Android's Uncurated App Marketplace Draws Criticism, Google Activates 'Kill Switch' on Two Apps

[acaden]

This debate isn't even going to be relevant in a few years. The iPhone will be just as open as the Android market.

Why? HTML 5 (and its successors) will encapsulate all the features of native apps such as location data, file system access, and hardware acceleration. And it will be the job of the browser to ask the user if they would like to entrust a particular web app with the proper permissions. This is going to be no different than what Android does to sandbox and escalate permissions for its native apps now. Steve Jobs can't save you from giving a rogue web site access to your GPS coordinates any more than Google.

What are all of you open market haters going to say about it then?

 

[dogie678]

Security issues, confusion, spam and uncertainty certainly are getting a lot of Android users and developers worried. Why do Android developers and users have to worry about these crap??

Check this forum posts (and dozens like it) in Google's own Android Market support form.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Android+Market/thread?tid=59f31b0735162150&hl=en


Blatant lies in my app's comments about malicious intent

I just put up my first Android game to the market yesterday, and the 2nd out of 2 comments is saying:

"Privacy Breach, your contacts are sent to a different number. Don't use until update allows you to send from the android system only!"

My game does no such thing, I never set the "READ_CONTACTS", "SEND_SMS" permissions much less use those API's. The only thing I do is let the users put the results from the game in an SMS or Email, but they must choose the recipient and actually send it themselves.

Is there a way to remove such a blatant lie from the comments of my app?

 

[marksman]

what always kills me is when people just parrot the sayings of everyone else "oh, I'd rather have an Open platform....Apple is too closed...I don't like a closed system....". Yet when you call them on it, they can't tell you what it is they want to do that they just can't do on that "closed" system or why it's so bad other than "it's closed".

This is always code for wanting fetish porn.

 

[hitekalex]

You can't compare a cell phone to a desktop computer. Cellphones are an encapsulated nexus of highly sensitive information.

Yes you can, and no they're not. My laptop contains a heck of a lot of more of highly personal/sensitive information than my cellphone. And I do a heck of a lot more of highly personal/sensitive tasks on my desktop.

The notion that somehow cellphones must be protected by all means and turned into closed computing environment is as ridiculous as that old carriers' (and Steve Jobs) argument - "allowing 3rd party apps on cellphones would jeopardize the cell tower network"

Somehow, the cell tower networks have so far survived the Android, and so will we.

 

[josephabennett]

There will be no Android - there will be Verizon Android, Sprint Android, etc.

Maybe you download spyware.

I'm a little smarter.

And right there, right there! spells out the difference in approach between iOS and Android, and why I think Android may ultimately fail.

My buddy (Android user) and I (iPhone user) are having conversations like this in the lunchroom. We are both extremely tech savvy, do development for a living, etc.

With Android, you absolutely get more choice, but you better be really, really, really careful. I have used his phone, and I get it, i like a lot of the freedom, but I wouldn't let my tech luddite wife, mother, or father-in-law touch it with a 10 foot pole.

It is just begging to be hacked, cracked, and customized, which for a tech savvy person is great, but will just result in all kinds of horrible failures for the average Joe. The people I'm thinking about are the same people who run Windows, have an anti-virus scanner on their computer, yet when they ask me why it is running slow, in about 10 minutes I can diagnose that they have bots on it and they had no idea how it got there.

Phone carriers, despite their stupidity in many areas, are not wholly stupid. They will limit what you can do on an Android phone because they will not stand for their phones being turned into bots by customers, who they already regard as inept.

Many Android phones *today* can't upgrade beyond 1.5/1.6 due to carrier restrictions, and other Android phones will not let you access the Google App Market as the carrier won't let the app on the phone.

This will result in a fragmented market, and basically, every carrier will end up with their *own* version of Android, with their *own* set of restrictions, OS upgrade policies, etc. BTW, just like Windows Phones have had.

Yes, if you are tech savvy, you will be able to probably find ways to hack around that, and you will be able to pat yourself on the back for your cleverness.

But I"m sorry, this is not what Google is going after, yet I think that is exactly what will happen.

Anyway, if you are so clever as to be able to hack around your Android phone, why don't you just unlock and Jailbreak an iPhone? You'll get the same satisfaction of rejoicing in your own cleverness, plus you will be able to download your own custom IPAs that will pretty much let you do whatever you want.

 

[dogie678]

And right there, right there! spells out the difference in approach between iOS and Android, and why I think Android may ultimately fail.

My buddy (Android user) and I (iPhone user) are having conversations like this in the lunchroom. We are both extremely tech savvy, do development for a living, etc.

With Android, you absolutely get more choice, but you better be really, really, really careful. I have used his phone, and I get it, i like a lot of the freedom, but I wouldn't let my tech luddite wife, mother, or father-in-law touch it with a 10 foot pole.

It is just begging to be hacked, cracked, and customized, which for a tech savvy person is great, but will just result in all kinds of horrible failures for the average Joe. The people I'm thinking about are the same people who run Windows, have an anti-virus scanner on their computer, yet when they ask me why it is running slow, in about 10 minutes I can diagnose that they have bots on it and they had no idea how it got there.

Phone carriers, despite their stupidity in many areas, are not wholly stupid. They will limit what you can do on an Android phone because they will not stand for their phones being turned into bots by customers, who they already regard as inept.

Many Android phones *today* can't upgrade beyond 1.5/1.6 due to carrier restrictions, and other Android phones will not let you access the Google App Market as the carrier won't let the app on the phone.

This will result in a fragmented market, and basically, every carrier will end up with their *own* version of Android, with their *own* set of restrictions, OS upgrade policies, etc. BTW, just like Windows Phones have had.

Yes, if you are tech savvy, you will be able to probably find ways to hack around that, and you will be able to pat yourself on the back for your cleverness.

But I"m sorry, this is not what Google is going after, yet I think that is exactly what will happen.

Anyway, if you are so clever as to be able to hack around your Android phone, why don't you just unlock and Jailbreak an iPhone? You'll get the same satisfaction of rejoicing in your own cleverness, plus you will be able to download your own custom IPAs that will pretty much let you do whatever you want.

agree. it's being discussed everywhere.

Google’s mismanagement of the Android Market

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1466802

http://nanocr.eu/2010/06/27/googles-mismanagement-of-the-android-market/

 

[Hal Itosis]

Who the heck is Jon Johansen?

On the technical side, he probably qualifies as a genius. On the social/political side, he's just another pidarcus with a Steve Jobs complex. (or probably despises anyone who charges money for anything in any digital format). He may even be a member here.

I did butt heads with him over at Ars Technica once (JonLech), where he was spreading FUD about how Jobs secretly wanted to keep DRM on music at the iTunes Store... and consequently, Steve's famous "Thoughts on Music" is all lies:

Steve's letter was conveniently timed to deflect that and take credit for the move to DRM-free that was already happening.

Oooh, how diabolical. What do you expect from a Scandihoovian who probably never heard of the Grateful Dead? (relax, i'm half-Swedish and very proud of it). Jobs is a Dead-head/hippie from way back when (you know: the band which epitomizes the word "bootleg"), and he probably worked really hard to remove DRM from music at the iTunes store.

But Jon would have folks believe otherwise. Somehow he knows everything that happened (or didn't happen) behind the scenes. My request for a single shred of proof still sits unanswered.

 

[wreckshop]

3 apps? that's it?

Why does he need to list every single app for u? he gave u an idea, now do ur own damn homework if u really think its only 3 apps. here's a hint, u can start by looking in the iphone hacks section on this board

 

[ramuman]

...

With Android, you absolutely get more choice, but you better be really, really, really careful. I have used his phone, and I get it, i like a lot of the freedom, but I wouldn't let my tech luddite wife, mother, or father-in-law touch it with a 10 foot pole.

It is just begging to be hacked, cracked, and customized, which for a tech savvy person is great, but will just result in all kinds of horrible failures for the average Joe. The people I'm thinking about are the same people who run Windows, have an anti-virus scanner on their computer, yet when they ask me why it is running slow, in about 10 minutes I can diagnose that they have bots on it and they had no idea how it got there.
...

I disagree. Plenty of incompetent people manage to use both Android and iOS.

 

[twilson]

Sensationalist garbage.

The android market place has many many quality apps as well as App Brain and other methods of finding the highest quality ones.

The phone is built such that apps do not have access to your sensitive data *unless you let it*. It will ask you if you want the application to access all your private details and the user has full control over the outcome.

Mac users wouldn't want the iPhone app store misrepresented and they shouldn't want misinformation spread about the competitors either.

I owned the HTC Desire for 7 days (took it back cos both it an Android were *****!). And I came across the odd high quality app, usually from Google. Most third-party stuff is utter tripe and the Android devices out there are sub-standard, from start to finish. They only do well on bulletpoint features. The quality of said features is at best questionable.

The touch screens are crap and highly inaccurate, the "awesome" (NOT!) AMOLED screens aren't bright and vibrant, they are just over-saturated, and look crap in daylight.

I won't be trying an Android handset again. As for having to approve the 30 piece of atomised functionality that an app is allowed to perform. That's a joke. I'm a technically competent user, and I didn't exactly find that very friendly, some of the descriptions of functionality were slightly cryptic or not even necessary. Most users would just be scared and say yes, or just say yes without reading.

At least the iPhone spells it out nice and clearly that "App X wants to access your location"

 

[lawrence32]

So how long untill we hear of an app on android that is a fart app by design asks for the users permission to connect to the internet to download new fart sounds, but really spams message boards with your phone.

This could happen without you ever really knowing once you give this app the thumbs up to do it's thing.

I do write software but I'm not 100% up to speed with android at this point, but I have been tasked at work to find out more about the possibility of security breaches with android. Anyone else have any ideas of what could be possible, or not possible?

 

[ramuman]

... Anyone else have any ideas of what could be possible, or not possible?

WiFi syncing

 

[SandynJosh]

Ooops, I meant Gawker. I don't even know why I remember Gawker's one, not the point.

I wanted to add Apple's objection on the jailbreaking being an excemption to DMCA.

I can understand Apple's objection to jailbroken iPhones. Apple don't want to provide warranty service to a phone that is operating abnormally due to running software they haven't vetted through their own process...in fact, software that is deliberately circumventing their process. Furthermore, if maleware is to cause security or exploit problems on a jailbroken iPhone, it will likely get reported in the news as a failing of the iPhone. This reflects badly on Apple's product, not the jailbroken application. Not even the news sector is technically smart enough to see the difference, the general public is even further behind the curve on understanding the difference.

 

[0dev]

People looking to download Twilight to their phone deserve to have it hacked.

Seriously, though; what damage would a botnet of 300 phones really do? I'm guessing not much.

 

[lawrence32]

People looking to download Twilight to their phone deserve to have it hacked.

Seriously, though; what damage would a botnet of 300 phones really do? I'm guessing not much.

If I had access to 300 phones, then I have 300 different ip addresses to spam what ever I want on the net. That 300 could turn in 300,000 very fast. I could even start a ddos attack and bring a site down.

 

[MacFly123]

It is just a matter of time until smart phones become a massive target for hackers and Android is turning into the prime candidate for execution! Will be interesting to see what happens!

 

[gluonspring]

Trashing Android's wild west = trashing Mac's wild west.

Such a silly comparison

You're right. Politics is off topic. Edited to keep the focus on the real question. To wit...

How is it that Mac users have survived thus far without Apple telling us what we can and can not install on our Macs? I'd wager that the vast majority of the posts in this forum are typed on Macs. I have to wonder about people who can write, without apparent irony, about the awful wild west of Android, while enjoying the even wilder west of the Mac. I mean, I can install ANYTHING on my Mac, from ANYWHERE. I can install programs emailed to me, I can put in any old DVD and install software, and I can visit any website in the world and just download software, directly to my computer! It's insane! Surely my bank account must have been emptied out a dozen times over by now, right?

To listen to people talk here, an environment like that would be the road to ruin, or you'd have to be some technical genius to keep malware off of your computer. Yet most of us are typing our rants here on a Mac (my rant included) and somehow we're not terrified that Firefox,Skype, Evernote, Quicksilver, TextMate, Eclipse, or any of the hundreds of other programs we have download from the internet are going to turn on us (and, by the way, three of these programs I use EVERY DAY would NOT be allowed in the App store, and one would be crippled). How have Mac users survived without someone to tell us what we can and can't do with our Macs? How can we poor Mac users function without a One True App Store?

The answer is quite simple. First, few of us install un-curated applications on our Macs. Almost every application I've ever installed on my Mac I installed after reading someone's recommendation in some magazine or well known blog, or I buy it direct from some known company. An awful lot of it I download from apple.com/downloads. Those trusted sources (plural) do the curation for me. Everyone on this forum has managed to navigate that "scary" world and find sources we trust without having to have Apple insist that they are the ONLY source for software. So it is sort of bizarre that everyone now acts like we can't survive without that kind of control over what we see and do on our iPads and other iDevices. What's different? What argument can there be for censoring the iPad that wouldn't apply equally well to our Macs? Yet here we are, happily using our Macs without any real worries ranting about how awful it'd be to live in the scary Android world which, it happens, is just like the Mac world. It makes no sense.

 

[inkswamp]

With freedom comes responsibility.

Having a more free ecosystem means users will have to exercise more responsibility in what they add to their devices. I'd gladly take this over the Apple model.

Where your logic is broken is the assumption that what you're allowed or not allowed to do on a phone sold to you by one of two competing multimillion dollar, multinational tech corporations somehow represents freedom.

Here's the truth: neither Google nor Apple offer you freedom in any sense of the word, although one of those companies is more willing to insult the intelligence of consumers by playing along with the charade that they do.

So please spare us all any sanctimonious extrapolations about how the offerings of one giant corporation represents freedom and the other does not. That's just the kind of pointlessly divisive and provincial thinking that has come to characterize a lot of discussions about technology lately and quite frankly, it's getting really f______g boring.

 

[Thex1138]

Google use the Kill switch

... but Apple cops the heat... great stuff... /Sarcasm

 

[paul4339]

Then you should take it. For most people, however, a curated app store will provide a more secure, more enjoyable and more valuable experience. People who choose the Apple model are exercising their freedom to realize the most value for their money. They are not infosec or technical experts, so it is in their best economic interest to allow others, who are experts, to do that work for them.

People like yourself might prefer more of a hobbyist or enthusiast type of product, where you are left to find and put the parts together -- or even make some of the parts -- yourself. It's great that you have that choice. But just as in most other markets, the hobbyists are a small minority and the products that work best for them, which are always inherently more "free", are an inferior choice for the non-hobbyists.

well said.

 

[fox777]

Lmao..... People get off your high horses. APPLE HAS CRAP TON OF GARBAGE as well. Look at all those apps that made in top 5 PAID at one point of time that were "Hand heater"... Wtf is that? Does it really heat your hands? NO. Was it VERY tricky and deceptive in description? YES. Thousands of people downloaded and PAID for that crap only to be ripped off.

There are tens if not hundred rip off apps in App Store so don't say Apple is all powerful and clean.

 

[gluonspring]

It's unconscionable that malware should be in Android store...

I think a lot of us, me included, have been conflating two things. One thing is the general Android philosophy of letting you do what you want with your device, which is a good thing, and the other is the actual presence of malware in Google's app store, which is unconscionable. The two things are not one and the same.

I think it is unconscionable that there is any malware in the Android store, period. It just isn't acceptable. Just as it would be unconscionable for Amazon to sell malware. Or WalMart. Or for apple.com/downloads to contain any software that is malware. When you get something from a name brand store, you trust that company to have done some minimal vetting of the product. If they don't, they deserve a black eye. So Google really needs to get their act together with their app store, or close it down. Either would be OK, but if Google is going to have an app store, it should be a source you can trust.

On the other question, though, I simply can't go along with Apple. It's one thing to say, "We offer you a trusted store with carefully curated products". That's a service to your customers. It's another thing to say, "We provide the only store, and you are prohibited from doing anything we don't want you to do." That is an affront to your customers. If Apple offered an App store full of known safe things, but allowed you to install software from somewhere else if you were so inclined, that kind of App store *option* would be a true *service* to their customers. Who could complain about having A safe source for software? Great. It's Apple's insistence that there can be no other App store that I find objectionable. Having a safe curated app store, and even parental controls to ensure that my kids can only download from there, would be an actual feature of the products in my eyes. However, when Apple says to me, "I know you want to install a dashboard app on your iPad with little weather widgets and what not, but Apple is not going to let you", that's what is offensive to me. If Apple would just not insist that jailbreaking is illegal (and they do insist just that), I could maybe stomach it. But Apple is saying that if I want a dashboard on my iPad, I have to break the law (in their eyes), that's just offensive.

I really love my MacBook, and have been an Apple fanboy for 26 years. I've never even owned a non-Apple computer. I've put up with paying premium prices, with having no upgrade path except throwing my old computer away, and so on, because I like the products enough to overlook those irritations. Nonetheless, I just can't bring myself to follow them down the iOS path of absolute Apple authoritarian control of everything I can do with the devices I purchase.

 

[kalsta]

I want phones to be open for the same reasons I want my OS to be open (not open source, open in that I can install whatever I want).

Do you think OS X and Windows would be better if Apple and Microsoft had to approve each app for their respective OS?

Guys, what is wrong with having different approaches for different devices?

In years gone by I've listened to friends tell of their adventures haggling over motherboards and cases at a computer fair, wrestling with driver incompatibilities, twiddling around with Linux variants, or whatever the latest thing is. And what I had to understand is (even as they're telling tales of late nights and woe) they really don't mind it! It's all part of the experience for them.

Then there are people who want to be creative, but see the computer as a tool for creativity — not the object of creativity. That's me. If the tool comes largely preconfigured and ready to use out of the box, that's more time I have to spend on the important stuff.

Then there are others who just want to communicate with friends and/or consume media — and there's nothing wrong with that either!

So in years gone by we just had a range of PCs, with the Mac being towards the user-friendly end of the scale. Now we have a new breed of Apple 'i' devices that push ease-of-use even further — right down to the quality-controlled app store.

What's wrong with that? What's wrong with owning an iPad when you just want something simple and stress-free, and a Mac/PC when you want to do more?

Disclaimer: Although I like the quality controlled nature of the app store for iOS, I concede that Apple could still give users the choice. The iPhone could pop up a message along the lines of 'You are about to download an untested app from a non-approved vendor. This is unsupported and your phone could blow up. Are you sure?'

 

[Consultant]

Android: open to spywares

Where your logic is broken is the assumption that what you're allowed or not allowed to do on a phone sold to you by one of two competing multimillion dollar, multinational tech corporations somehow represents freedom.

Here's the truth: neither Google nor Apple offer you freedom in any sense of the word, although one of those companies is more willing to insult the intelligence of consumers by playing along with the charade that they do.

So please spare us all any sanctimonious extrapolations about how the offerings of one giant corporation represents freedom and the other does not. That's just the kind of pointlessly divisive and provincial thinking that has come to characterize a lot of discussions about technology lately and quite frankly, it's getting really f______g boring.

Exactly. Google is so open, it does not allow its maps data to be used for navigation on non-google devices.

Google advertises open platform, but won't allow most users to update their phone software, due to GOOGLE's deals with the carriers.

 

[kalsta]

Anyway, if you are so clever as to be able to hack around your Android phone, why don't you just unlock and Jailbreak an iPhone? You'll get the same satisfaction of rejoicing in your own cleverness, plus you will be able to download your own custom IPAs that will pretty much let you do whatever you want.

Well said!