@@trappedcat3615 I reported an issue with custom functions reloading needlessly costing my clients money on too many API requests, and they were like "Well, try caching", I explained that caching doesn't solve the problem since 1. the custom function like the one I made are not supposed to be deterministic but should generate a new value every time they are called and 2. you (Google) doesn't even allow caching (I think) for more than 6 hours, which is a joke. On top of that it's an obvious bug since the functions recalculate simply because you move the column from one place to another (and even when that doesn't result in cell references being changed in it), but guess what? they were like... "yeah don't care we downgrade this from S2 -> S3" which I learnt it's basically "something that doesn't affect a lot of users, so the priority is low". In my opinion Google Sheets and Apps Script are the only "apps" that make Google worthy it. I can't think of any other Google productivity tools that is worth the time. The only reason I reported that bug is because I thought they were serious, but off course not, to me they came across as arrogant and cocky and seeing what they do with people here on UA-cam with censorship, it all makes sense: they are all the same. Google is the new Microsoft, and I hope it will die.
@@deleted-u5g Haha... I doubt you even know what Im talking about. My last job is still running admin scripts I wrote using cronjobs on forms, calendars, and sheets.
Google, one of the largest, most influential, most highly opinionated about your apps and sites, companies has the absolute worst UI, usability, DX etc. Absolutely astonishing and ridiculous this is still allowed
Apple App Store definitely changes their requirements often. I was fighting them on an IAP change, and in that process, they changed the requirement again.
They're also enforced inconsistently. I once had Apple block a critical bug fix update because they said I violated a UI guideline of allowing more than one popover to be open at a time, even though that UI had existed and been approved since the very first version of the app.
Came here to say this. The idea that Apple doesn't pull the rugs on devs is laughable. Their requirements are opaque, change constantly, and aren't consistently applied from review to review. I remember every time we had to submit an update for review the whole team would just cross their fingers, and often be disappointed, only to have basically the same app approved the next time. This was the scenario at multiple companies in wildly different industries.
After weeks of back and forth with Apple, in the most random dumb little things they wanted changed. They suddenly out of no where, wanted me to remove the user login from my app. Considering Google nor Apple give you a proper device id to work with ,all this does is cause massive regression my code base in order to try support dogshit no login concepts that are pushed onto me, by people who dont even give you the tooling you need to do such things correct. I dont want to generate a uuid. I dont want my dbs filled with tons of 'devices' or 'accounts' for these uuids that will change every time the user wipes the app. Its insanity. While you sit there, and both stores are filled with apps that need a login to function securely and well.
Have to be honest. This is tame in comparison what happend just yesterday from Google Play reviewers; We submitted a newly app in Closed Testing-and we had previous releases with no issues, mind you-and not only did they not use the correct password for the review account, they used the Production of the legacy app. They rejected the submission with "Violates our policies; no disclosure for use of Bluetooth Location permissions." - of which this update was exactly made to address. I fault both Apple and Google for these terrible processes, but this took the cake for me. It shows how broken they really are. Mistakes can happen, but getting the wrong APK of an app that is a completely different version number, and look and feel and then reject it for entirely different reason is insane. And it's not something you can dispute either; you're forced to either resubmit (and rebuild) or contact their "policy support" which can take multiple days to get a response from. So far we have not had this ridiculous treatment from Apple, but we're also just about to release our new app in a closed beta test to the public. Time will tell. What's funny is that Apple didn't seem to care that we asked the user for Bluetooth permission during the splash screen without context. We later addressed this ourselves, because Google was more strict on this.
@@draken5379 I had the same problem with apple. I, by now, removed the login and the functionalities that requires an account. I plan to return them eventually, but I gave up dealing with apple crazyness. My experience with apple is way worse than with google.
6:24 NO APP NEEDS ACCESS TO THE /auth/drive scope - THEY ONLY NEED /auth/drive.file there is a huge difference in these - the first lets apps access EVERY SINGLE FILE on your drive, whereas the second only lets apps access the files THE APP CREATES. This is a really bad look for iA Writer devs scoping things badly. Absolutely no app should use the whole drive scope, and that is why google seems to be "shadow-"deprecating it.
@@leandro6234 this is an ignorant statement - just because spooks CAN go thru courts to get a judge to approve an evidence-based warrant does not mean it is the same thing as straight-up having access to every person's data in Dropbox. To get a warrant you already need to have evidence, whereas if you sift thru every person's dropbox you can target individuals who were never on the gov's radar to begin with. This applies to every medium, including wiretaps, traffic sniffers, text messages, emails, etc.
The only reason I can think of as to why they'd ever say that a "writer" app only "needs" read-only access to Drive, is if they want to force people to use Google Docs.
I've been building hybrid apps for 10 years now. Saying developing for Android is a nightmare is saying you've never developed for iOS. Apple constantly changes their contracts. You get your update rejected for no reason after changing a color just because your former version got accepted by a random guy that had no issues with it and the next random guy does. They don't even follow your provided notes to test some new in app purchase and mostly reject you with copy/pasted random messages that have nothing to do with the issue. You can even receive app deletion warns because of bad reviews that have to do with their own iOS users not understanding what an autorenewal so you're now treated as a scammer. The truth is I have never used the Google Drive api but saying that developing for Android is a hellish experience because of that reason when deploying an update to Google Play is usually tap a button and you're done... mhhh yeah...
Having deployed dozens of apps to both iOS and Android I can confidently say they both suck, but Android definitely sucks the most. Dev console is hell to navigate, SDK deprecates on a 2 year cycle, random arbitrary/subjective rejections. All of this happens on iOS too, but I've definitely had worse experiences with the Play Store. It's also easier to take an app down from the App Store and bring it back up later than it is on Android because it has to be approved again. Not to say that Apple doesn't occasionally change terms in a way that majorly screws us over every now and then, but Google is almost as bad and the day to day experience is horrible. They monopolize these systems so they don't really have any reason to improve though. Also quick edit to throw a fuck xcode in there
As another mobile app developer I would rather have a new sdk every 2 years than a new machine every 4 because xcode isn't updated for your device anymore. Not too mention all the random bs disapprovals only to submit the same app 5 minutes later and it will get approved.
I've done both. Definitely hate android more. Working in android studio is a miserable experience compared to xcode. Yes, the iOS app store can be a pain, but my day to day life is easier developing for iOS.
The nice thing about Android is that you don't really need to deal with Google. You don't have to deal with google drive, etc, to be able to make an Android app. You don't need to publish your app on the Play Store. For example, you could let people download an APK, or use alternative app stores instead. It isn't perfect, but at least you have the freedom to completely circumvent having to deal with Google if you want.
I'm an F-Droid user, but even I am self aware enough to admit I'm the percent of a percent. I will say, the experience being less smooth is absolutely Google's doing. Background app installs and updates requiring root is absolutely an anti-competitive move, no good reason for it
I've always hated Google Drive. I just want a tree view for folders, and it feels like this is a google drive anti-pattern. "Just search for it".. Maybe I don't want to just search for everything all the time.
These security theatre audits and compliance attestations are becoming increasingly "normal" pretty much every where in the corporate space. We have to prove to new clients which ones we've passed/already have, why we don't do their own preferred one, have increasingly severe deep internal audits to the point where any device that can no longer receive BIOS updates is a no no as it's a security risk. It's becoming a total XKCD 15 standards issue and is only going to get worse as no one accepts anyone else's as good enough, regardless of industry bodies or government backing. I get to waste about a month of my year on this shit, and I'm over it! So yeah, google are crap here, but it's becoming 'the standard', so it ain't going anywhere.
This. The app I made like 8 years ago for my school requires nothing but internet to fetch data from our API. And now they ask me to submit my documents otherwise I can kiss my dev account goodbye, even though I paid own damn money for it.
Correction: Every few years Google does a cleanup of their Play Store by requiring the developers to give out again their identity (which I just did not that long ago,) update their apps (using the latest Android API target for example, which I also had to do). Then I understand Google's recommendations for the writer app were idiotic but I think you can kinda easily not use any of those scopes, the file picker/file saver activities enable you to access external storage (like Google Drive and others) which is now the recommended way to save/read from cloud storage because it asks the user using Android's UI what to do and where which is 100% transparent. The Google Drive writing permission is now considered to be a less needed one and useful in a very few cases (for Android apps anyway), asking heavy verification for its sensitive use is more understandable (even if I think the security audits are way too much). You could also say this forms anticompetitive behavior by only enabling your product (Google Docs in this case) to use the APIs required for Google Drive by stomping the little players with security audits. Also those checks are for many different scopes (just go to the Google Cloud Console and list the Google Workspace APIs with kinda relevant scopes). Finally, when they talked about limiting the app to 100 users they meant unverifying the Google Cloud project which limits the OAuth to 100 users (most of the time those are test users). TL;DR: This is kinda stupid from Google but there are workarounds which are the new recommended ways to do and some of the points Theo made were just regular Play Store policies. And as a bonus don't ask them to fight more against piracy because they just enabled developers to prevent sideloading of app IDs if they are present in the Play Store (see all the Play Store Integrity stuff) edits: typo/clarifications
Thanks for your clarification. As a dev adapting to changes is tiring but as a user these uniform checks and updates are welcome, maybe some the pickforks would drop helpful if reasons why were concise, reasonable and human readable
And shenanigans like that always confirm my decision avoiding the ongoing enshittification of the world by moving my stuff. From windows to linux (hello, lovely nixos), from onedrive and googledrive to synology drive (hosted on my own local synology), from gmail/outlook to my self-hosted mailcow. The list is growing, and every new thing either needs to be open-source or self-hosted. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
@@redstone0234 You're right, and I wouldn't recommend that for everyone. Luckily I know most of the pitfalls after 20 years in tech. And if I end up on a blacklist... c'est la vie.
The killer is that there's practically no recourse. There's no human to reason with, unless you have "friends of friends of friends" to go to. And even that doesn't work.
@@Lucas_Simoni oh they are still on github and I have obtainium setup to pull updates for family members that I have set to use the apps so that they stay up to date.
@@Lucas_Simoni Self distributed apks have barely any more permissions than PWAs. At that point it really makes more sense to abandon having a native app at all.
In fairness, the DUNS/passport verification was mandatory for all Google Play accounts registered as a business, and everybody had an appointment during the current year. It also involved filling out tax status forms for a number of countries. We went through the same thing with Apple. It seems driven by EU laws. The US has a deadline for similar "beneficial owner" laws at end 2024. It's just a 2024 reality about fighting tax evasion, and not personal.
To be clear: FinCen's BOI has nothing to do with tax evasion or money laundering. Huge companies are exempt. This is a small business kill list. Wait and see...
I ain't a registered business, and I only have a simple app for my school that displays articles retrieved from our APIs. No extra permissions, but internet access. Now I have to submit my document scans and hope it works before the Nov 8th deadline otherwise I lose my dev account I paid own money for. Nothing fair here chief
If I'm remembering it right: Redigit *couldn't* publish Terraria on Stadia because there were too many company things on his personal Gmail, it was maybe even the account they were going to publish from. I could be exaggerating in my memory though.
2:53 I hate Google Play with a passion. Every time you go to update an app, there are at least 15 new forms you have to fill out before you can upload your APK/App Bundle. It's stupid.
I understand google not wanting to give apps full write perms over someone's entire google drive. However, the better option would be allow users to designate a folder for apps to access, and not allow that folder to be the top level one (aka full access). That way it's down to the user to decide what folder an app has access. But that requires WAY more work on Google's side.
As a user, I thought that already existed. I have some apps that have used directories for storing their stuff, or backing up settings and I had assumed that they were restricted to their own directory. For example screencastify, which lets me record screencasts. It only saves to my Google Drive, they use it as their storage, in exchange for not charging a stupid amount per year. Maybe I granted full access without realising it.
That actually exists already. You can ask for many different API Scope levels, including drive appfolder, and drive appdata But they only allow you as a dev to access that apps specific folder. If you want a user to pick a file to open/edit you should use drive file which opens a Google provided UI to pick a file and then sends it to the application. The full drive api scope grants access to all files and folders on the google drive and is therefore restricted. Though Google specifically lists productivity and note taking apps as apps that can apply for full drive scope access so why they had to be such a pain in these cases is beyond me.
I wonder if Google realize how their continuous reputation for making useful stuff go away drives anyone with a long term requirement away - not just now, but in the future too. It erodes trust. Including corporations with devs who have been bitten once too often. It is sad to see.
I enjoyed Google’s advert for Google Drive while on Google’s UA-cam platform while watching this video. That’s my daily irony amount achieved and I’ve not even had breakfast yet…
Google drive was always shitty, I hope apps stop using it and then we can have a little fight over the best features, but I know people aren't interested in pushing their data around to make their voice heard. So we are stuck with shitty half solutions.
Maybe because everyone has a google drive, and the alternative is every app requiring you to have an account with a different cloud storage that you have never heard of? And how many are gonna even give API access?
I had “move away from Dropbox” on my todo list for a very long time because Condoleezza Rice was on the board of directors and I don’t think someone instrumental in authorizing the Patriot Act and that has no tech expertise should have any sway in a company that holds lots of user data. Thankfully she’s not currently on the board but still probably best to move towards something like Syncthing.
I wonder if this violates the EU's competition rules forcing large companies to maintain APIs for third party integrations. The US will never regulate mega corps for their anti competitive practices
Absolutely the right approach by iA. Been loving their products for years. If the platform doesn't want you, move away from it. Especially if you are a product with a name.
This move makes some sense from Google's perspective. They aren't being dumb or incompetent. They get to say they've increased security while offloading all of the cost, verification, and liability of those claims onto app developers and the auditors they have to hire. They've also reduced their own maintenance, compliance, and security costs by reducing the number of apps hitting the drive API. It is gross though and ultimately bad for consumers as it shrinks their options only to devs/partners who can pay the tolls, locking out most new entrants that don't have large VC backing. These walled gardens are always going to make choices like this that protect themselves no matter the cost to others. Seems like they've already captured so much of modern computing that it's hard to see a way free of them. Users and devs should try as best they can though. Would be great if free sync tools like syncthing had integrations available for android app devs. Until then, maybe devs just need to write local and push users towards these sync tools that are further outside the garden. PS: Dropbox wishes they could bully users and devs like Apple/Google. The only thing making them less evil is a lack of scale. Spend the dropbox fees on an offsite server running syncthing. Don't let someone else control your files.
"don't attribute top malice" ignores the 3rd option - you don't know what certain large companies stand to gain from locking out competition within the Google garden; this option is equally likely which would imply Google IS getting a lot of money and or getting lobbied behind the scenes. Venture scale money motives are not immediately clear so don't ignore them outright.
I'm a solo dev building an Android app with an accessibility requirement, I haven't even gotten to the approval stage yet... this sort of shit is scary af for me. I've been trying to build Google Sign in for the app + a Chrome extension I'm building alongside it and even that has been rough with Google's policies. I'm not sure if I should keep trying here
It was always bad with the api verification process, some of things they require you to submit are things that don't even apply to your app sometimes and it can get stuck in limbo for a long time
Very hard to feel sorry for a team charging $99 for a Markdown editor, with no guaranteed updates and no student discount. They literally say on their site: "Minor updates are free, while major updates may incur costs. The timeline for updates is uncertain. You might get lucky-or not." What did I just read?
That's the kind of stuff that made me stop developing Android apps. Google deprecated Google Drive apps and forced everyone to use their api, unless you're a huge company. It also rewrites it's own android sdks all the time for no good reason, and then forces you to update to the latest version. You have to learn a completely different library on their horrible docs site to do the same thing you were doing before. Ain't nobody got time for that. These required documents are also a pain in the ass, they keep requiring more and more stuff almost every month. It's just ridiculous.
@@laujimmy9282 Yeah, I know it sucks, but quitting depends on what you want for you career. There will always be demand for Android devs, so you would be in a safe spot I assume. If you quit, you would have to choose another tech stack, like web front end, iOS dev, backend, etc. If I were you, would do what I like the most but that also pays my bills
They're doing this to prevent startups from launching competing cross-platform storage and search products like Glean, DropBox Dash etc. Makes sense to be honest.
I’m old enough to remember when Theo was reading us Google wasn’t changing Chrome to manifest v3 to get rid of ad blockers. (That was a few days ago for the uninitiated).
Since theo makes further comments about Google not caring about “chump change”. I promise they do. Companies are constantly looking to cut waste and offload their own burdens. They don’t always do this in the most logical or efficient ways, but once a clear and obvious way to make money/cut losses comes along (like killing adblockers or making devs responsible for their own security scans) they will start doing it.
This is why we need laws to protect side-loading and 3rd party app stores. At least they could host their own APK, or offer users cloud storage for a subscription instead of google drive. Heck, maybe even let pirates use a rate-limited free tier and convert them into paying users if they want to use it for work.
I lost my Android Developer account because my business legal name changed and the form to inform that change at google does not work. After 6 months trying to contact from many other ways I simply lost everything.
As a normal user, I've found Google Drive has been getting worse and worse. Can't sort files by size anymore, can't copy files to my drive anymore (only shortcuts) removed integration with Google Photos, unnacurate metadata on Takeout, and zero options to help with managing storage as well as a laggy website.
yeah, ive heard about a couple such stories before. I pretty much expect drive to be gone at any moment, so use redundant storage, but I dont know what to do about dozens and dozens of other apps and servises and accounts that are authorized through google/gmail.
Ive also heard that if they ban your account, they may use tracking technologies to find any of your alternate accounts and ban them too. All of that is automated, ofcourse, they literally dont have real humans for revewing any of that, just like with youtube, and havent had for a decade. Any appeal just goes to a slightly more sophisticated bot.
I kind of understand where Google are coming from, from a security perspective. You don't want people giving access to their Google Drive account to an application that turns out to be compromised or contain malicious code that exfiltrates all their private data. But they have to make the process less onerous for smaller developers, it sounds like such a pain to deal with.
Happy Synology customer here. Most of my video consumption is done with grayjay. One of my phone doesn't even run google play services. The other must because of some banking apps.
This is a vertical integration issue. Access to google drive should have nothing to do with permissions in an app just because they're owned by the same company. Imagine if they restricted SMB or S3 access the same way (or maybe they do?)
We have a similar issue with account verification not working and are expecting our app to be taken offline due to their error. Not to mention the noexistant support.
I have a feeling that this is the start of something bigger then we can wrap our heads around at this point in time. Data has become even more precious and it seems that due to more regulations and pressure random applications can't simply get the keys to data kingdom that easily. Also lets not beat around the bush, Apple Application submission process is in the same state as Google, you just need to check the developer forums and very quickly find out all sorts of weird and random issues.
Didn't watch yet but I tried to get my MVP for my cold email app approved from Google, they recently told me that "my application is facilitating spam", so now NO cold email applications are going to get approved?! I have no idea, this gatekeeping by billion dollar industries is getting ridiculous. Had no idea it would be such a problem for such a basic thing.
They meant "open" as in not a walled garden and/or not restricted to their hardware. It can be a minefield developing for Windows if you need to do anything really low level because you never know what kind of hardware or 3rd-party software and drivers you might be dealing with. Still, for most desktop and store apps these days, you rarely have to worry about it. Game devs probably run into issues more than anyone. Apple's big advantage over other operating systems is they only ever have to run on their own hardware and drivers.
I really dislike google drive APIs, they have been stopping me for months. I built a VR file viewer, and they won't allow it to browse a user's own files, just keep giving me the run around. But this is also iOS and Android, both versions are hurt. Think i'm just going to drop the feature, dropbox still works.
"This is an *unintentional* power shrinkage to the most powerful people who can afford to do all those things" It is definitely intentional, big corps HATE small and opensource projects
I’ve watched _at least_ three of your videos now, and I _still_ can’t get over your face being that of someone non-Australian. Every time I forget, and I click on one of your videos expecting “crikey mate, struth!”, and then you speak and I’m surprised all over again.
At first I thought "Yeah, this is Google trying to remove rivals of G Documents", specially with their changing terms, but after you showing that Panic has the same issues with Transmit, it seems someone added bureaucracy, and it's periodically updating it, just for showing their bosses/supervisors they're doing things to improve the Play Store. Man, how I miss the early 2000s Google Inc. ...
He meant Google's ROM for Pixel phones, that's a lot more than what you can call base Android. It's not good for testing apps on as it might not work on other Android flavors. There is no longer a baseline android that can be tested against (except if you really want to install AOSP, but that is unusable for any developer developing against Google Play Services which you in most cases have to).
Here's what it feels like submitting to each app store; Apple is like the grandma with short term memory who don't remember where she put her glasses and asks you, every time, where they are. When you tell her, she forgets again and keeps looking. Google is like the bully that hides your belongings on purpose and gaslights you until you admit to something you didn't do. And make you write it on a 1x1cm piece of paper with a short, unsharpened pencil.
Crazy idea, have Google do a "Library" ( don't recall what they are called on Android) that dictates how you access Drive. So it can warn users of access, and have them agree/disagree avoiding all this...nonsense. You link your app to the library, and the library is the gate keeper and they can update their app to meet new security requirements and such. This could work on any platform, though would require Google actually...do something, like make those libraries.
Apple's App Store policies might be consistent in the sense that they don't get changed often, but Apple is far from consistent in enforcing them. Equally as bad if not worse if you'd ask me. If stuff gets changed a lot, but you know that what is written is followed, you at least have something to follow.
I'm sorry, but with the consistency google does changes like this, it is just obvious, that it is intentionally trying to squeeze money for their partners to stay a monopoly. There is just no sugarcoating here. This issue has been going on for months! If the were just dumb, they would have changed something for the better, not worse. But we can only see changes to make things worse, while providing the monopoly with more benefits.
I totally understand why unrestricted drive access is scary to hand out, but these rules are ridiculous. What's the point of annual scans in the first place? For a scan to have any meaning it has to be done for every single new version of the app, and that simply cannot be done manually. Either your company is too small to afford manual reviews, or the application is so big that it can't be manually reviewed, there is almost never an in-between. The sensible approach would be to make users aware of the risk of running these apps before they approve the drive access, and the ability to lessen those warnings by going through the security audit process.
Only thing I disagreed with was arguing that the security scan not finding any issues meant their users got no benefit. It's like saying health insurance is bad because you didn't need to see a doctor this year. Otherwise I 100% agree, an action like this makes you wonder if they even talk to devs before big changes? I know Google has become bloated and full of a lot of people who are just doing stuff for the sake of job security but this is just a joke.
Also google just made updates to make sharing google drive links easier while using their workplace. Sounds like they want to remove any potential for people to use anything other than their own products.
Hmm, it is interesting to me that just as Google is getting forced to open the app store and that they can't make deals with phone vendors that they are now pushing new security rules to core functionality that would only be no big deal to the companies they were making backroom deals with. And of course.. the push for Google AI tools.
That's why I only develop WebApps, it's the most free and decentralized environment we have so far, and we need to protect it while pushing web3 further.
"Trust and Transparency" is another issue I have with the play store. No one else seems to talk about how the Play Store wants toDox all the individual/hobby devs.
12:08 Pixel experience isn’t a version of android that runs on a Pixel phone. It was an opens-source community-driven ROM. Also, pixel phones were never just stock android
Every google product hates developers. It's ridiculous what you do to get an API key properly work
Apps Script is where it's at
@@trappedcat3615 I reported an issue with custom functions reloading needlessly costing my clients money on too many API requests, and they were like "Well, try caching", I explained that caching doesn't solve the problem since 1. the custom function like the one I made are not supposed to be deterministic but should generate a new value every time they are called and 2. you (Google) doesn't even allow caching (I think) for more than 6 hours, which is a joke. On top of that it's an obvious bug since the functions recalculate simply because you move the column from one place to another (and even when that doesn't result in cell references being changed in it), but guess what? they were like... "yeah don't care we downgrade this from S2 -> S3" which I learnt it's basically "something that doesn't affect a lot of users, so the priority is low". In my opinion Google Sheets and Apps Script are the only "apps" that make Google worthy it. I can't think of any other Google productivity tools that is worth the time.
The only reason I reported that bug is because I thought they were serious, but off course not, to me they came across as arrogant and cocky and seeing what they do with people here on UA-cam with censorship, it all makes sense: they are all the same.
Google is the new Microsoft, and I hope it will die.
@@trappedcat3615 long story short, they themselves don't even take Apps Script seriously!
@@deleted-u5g Haha... I doubt you even know what Im talking about. My last job is still running admin scripts I wrote using cronjobs on forms, calendars, and sheets.
@@deleted-u5g what's the long story 😂
I just paid $400 to Google for my "security audit". They found 0 issues. Thanks.
@@
"Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity... *_unless it's a big corporation._* They are, by definition, malicious."
Google, one of the largest, most influential, most highly opinionated about your apps and sites, companies has the absolute worst UI, usability, DX etc. Absolutely astonishing and ridiculous this is still allowed
Google loves to not test their android apps properly, some of the worst bugs I've seen.
it's time for "drivething"
picthing
uploadthing
and...
downloadthing
now someone is going to buy that domain and sell it for 4000$ to Theo.
I cant wait for Datething
@@Dhalucario Yes, let people submit their coding projects, and whoever's coding style matches, put them up together.
Ooo yaa
Apple App Store definitely changes their requirements often. I was fighting them on an IAP change, and in that process, they changed the requirement again.
They're also enforced inconsistently. I once had Apple block a critical bug fix update because they said I violated a UI guideline of allowing more than one popover to be open at a time, even though that UI had existed and been approved since the very first version of the app.
Came here to say this. The idea that Apple doesn't pull the rugs on devs is laughable. Their requirements are opaque, change constantly, and aren't consistently applied from review to review. I remember every time we had to submit an update for review the whole team would just cross their fingers, and often be disappointed, only to have basically the same app approved the next time. This was the scenario at multiple companies in wildly different industries.
After weeks of back and forth with Apple, in the most random dumb little things they wanted changed. They suddenly out of no where, wanted me to remove the user login from my app. Considering Google nor Apple give you a proper device id to work with ,all this does is cause massive regression my code base in order to try support dogshit no login concepts that are pushed onto me, by people who dont even give you the tooling you need to do such things correct.
I dont want to generate a uuid. I dont want my dbs filled with tons of 'devices' or 'accounts' for these uuids that will change every time the user wipes the app. Its insanity.
While you sit there, and both stores are filled with apps that need a login to function securely and well.
Have to be honest. This is tame in comparison what happend just yesterday from Google Play reviewers;
We submitted a newly app in Closed Testing-and we had previous releases with no issues, mind you-and not only did they not use the correct password for the review account, they used the Production of the legacy app. They rejected the submission with "Violates our policies; no disclosure for use of Bluetooth Location permissions." - of which this update was exactly made to address.
I fault both Apple and Google for these terrible processes, but this took the cake for me. It shows how broken they really are. Mistakes can happen, but getting the wrong APK of an app that is a completely different version number, and look and feel and then reject it for entirely different reason is insane. And it's not something you can dispute either; you're forced to either resubmit (and rebuild) or contact their "policy support" which can take multiple days to get a response from.
So far we have not had this ridiculous treatment from Apple, but we're also just about to release our new app in a closed beta test to the public. Time will tell. What's funny is that Apple didn't seem to care that we asked the user for Bluetooth permission during the splash screen without context. We later addressed this ourselves, because Google was more strict on this.
@@draken5379 I had the same problem with apple. I, by now, removed the login and the functionalities that requires an account. I plan to return them eventually, but I gave up dealing with apple crazyness. My experience with apple is way worse than with google.
"dropbox is fine" is a great overstatement considering how many data loss stories there are with it (including my own).
6:24 NO APP NEEDS ACCESS TO THE /auth/drive scope - THEY ONLY NEED /auth/drive.file
there is a huge difference in these - the first lets apps access EVERY SINGLE FILE on your drive, whereas the second only lets apps access the files THE APP CREATES.
This is a really bad look for iA Writer devs scoping things badly. Absolutely no app should use the whole drive scope, and that is why google seems to be "shadow-"deprecating it.
I came looking for this comment
What about apps that need to be able to open documents that they didn't create? This seems a perfectly reasonable expectation for a text editor app.
Don’t use Dropbox. They have long history of branches, employees going though people’s personal files and gov agencies accessing people’s drives.
branches? did you mean breaches?
All goverments can demand information afaik so it is the same.
Just encrypt your stuff.
Booooo the government booooo scaryyy booo
@@leandro6234 this is an ignorant statement - just because spooks CAN go thru courts to get a judge to approve an evidence-based warrant does not mean it is the same thing as straight-up having access to every person's data in Dropbox.
To get a warrant you already need to have evidence, whereas if you sift thru every person's dropbox you can target individuals who were never on the gov's radar to begin with. This applies to every medium, including wiretaps, traffic sniffers, text messages, emails, etc.
Ask Luke from Float Plane about the App Store rules being consistent 😂
Pretty sure Luke and Theo are friends too lol
Luke needs to leave that slime ball Linus behind
@@mattymattffs what did Linus do?
@@mattymattffsLuke and Linus are an unstoppable team
@@Brixster they dropped off hard. They lost all credibility in the eyes of true tech heads.
The only reason I can think of as to why they'd ever say that a "writer" app only "needs" read-only access to Drive, is if they want to force people to use Google Docs.
I've been building hybrid apps for 10 years now. Saying developing for Android is a nightmare is saying you've never developed for iOS. Apple constantly changes their contracts. You get your update rejected for no reason after changing a color just because your former version got accepted by a random guy that had no issues with it and the next random guy does. They don't even follow your provided notes to test some new in app purchase and mostly reject you with copy/pasted random messages that have nothing to do with the issue. You can even receive app deletion warns because of bad reviews that have to do with their own iOS users not understanding what an autorenewal so you're now treated as a scammer. The truth is I have never used the Google Drive api but saying that developing for Android is a hellish experience because of that reason when deploying an update to Google Play is usually tap a button and you're done... mhhh yeah...
Having deployed dozens of apps to both iOS and Android I can confidently say they both suck, but Android definitely sucks the most. Dev console is hell to navigate, SDK deprecates on a 2 year cycle, random arbitrary/subjective rejections. All of this happens on iOS too, but I've definitely had worse experiences with the Play Store. It's also easier to take an app down from the App Store and bring it back up later than it is on Android because it has to be approved again. Not to say that Apple doesn't occasionally change terms in a way that majorly screws us over every now and then, but Google is almost as bad and the day to day experience is horrible. They monopolize these systems so they don't really have any reason to improve though.
Also quick edit to throw a fuck xcode in there
As another mobile app developer I would rather have a new sdk every 2 years than a new machine every 4 because xcode isn't updated for your device anymore. Not too mention all the random bs disapprovals only to submit the same app 5 minutes later and it will get approved.
Guys, there’s no need to fight, _all_ operating systems suck.
Except BeOS.
I've done both. Definitely hate android more. Working in android studio is a miserable experience compared to xcode. Yes, the iOS app store can be a pain, but my day to day life is easier developing for iOS.
@@willswonderland m1 air 8gb for 600$ after 5 years still holds latest xcode as day one. No major frizes/lags at all.
The nice thing about Android is that you don't really need to deal with Google.
You don't have to deal with google drive, etc, to be able to make an Android app.
You don't need to publish your app on the Play Store. For example, you could let people download an APK, or use alternative app stores instead.
It isn't perfect, but at least you have the freedom to completely circumvent having to deal with Google if you want.
Cool, but who is downloading you app on alternate stores anyway? Other devs?
Android has its problems but is miles better than IOS precisely for this reason.
iOS now has 3rd party stores. Yeah, you can now play Fortnite on an iPhone.
@@Nekroido Europe thing only
I'm an F-Droid user, but even I am self aware enough to admit I'm the percent of a percent.
I will say, the experience being less smooth is absolutely Google's doing.
Background app installs and updates requiring root is absolutely an anti-competitive move, no good reason for it
This isn't the vid i wanna be recommended when I just got assigned a google API user story
I've always hated Google Drive. I just want a tree view for folders, and it feels like this is a google drive anti-pattern. "Just search for it".. Maybe I don't want to just search for everything all the time.
Maybe DHH has a point with the PWAs?
yep yep yep
These security theatre audits and compliance attestations are becoming increasingly "normal" pretty much every where in the corporate space. We have to prove to new clients which ones we've passed/already have, why we don't do their own preferred one, have increasingly severe deep internal audits to the point where any device that can no longer receive BIOS updates is a no no as it's a security risk.
It's becoming a total XKCD 15 standards issue and is only going to get worse as no one accepts anyone else's as good enough, regardless of industry bodies or government backing.
I get to waste about a month of my year on this shit, and I'm over it!
So yeah, google are crap here, but it's becoming 'the standard', so it ain't going anywhere.
4:59 No, they aren't requiring passport scans for Google Drive APIs, but for the Play Store.
This. The app I made like 8 years ago for my school requires nothing but internet to fetch data from our API. And now they ask me to submit my documents otherwise I can kiss my dev account goodbye, even though I paid own damn money for it.
Part of me wonders if this is Google's ham-fisted way of trying to get people to stop using Google Drive as the storage for their Plex library.
Correction: Every few years Google does a cleanup of their Play Store by requiring the developers to give out again their identity (which I just did not that long ago,) update their apps (using the latest Android API target for example, which I also had to do). Then I understand Google's recommendations for the writer app were idiotic but I think you can kinda easily not use any of those scopes, the file picker/file saver activities enable you to access external storage (like Google Drive and others) which is now the recommended way to save/read from cloud storage because it asks the user using Android's UI what to do and where which is 100% transparent. The Google Drive writing permission is now considered to be a less needed one and useful in a very few cases (for Android apps anyway), asking heavy verification for its sensitive use is more understandable (even if I think the security audits are way too much). You could also say this forms anticompetitive behavior by only enabling your product (Google Docs in this case) to use the APIs required for Google Drive by stomping the little players with security audits. Also those checks are for many different scopes (just go to the Google Cloud Console and list the Google Workspace APIs with kinda relevant scopes). Finally, when they talked about limiting the app to 100 users they meant unverifying the Google Cloud project which limits the OAuth to 100 users (most of the time those are test users).
TL;DR: This is kinda stupid from Google but there are workarounds which are the new recommended ways to do and some of the points Theo made were just regular Play Store policies.
And as a bonus don't ask them to fight more against piracy because they just enabled developers to prevent sideloading of app IDs if they are present in the Play Store (see all the Play Store Integrity stuff)
edits: typo/clarifications
Thanks for your clarification. As a dev adapting to changes is tiring but as a user these uniform checks and updates are welcome, maybe some the pickforks would drop helpful if reasons why were concise, reasonable and human readable
And shenanigans like that always confirm my decision avoiding the ongoing enshittification of the world by moving my stuff. From windows to linux (hello, lovely nixos), from onedrive and googledrive to synology drive (hosted on my own local synology), from gmail/outlook to my self-hosted mailcow. The list is growing, and every new thing either needs to be open-source or self-hosted. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
self-hosted Mail is a pain! good luck not finishing up in a spam filter
Just take a smaller mail provider like Proton or Fastmail
@@redstone0234 You're right, and I wouldn't recommend that for everyone. Luckily I know most of the pitfalls after 20 years in tech. And if I end up on a blacklist... c'est la vie.
The killer is that there's practically no recourse. There's no human to reason with, unless you have "friends of friends of friends" to go to. And even that doesn't work.
build for web, support non-google browsers
Enshitification incoming.
I abandoned hobby apps because of this. The hoops were not worth jumping through anymore.
All these non-free platforms are a massive pain to develop for. I've abandoned them so I can keep building things and enjoying new ideas.
Bro, just distribute the apk files yourself. Those devs want to release stuff on the store and get free marketing, this is not 2010 anymore.
@@Lucas_Simoni oh they are still on github and I have obtainium setup to pull updates for family members that I have set to use the apps so that they stay up to date.
@@Lucas_Simoni Self distributed apks have barely any more permissions than PWAs. At that point it really makes more sense to abandon having a native app at all.
@@HansZimmer-b1r Actually, self distributed APKs don't have limitations once they're signed ;)
Plus, what limitation are you talking about?
In fairness, the DUNS/passport verification was mandatory for all Google Play accounts registered as a business, and everybody had an appointment during the current year. It also involved filling out tax status forms for a number of countries. We went through the same thing with Apple. It seems driven by EU laws. The US has a deadline for similar "beneficial owner" laws at end 2024. It's just a 2024 reality about fighting tax evasion, and not personal.
To be clear: FinCen's BOI has nothing to do with tax evasion or money laundering. Huge companies are exempt. This is a small business kill list. Wait and see...
I ain't a registered business, and I only have a simple app for my school that displays articles retrieved from our APIs. No extra permissions, but internet access. Now I have to submit my document scans and hope it works before the Nov 8th deadline otherwise I lose my dev account I paid own money for. Nothing fair here chief
If I'm remembering it right: Redigit *couldn't* publish Terraria on Stadia because there were too many company things on his personal Gmail, it was maybe even the account they were going to publish from. I could be exaggerating in my memory though.
No, Terraria for Stadia was momentarily canceled because the creator’s Google account was banned for no apparent reason.
2:53 I hate Google Play with a passion. Every time you go to update an app, there are at least 15 new forms you have to fill out before you can upload your APK/App Bundle. It's stupid.
Shit like this is why I have been using Bing out of spite. I hate what Google has become and hope they have plenty of more lawsuits coming their way.
I wish Apple's app store policies were consistent.
at least that mean i dont have to iphone :) cause iphone = crapple
I understand google not wanting to give apps full write perms over someone's entire google drive. However, the better option would be allow users to designate a folder for apps to access, and not allow that folder to be the top level one (aka full access). That way it's down to the user to decide what folder an app has access.
But that requires WAY more work on Google's side.
As a user, I thought that already existed. I have some apps that have used directories for storing their stuff, or backing up settings and I had assumed that they were restricted to their own directory. For example screencastify, which lets me record screencasts. It only saves to my Google Drive, they use it as their storage, in exchange for not charging a stupid amount per year. Maybe I granted full access without realising it.
That actually exists already.
You can ask for many different API Scope levels, including drive appfolder, and drive appdata
But they only allow you as a dev to access that apps specific folder.
If you want a user to pick a file to open/edit you should use drive file which opens a Google provided UI to pick a file and then sends it to the application.
The full drive api scope grants access to all files and folders on the google drive and is therefore restricted.
Though Google specifically lists productivity and note taking apps as apps that can apply for full drive scope access so why they had to be such a pain in these cases is beyond me.
I wonder if Google realize how their continuous reputation for making useful stuff go away drives anyone with a long term requirement away - not just now, but in the future too. It erodes trust. Including corporations with devs who have been bitten once too often. It is sad to see.
I enjoyed Google’s advert for Google Drive while on Google’s UA-cam platform while watching this video. That’s my daily irony amount achieved and I’ve not even had breakfast yet…
Google drive was always shitty, I hope apps stop using it and then we can have a little fight over the best features, but I know people aren't interested in pushing their data around to make their voice heard. So we are stuck with shitty half solutions.
Cuz it's free 15GB of storage
Maybe because everyone has a google drive, and the alternative is every app requiring you to have an account with a different cloud storage that you have never heard of? And how many are gonna even give API access?
Sounds like Google Drive needs an option for granular permissions... Starting with a private store per app.
I had “move away from Dropbox” on my todo list for a very long time because Condoleezza Rice was on the board of directors and I don’t think someone instrumental in authorizing the Patriot Act and that has no tech expertise should have any sway in a company that holds lots of user data. Thankfully she’s not currently on the board but still probably best to move towards something like Syncthing.
I wonder if this violates the EU's competition rules forcing large companies to maintain APIs for third party integrations.
The US will never regulate mega corps for their anti competitive practices
Absolutely the right approach by iA. Been loving their products for years. If the platform doesn't want you, move away from it. Especially if you are a product with a name.
This move makes some sense from Google's perspective. They aren't being dumb or incompetent. They get to say they've increased security while offloading all of the cost, verification, and liability of those claims onto app developers and the auditors they have to hire. They've also reduced their own maintenance, compliance, and security costs by reducing the number of apps hitting the drive API.
It is gross though and ultimately bad for consumers as it shrinks their options only to devs/partners who can pay the tolls, locking out most new entrants that don't have large VC backing.
These walled gardens are always going to make choices like this that protect themselves no matter the cost to others. Seems like they've already captured so much of modern computing that it's hard to see a way free of them. Users and devs should try as best they can though. Would be great if free sync tools like syncthing had integrations available for android app devs. Until then, maybe devs just need to write local and push users towards these sync tools that are further outside the garden.
PS: Dropbox wishes they could bully users and devs like Apple/Google. The only thing making them less evil is a lack of scale. Spend the dropbox fees on an offsite server running syncthing. Don't let someone else control your files.
"don't attribute top malice" ignores the 3rd option - you don't know what certain large companies stand to gain from locking out competition within the Google garden; this option is equally likely which would imply Google IS getting a lot of money and or getting lobbied behind the scenes. Venture scale money motives are not immediately clear so don't ignore them outright.
Similar to the "Manifest V3" forced switch -- which coincidentally breaks most ad blockers for UA-cam.
I'm a solo dev building an Android app with an accessibility requirement, I haven't even gotten to the approval stage yet... this sort of shit is scary af for me. I've been trying to build Google Sign in for the app + a Chrome extension I'm building alongside it and even that has been rough with Google's policies. I'm not sure if I should keep trying here
It was always bad with the api verification process, some of things they require you to submit are things that don't even apply to your app sometimes and it can get stuck in limbo for a long time
Very hard to feel sorry for a team charging $99 for a Markdown editor, with no guaranteed updates and no student discount.
They literally say on their site: "Minor updates are free, while major updates may incur costs. The timeline for updates is uncertain. You might get lucky-or not."
What did I just read?
Wtf google, if I want to give an app permission thats my business not yours
That's the kind of stuff that made me stop developing Android apps. Google deprecated Google Drive apps and forced everyone to use their api, unless you're a huge company. It also rewrites it's own android sdks all the time for no good reason, and then forces you to update to the latest version. You have to learn a completely different library on their horrible docs site to do the same thing you were doing before. Ain't nobody got time for that. These required documents are also a pain in the ass, they keep requiring more and more stuff almost every month. It's just ridiculous.
I am actually deciding if I should quit as well, after watching this vid
@@laujimmy9282 Yeah, I know it sucks, but quitting depends on what you want for you career. There will always be demand for Android devs, so you would be in a safe spot I assume. If you quit, you would have to choose another tech stack, like web front end, iOS dev, backend, etc. If I were you, would do what I like the most but that also pays my bills
This is the typical stuff monopolies do to get more of the pie.
I really like Proton Drive, all client apps are open-source. Sadly, they don't have first-party API yet
I'm really getting sick of Google, acting like monolithic gods and they don't know what the fuck they're doing ever.
They're doing this to prevent startups from launching competing cross-platform storage and search products like Glean, DropBox Dash etc. Makes sense to be honest.
I’m old enough to remember when Theo was reading us Google wasn’t changing Chrome to manifest v3 to get rid of ad blockers. (That was a few days ago for the uninitiated).
Since theo makes further comments about Google not caring about “chump change”. I promise they do. Companies are constantly looking to cut waste and offload their own burdens. They don’t always do this in the most logical or efficient ways, but once a clear and obvious way to make money/cut losses comes along (like killing adblockers or making devs responsible for their own security scans) they will start doing it.
This is why we need laws to protect side-loading and 3rd party app stores. At least they could host their own APK, or offer users cloud storage for a subscription instead of google drive. Heck, maybe even let pirates use a rate-limited free tier and convert them into paying users if they want to use it for work.
08:15 malicious writing is worse than malicious reading if you use google drive to share executables (overwriting executable with malware)
I lost my Android Developer account because my business legal name changed and the form to inform that change at google does not work. After 6 months trying to contact from many other ways I simply lost everything.
Yeah, not only Android. We are going through this with a Workspace app every now and then.
As a normal user, I've found Google Drive has been getting worse and worse. Can't sort files by size anymore, can't copy files to my drive anymore (only shortcuts) removed integration with Google Photos, unnacurate metadata on Takeout, and zero options to help with managing storage as well as a laggy website.
The last story about losing EVERYTHING from your Google account with no reason stated terrifies me.
yeah, ive heard about a couple such stories before. I pretty much expect drive to be gone at any moment, so use redundant storage, but I dont know what to do about dozens and dozens of other apps and servises and accounts that are authorized through google/gmail.
Ive also heard that if they ban your account, they may use tracking technologies to find any of your alternate accounts and ban them too. All of that is automated, ofcourse, they literally dont have real humans for revewing any of that, just like with youtube, and havent had for a decade. Any appeal just goes to a slightly more sophisticated bot.
I kind of understand where Google are coming from, from a security perspective. You don't want people giving access to their Google Drive account to an application that turns out to be compromised or contain malicious code that exfiltrates all their private data. But they have to make the process less onerous for smaller developers, it sounds like such a pain to deal with.
Happy Synology customer here. Most of my video consumption is done with grayjay. One of my phone doesn't even run google play services. The other must because of some banking apps.
I was wondering whe the title wasnt "developers hates google drive now". But its pretty clear now :)
the irony of the docker image not working omg
As someone who works in embedded systems, sending me a docker is already annoying. If it also didn't work, I would start breaking stuff.
This is a vertical integration issue. Access to google drive should have nothing to do with permissions in an app just because they're owned by the same company. Imagine if they restricted SMB or S3 access the same way (or maybe they do?)
We have a similar issue with account verification not working and are expecting our app to be taken offline due to their error. Not to mention the noexistant support.
I have a feeling that this is the start of something bigger then we can wrap our heads around at this point in time. Data has become even more precious and it seems that due to more regulations and pressure random applications can't simply get the keys to data kingdom that easily. Also lets not beat around the bush, Apple Application submission process is in the same state as Google, you just need to check the developer forums and very quickly find out all sorts of weird and random issues.
Can’t Google just give „folder” specific read/write permissions?….
You were ahead of me with the synology. I was 1 minute in the video and I was like. Time for some NAS
Didn't watch yet but I tried to get my MVP for my cold email app approved from Google, they recently told me that "my application is facilitating spam", so now NO cold email applications are going to get approved?! I have no idea, this gatekeeping by billion dollar industries is getting ridiculous. Had no idea it would be such a problem for such a basic thing.
I've been paying google drive for 2tb monthly. i guess its the time to merge off
They meant "open" as in not a walled garden and/or not restricted to their hardware. It can be a minefield developing for Windows if you need to do anything really low level because you never know what kind of hardware or 3rd-party software and drivers you might be dealing with. Still, for most desktop and store apps these days, you rarely have to worry about it. Game devs probably run into issues more than anyone. Apple's big advantage over other operating systems is they only ever have to run on their own hardware and drivers.
I really dislike google drive APIs, they have been stopping me for months. I built a VR file viewer, and they won't allow it to browse a user's own files, just keep giving me the run around. But this is also iOS and Android, both versions are hurt.
Think i'm just going to drop the feature, dropbox still works.
It's funny how this is timed just in time with me buying my first NAS. Not that I trusted Google drive with too much to be fair...
"This is an *unintentional* power shrinkage to the most powerful people who can afford to do all those things"
It is definitely intentional, big corps HATE small and opensource projects
How is piracy a problem on the google store?
More developers should bring their apps to trusted third-party Android App Stores, along with said stores getting more recognition.
This is not about security. This is about legal liability. These processes are just for saving their asses in court when they eventually need it.
I’ve watched _at least_ three of your videos now, and I _still_ can’t get over your face being that of someone non-Australian. Every time I forget, and I click on one of your videos expecting “crikey mate, struth!”, and then you speak and I’m surprised all over again.
At first I thought "Yeah, this is Google trying to remove rivals of G Documents", specially with their changing terms, but after you showing that Panic has the same issues with Transmit, it seems someone added bureaucracy, and it's periodically updating it, just for showing their bosses/supervisors they're doing things to improve the Play Store.
Man, how I miss the early 2000s Google Inc. ...
Hearing Terraria be described as "that 2D Minecraft game" was so hilarious.
Why would someone be a VLC hater? Such a great product
The Google Drive API is the only way i can reliably back up my Google Takeout archives to my NAS. Cool.
As someone who’s dealt with Apple enforcing rules inconsistently, it’s not unique to Google
Pixel Experience isn't made by Google, it's a discontinued 3rd-party Android "distro"
He meant Google's ROM for Pixel phones, that's a lot more than what you can call base Android. It's not good for testing apps on as it might not work on other Android flavors. There is no longer a baseline android that can be tested against (except if you really want to install AOSP, but that is unusable for any developer developing against Google Play Services which you in most cases have to).
Here's what it feels like submitting to each app store;
Apple is like the grandma with short term memory who don't remember where she put her glasses and asks you, every time, where they are. When you tell her, she forgets again and keeps looking.
Google is like the bully that hides your belongings on purpose and gaslights you until you admit to something you didn't do. And make you write it on a 1x1cm piece of paper with a short, unsharpened pencil.
I see you didn't use an HB2 pencil
Crazy idea, have Google do a "Library" ( don't recall what they are called on Android) that dictates how you access Drive.
So it can warn users of access, and have them agree/disagree avoiding all this...nonsense.
You link your app to the library, and the library is the gate keeper and they can update their app to meet new security requirements and such.
This could work on any platform, though would require Google actually...do something, like make those libraries.
Apple's App Store policies might be consistent in the sense that they don't get changed often, but Apple is far from consistent in enforcing them. Equally as bad if not worse if you'd ask me. If stuff gets changed a lot, but you know that what is written is followed, you at least have something to follow.
I'm sorry, but with the consistency google does changes like this, it is just obvious, that it is intentionally trying to squeeze money for their partners to stay a monopoly. There is just no sugarcoating here. This issue has been going on for months! If the were just dumb, they would have changed something for the better, not worse. But we can only see changes to make things worse, while providing the monopoly with more benefits.
this is a textbook example of something called the Retroactively Amended Product Experience. (look at capital letters)
Want to talk about security and privacy. The heck, if im sending any company a digital copy of my government issued ID.
I totally understand why unrestricted drive access is scary to hand out, but these rules are ridiculous.
What's the point of annual scans in the first place? For a scan to have any meaning it has to be done for every single new version of the app, and that simply cannot be done manually. Either your company is too small to afford manual reviews, or the application is so big that it can't be manually reviewed, there is almost never an in-between.
The sensible approach would be to make users aware of the risk of running these apps before they approve the drive access, and the ability to lessen those warnings by going through the security audit process.
Only thing I disagreed with was arguing that the security scan not finding any issues meant their users got no benefit. It's like saying health insurance is bad because you didn't need to see a doctor this year. Otherwise I 100% agree, an action like this makes you wonder if they even talk to devs before big changes? I know Google has become bloated and full of a lot of people who are just doing stuff for the sake of job security but this is just a joke.
Google Drive hates creative writers too, welcome to the club of pain my developer friends.
Also google just made updates to make sharing google drive links easier while using their workplace. Sounds like they want to remove any potential for people to use anything other than their own products.
I remember using Coda back in the day. One of the best coding tools for mac around 2010
Hmm, it is interesting to me that just as Google is getting forced to open the app store and that they can't make deals with phone vendors that they are now pushing new security rules to core functionality that would only be no big deal to the companies they were making backroom deals with. And of course.. the push for Google AI tools.
I notice Theo posted 30 minutes ago, I go to bed. I wake up, Theo has posted 1 hour ago. Are you doing alright Theo?
That's why I only develop WebApps, it's the most free and decentralized environment we have so far, and we need to protect it while pushing web3 further.
Write access is less permissive than read in many systems, including iOS Photos
I always find it absolutely amazing how google can make one of the worst shitty developer experiences from all big companies I tried.
I have several apps I put out there for free that are not available anymore because I don't have time to jump through Google's hoops every few months.
"Trust and Transparency" is another issue I have with the play store. No one else seems to talk about how the Play Store wants toDox all the individual/hobby devs.
12:08
Pixel experience isn’t a version of android that runs on a Pixel phone. It was an opens-source community-driven ROM.
Also, pixel phones were never just stock android