Guest post by In Taiwan, Google recently stopped showcasing paid applications in its marketplace owing to the continuing fight that arose merely because of the change in the return policy, when it was dramatically reduced to just fifteen minutes from 24 hours. In related news, “Apple has rolled out a new refund policy in the Taiwanese versions of its App Store, Mac App Store, and iBookstore. The changes, reported by IDG News this morning, give app buyers the option to get a refund on paid applications and e-books within seven days of buying them from one of Apple’s digital storefronts.”
Well… So far Android Market isn’t a “really great product” coming from Google. I would qualify it as a beta product still…
It’s not as flexible as one might want, it has some stupid bugs. As a publisher, I can say that Apple’s AppStore is better on almost all fronts(as software, not a comment on apps in the marketplace or AppStore). One exception though – pricing flexibility.
It’s amazing what they rolled out as limited beta in Google+, while a released product Android Market is just plain too bad…
The article doesn’t mention the reason for the change. Maybe people were abusing the system in that country. Like buying apps, returning them, and then buying them all over again to keep from ever actually paying for it. Also, since Apple has an all sales are final policy in most places, you can’t really fault Google which at least gave 24 hours to start with. As for the quality of the actual store, I haven’t heard any real complaints about it.
Actually before the change to 15 minutes you had 24 hours and only one could you get a refund. Thus the companies had nothing to lose. The current situation on the other hand is that customers have to test the application within 15 minutes !!!! Just ridiculous.
From what I heard (discussions on IRC) the reason for the drop was that some people were buying games and completing them in 24 hours and then returning them. However I’m yet to read anything (semi) official verifying this.
15mins, is in my opinion, worse than useless. It limits where you can download the app (as you need to save yourself good time to test it) and then encourages users to just ditch the app at the 1st sign of trouble and without even trying it properly. While I can understand 24 hours might have exposed the market to abuse, 15 minutes is far too far the other way!
In fact, there’s not much I do like about Androids market. The OS as a whole I love but Android Market in severe need for some TLC.
I have now had an Android Honeycomb tablet for about a month. It’s the first and only Android device I own or have used and thus I had thought about doing an article here about my experiences with it, mostly focusing on the shortcomings and criticism of Android. But meh, I don’t think anyone would bother reading yet another such article, so I think I’ll skip it.
Anyways, Android Market was actually one of the points I had planned to ramble about: there has already been 5 or so cases of malware being implanted in Android Market during just the last few months. That’s quite often and a horrible risk for end-users who obviously expect a market-place like that to be safe to use! It is nice for developers that Google doesn’t check the applications and that you can just slap whatever you want in there, but safety for end-users should come first. Google should really start reviewing the applications and games that are submitted to Market.
Also, the categories – system… well, what’s the point of having such when it’s not enforced in any way or form? There’s plenty of apps that are in the completely wrong section, ignoring any and all guidelines and common sense, and some developers even seem to push their apps in wrong, less-active categories just so their apps would stay visible as long as possible. While this isn’t a security problem per se, it does constitute to the somewhat soddy, let’s-just-slap-something-together feeling of Android.
Thirdly, the comments and ratings system is buggy. First of all, even if I buy something I still cannot make comments or rate the applications on my tablet if I’m using the Market app; I can only comment and rate if I use the browser to browse Market. Also, for some reason, I’m seeing different comments in the Market app and the browser version. I’ve even seen some applications that have 15 comments when viewed with browser and none at all when viewed with Market app. Again, really soddy and constitutes to the bad taste left in one’s mouth.
Fourth…Well, it seems Market just suggests stuff based on what has been popular, not in any way or form related to what you might be interested in. It would be nice if you could for example define a list of what kinds of stuff you’d like to see in suggestions.
Fifth, Market shows applications as compatible or incompatible based on the device manufacturer and model, not based on actual physical properties and software version. For example I sometimes see an application shown as “incompatible” on my tablet even though Galaxy Tab 10.1 has exact same hardware and software; the developer simply hasn’t listed my tablet in the compatible devices and thus Market doesn’t allow me to install it, yet it works just peachy if I find the .apk somewhere else. Again, this is something Google really needs to fix, it isn’t THAT hard to check what processor is in use, how much memory, storage, software version and screen space is available, and compare that to what the application developer has stated as the minimum instead of relying on a pre-compiled list of “compatible” devices.
Werecatf
I would be interested to know which tablet you have and what your over all impressions are of the device and interface. The marketplace may stink, but with the freedom Android offers, a better one will be built eventually.
I agree somewhat with you about the malware, but I don’t want a walled garden around the OS like Apple has. Thats one of the main reasons I won’t buy an iPad.
Edited 2011-07-18 14:11 UTC
I have an Acer Iconia Tab A500, 32Gb model. Overall I’m very satisfied with the hardware, it’s sturdy, clean and sleek, and the one single feature that made me choose it: a full-size USB-host port, meaning that I can just pop any USB-HDD, keyboard, mouse etc. on it and have a go with it.
The software though.. well, Acer hasn’t really bothered to do much with it. They just slapped a more-or-less bog-standard Honeycomb ROM on it, skipped half of the video codecs the H/W supports and called it a day. I don’t understand the point in not installing drivers for the codecs when they’re already supplied by NVIDIA and tested to be working! As such I resorted to installing a custom ROM on it
As for Honeycomb in general: too much to say in a simple comment.
Indeed, I don’t want a walled garden either. But if Google started actually reviewing apps and enforcing category rules they could STILL allow us to continue using non-Google markets, too. It’s not a one-or-the-other situation.
Atleast I’d like to know that I can trust what I get from Market and anyone who takes IT security seriously and actually bothers to also care about the non-geek populace should also hope for such a move from Google.
Reviewing apps for the official store does not make it a walled garden. The important thing is that you can install things from outside the official store if you want without going through hoops.
What are the missing features that you would want? I’m a rare visitor to the store, I usually know what app I want before I launch the marketplace. For that, it works great!
Call me paranoid, but I’m not browsing for a random app from an unknown dev in the marketplace.
Sigh
Title doesn’t match article content.
As a larger-than-article epilogue, includes unrelated competitor doing something else.
Posted by a user of less than a month who constantly bashes that platform.
Article is a dupe.
Title was taken directly from the article
Ummm, no.
You’re right. Apple isn’t a competitor in offering a smartphone applications store. They don’t compete in Taiwan and Apple didn’t update their return policy to accommodate regulations in that region.
What are you talking about?
.
I don’t bash the platform. I like a lot of it actually… at least that which doesn’t infringe on other companies legal claims. For the record, I can’t recall ever basing Android and if I ever said anything disparaging the instance is very secluded. You are wrong.
I don’t recall ever seeing that story referenced here… certainly not in relation to the Apple story which is relevant.
[i]Edited 2011-07-18 07:08 UTC
I wish Google would just let the developers decide what the return policy is, and then let users filter based on that criteria. That way, it would be very easy for us to tell which apps/games are crap and not worth bothering with.
For example, any dev who sets their return window to less than an hour is probably out for a quick cash grab, and so can go get f**ked as far as I’m concerned.
BTW: Doesn’t MS set like a 3 day return policy on Windows Phone?
Edited 2011-07-17 23:54 UTC
Last week, I bought a game from Apple’s App Store that claimed to be iPad compatible. Only after I had downloaded it did I discover that in fact there is a seperate version specifically for the iPad, and that’s the one I wanted. I called Apple, and they agreed to refund it as a “one time exception”. People need to be able to get refunds not just because some apps are crap or don’t do what you expected, but sometimes the descriptions are misleading and you buy the wrong thing.
Incidentally, since their refund system is entirely manual, it appears that the iPhone version of this game was still on my system, and I could still play it on my iPhone, even thought I didn’t pay for it. It just didn’t seem right to keep it, and it would suck to play on the iPhone anyway, so I deleted it manually. But while it would be bad to retroactively remove an app you paid for and want to keep, it only seems fair to remove your rights to an app that you got a refund for. Apple seems to just refund the money and let you keep the app. Maybe that’s a safer policy, or maybe it isn’t a policy and just an accident of no formal refund system.