical people, especially those who are members of the younger and the older generations.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    I guess that's why no one uses The Internet or Web Browsers. Pack it in, fellas, the web is a passing fad.
    - zaat 3y ago
      That's not what I said, I live half my life within browsers. But big chunk of the population that you are probably not thinking about is not like that. My mother in law is using browser to read on her computer, and will never do that on her phone - the screen is too small and the whole experience not something that fits someone at her age. On the other hand, my children use apps since they are two years old, and at the age of seven they still rarely if ever used browser.
      - mvdtnz 3y ago
        The screen is too small to use a web browser, but not too small to use an app? Can you explain what you mean? This doesn't seem at all reasonable.
        zaat 3y ago

by l72 3y ago

lutarezj 3y ago

Not sure if it helps, but if I was in your situation I’d provide a few app updates with a screen to train users on how to install the PWA version and gracefully run away from these problems. Maybe also provide a some sort of a form to get some feedback over the difficulties encountered by users to get there. Good luck!

l72 3y ago
The problem is that many of my users are temporary. For example, I have an app for the public transit system for a resort town in Colorado. The town has a decent, albeit small bus system. They technically have an app from their vendor, although it is not very good and is difficult to find. If you search for "$town_name transit app", it won't show up anywhere, where as my app does. And I think my app is much more user friendly. I wrote it because I visit this area a lot and hated the vendor app. My users are visiting this town for a few days, and are most likely going to open the app/play store and search for an app, use it for a few days, then leave the town and forget about it. The least amount of friction I can provide the better. My only goal is to support public transit and make it a smoother experience.
- sofixa 3y ago
  > If you search for "$town_name transit app" Do people really search for entirely temporary/short-term/single-use use apps, like for a resort town's transit or a restaurant? For me it's a last resort thing, if there's no website or it's unusable.
  - callalex 3y ago
    Or just use the built-in Maps app…
  - kergonath 3y ago
    I got Citymapper, and that was the end of me looking for transit apps when going abroad. But true, these days the built-in map apps in all platforms are also decent at dealing with public transport options.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Yes and people still watch TV even though you “haven’t owned one in 10 years”. Or do you think places are making apps that no one uses?
    - sofixa 3y ago
      > Or do you think places are making apps that no one uses? Of course, because apps are "modern". You've never seen an app that should have been a website? I know of multiple places that had shitty apps built for extremely narrow use cases that had close to zero use outside of the team that ordered it (while it was meant for a wider audience). And yes, I'm genuinely baffled people will bother downloading an app for a very limited use, like the transit of a place they'll visit once for a few days at most (especially considering there's Google/Apple Maps, Citymapper Transit; unless you can buy tickets through the app it's a waste on top of a waste). Has it been ingrained to such an extent that phone == app? Or is that an iOS thing, or maybe an American thing?
      - scarface_74 3y ago

carstenhag 3y ago

I have compassion with you, some of my private apps were also affected. But we were being told this deadline for many months now. It was clear that at some point they would show it more in your face. I also disliked the way it was formulated, also, even if everything was fine in production, it complained when testing versions didn't comply (doesn't make sense). Also, it was always only about pushing new updates (it's ever year like that). You could still keep the app live for some time. Saying you only had two weeks is not correct.

l72 3y ago
My understanding from earlier notifications was that updates would not be accepted unless you targeted a new api version. That is fine, since I haven't updated the Google Play "app" since I first released it. This is because the real app is a PWA that I update through the web, and the Play Store app is just a shell around that. The first time I was aware that the app would be delisted in the Play Store for new devices was in the August 18th email.
withinboredom 3y ago
This email was the first I'd ever heard of it.
- izacus 3y ago
  Play has raised it's tarter API requirements several years now and repeatedly warns a full year ahead of next change. If you never heard of it you've been deliberately playing dumb.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    In my case, I was hired to work on an update to a legacy app ~8 months ago. So this is my first round of bs. Been writing software for 20 years and I’ve never seen this before… I wouldn’t consider it playing dumb, I’ve just never had cause to care or receive an email like this.
    - 3y ago

TexanFeller 3y ago

> I'd prefer to get rid of the app and just have users go to the website and install the PWA, but the average user still doesn't know how to do this I think you misunderstood users, it's not just ignorance. I want apps to go back in the direction of real(not cordova) apps, not some low effort web thing. Basically zero web apps match the experience of a well crafted actual app.

l72 3y ago
I agree with you in many cases. At my professional company, we've made the decision to write native apps for Android, iOS, Windows, and the web, because we have pretty deep integration into each platform and want the best native experience for our users. But, for my personal apps (which is what I am talking about in this thread), I can't support that. Writing it once and maintaining it takes up enough of my free time. This app also doesn't have any integration with the system, and has a minimal interface, so it works quite well as a web app.
- zaat 3y ago
  The app my accountant provide me - a white-label finance app with the firm logo on it - used to be native. The developers had issues with updating the app to support a change in the camera API and I couldn't scan papers. They sent me get web app instead. Now whenever I use phone's native back button/gesture the app quits instead of going back within the app, there's a functional in-app back button, but my instincts will never disappear selectivity when I'm using their app. I have quit their app million times half-way of filling forms. Terrible UX.
  - themerone 3y ago
    In a properly coded single page application, the back button works as expected.
    - FridgeSeal 3y ago
      As keeps getting pointed out, every. Time. This. Gets. Raised: evidently most SPA’s are not written properly, because “back button not working properly” is easily one of the most common complaints.

BaseballPhysics 3y ago

> Truthfully, I'd prefer to get rid of the app and just have users go to the website and install the PWA, but the average user still doesn't know how to do this. Let's be clear: that's not because users don't know how to do it. It's because Google and Apple haven't made it as easy as installing an app from their app store. That's a choice, and it's a deliberate one.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I disagree, at least on the Android side of things (Apple has long been hostile to PWAs). Installing a PWA from a website is trivially easy on Android, it's just that most users really have separated in their minds (not surprising due to history) that apps come from app stores, and the browser is used for websites. Also, Google has made in much easier in recent years to submit plain PWAs to the Play Store: https://youtu.be/ddbHp8tGBwQ https://youtu.be/ddbHp8tGBwQ
- IshKebab 3y ago
  > it's just that most users really have separated in their minds (not surprising due to history) that apps come from app stores, and the browser is used for websites. Right, because for a very long time (and maybe still) PWAs have been much closer to terrible websites than good apps. They generally don't have the same UX properties as real apps. Remember when the iPhone first came out and web apps were the only option and they sucked balls? That never really changed. People still find mobile sites with maps that are impossible to use. They don't expect that from app store apps. And if it's just a web site, why do you need to "install" it? A link is surely sufficient?
  - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
    > And if it's just a web site, why do you need to "install" it? A link is surely sufficient? Really? You don't understand the value in having the PWA appear as a native app icon alongside everything else on the device?

es7 3y ago

I love cordova for my personal apps, but once every year or two when I’m forced to update Android and iOS they become such a nightmare. I spend days or weeks getting unblocked because I don’t have unlimited time to maintain these apps alongside everything else in my life.

izacus 3y ago
The amount of time you have won't change how many security issues you ship with your browser wrapper though.

themacguffinman 3y ago

> Truthfully, I'd prefer to get rid of the app and just have users go to the website and install the PWA, but the average user still doesn't know how to do this. And the Play Store is still the first place users go to find apps. If google would just allow submitting a PWA directly to the app store, that'd be nice... I am not looking forward to doing this yearly. This is what Trusted Web Activities (TWA) are for, you can use it to list PWAs in the Play Store without frameworks like Cordova https://rangle.io/blog/publishing-a-web-app-to-the-play-store-using-trusted-web-activities-twa https://rangle.io/blog/publishing-a-web-app-to-the-play-stor... https://developers.google.com/codelabs/pwa-in-play#0 https://developers.google.com/codelabs/pwa-in-play#0

modeless 3y ago
My TWA app still got hit with this mandatory update requirement. I'll have to rebuild the wrapper app for the first time in years. I don't even remember how I did it last time but I do remember that Android makes it nowhere near as trivial as it ought to be. I can practically guarantee that something will break if I try to do all this busywork. I'm probably not going to bother, it's just a free app that I made as a side project and a large majority of users visit the website in a browser. If Google actually cared about getting PWAs into the store, the process would be as simple as submitting the URL of your PWA manifest to the Play Console.
- sexy_seedbox 3y ago
  > If Google actually cared... Oh, I can say that about a LOT of other Google products.

mvdtnz 3y ago

Your customers have been using websites for much longer than they have been using apps. I simply don't buy that they can't understand how to use a website. Stop underestimating your users.

zaat 3y ago
It's amusing that you are certain that you know his customers better than he does. I believe that you are utterly wrong, and if not most than certainly many people who use public transport and smartphones have never or nearly never been using websites on their phones, many of them haven't been using websites on a computer two - this is very typical of the non-technical people, especially those who are members of the younger and the older generations.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  I guess that's why no one uses The Internet or Web Browsers. Pack it in, fellas, the web is a passing fad.
  - zaat 3y ago
    That's not what I said, I live half my life within browsers. But big chunk of the population that you are probably not thinking about is not like that. My mother in law is using browser to read on her computer, and will never do that on her phone - the screen is too small and the whole experience not something that fits someone at her age. On the other hand, my children use apps since they are two years old, and at the age of seven they still rarely if ever used browser.
    - mvdtnz 3y ago
      The screen is too small to use a web browser, but not too small to use an app? Can you explain what you mean? This doesn't seem at all reasonable.
      - zaat 3y ago