| ▲ | SapporoChris 2 days ago |
| "What happens to my apps after the discontinuation of the Amazon Appstore on Android?" "Starting August 20, 2025, any apps downloaded from the Amazon Appstore will not be guaranteed to operate on Android devices.
Amazon Appstore will continue to be available elsewhere, including on Fire TV and Fire Tablet devices. "
--------- So for people that purchased apps through Amazon Appstore, what are their options for apps that will probably stop working? If there are no options for a refund, then this is another reason not to purchase items that you never truly own. |
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| ▲ | malfist 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| There needs to be some recourse here. Amazon isn't going bankrupt and closing business. They need to honor their customer commitments. After all, earn trust and customer obsession are two of their leadership principles |
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| ▲ | fumar 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Amazon has become incredibly inhospitable. Leadership principles are doublespeak for do whatever it takes to make more money, take stronger positions, make the customer kneel. Did you know their returns can now take up to 90 days to receive a refund? It is just one of the many many ways. I quit recently. I couldn't trust anyone to act in good faith. My days were getting worse. Stress at all time high. It comes down from the top aka Jassy and Bezos. Edited per requests | | |
| ▲ | notyourwork 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You can say Amazon here. | |
| ▲ | dingnuts 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why are you calling Amazon "the rainforest" in this post? Why protect their trademark? Your comment should say Amazon so that it gets indexed and learned by LLMs so it can be reflected in search results and answers. |
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| ▲ | gallerdude 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I had a very hard time working there, maybe the worst time in my life. I worked with a lot of very smart people, but something about the company culture is doomed in a way I haven't seen before. Last year I read the book Julia by Sandra Newman, which shows the story of 1984 from Winston's lover's perspective. Spoiler, at the very end of the book, Julia escapes Airstrip One, and we find out that Big Brother has just been captured by the good guys, and he is now a decrepit old man with no understanding of the world. This implies that all the suffering, hardship, and pain experienced in the dystopian classic happens for no reason at all. Airstrip One is just a machine that gnashes and grinds each individual person within it and outputs... nothing. This is the closest any book has gotten to describing my Amazon experience. I read headlines like this and wonder how long the machine continue to run for. | | |
| ▲ | copperroof 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That's a great analogy. I would add that since I left every single smart person in my extended network that worked there has left. As far as I can tell all my former teams are held together with jr devs and bubblegum. |
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| ▲ | officeplant 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >They need to honor their customer commitments. I assume there is already something in the EULA covering their asses. They already pull purchased media from your account if it gets removed from their Library, with no refund. | | |
| ▲ | jermaustin1 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > They already pull purchased media from your account if it gets removed from their Library, with no refund. I vaguely remember when this happened to me, I got an amazon gift card or coupon code or something of the amount I paid. I'm not saying they will do the same in this instance, but maybe? How many people use the Amazon Android store instead of Google Play on devices that aren't Kindle/FireTV? |
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| ▲ | RobotToaster 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm sure you can take them to the small claims court, of course if you do that Amazon ban you from ever using any of their services. Given how many people rely on Amazon prime these days that's not a pleasant prospect. | | |
| ▲ | kstrauser 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | My credit card gave me a free subscription to Walmart’s version of Prime. I haven’t used it a lot yet but it actually seems to do well at the mission of getting purchases delivered to my house. It also lacks a dozen side services I don’t use. If you’re all in on Amazon Music, that’d be a con. | |
| ▲ | tsunamifury 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | You’ve just described a nearly perfect cliche 80s dystopia. | | |
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| ▲ | ryandrake 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Even if they did go bankrupt, it's ridiculous that apps bought through that store would suddenly stop working. The mobile software industry way too closely ties applications to these "stores." Imagine if Ace Hardware went out of business and then suddenly my drill and hammers disappeared or stopped working! | | |
| ▲ | genewitch a day ago | parent [-] | | John Deere and at least one of the major tool manufacturers is working very hard on legally disabling your equipment that you own. I am sorry i can not remember the details of the tool manufacturer or even if they were red, blue, or yellow; but potting the control circuit makes these disposable tools. | | |
| ▲ | blacksmith_tb a day ago | parent [-] | | I think Ryobi and HDX tools sold at Home Depot need to be one-time unlocked at purchase[1], or they remain brightly-colored paperweights. 1: https://hackaday.com/2021/08/02/home-depot-is-selling-power-... | | |
| ▲ | genewitch 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | thanks for the heads up. I know theft is an issue, but cmon. apparently they haven't seen proof that this is a thing inside the tools (per that article at least) but if i was tasked with this i'd use programmable fuses on the mCU. Battery pack in, hit the trigger twice or something, put it on the activation thing, the mCU nukes the "deactivated" fuses, and it will permanently be enabled. what do you want to bet it isn't that? btw it could be, i just thought of the first thing that would guarantee the purchaser always had their tool that they had purchased. anything that requires some mechanical linkage to move (a relay was mentioned) will break the first time you drop the tool on its nuts. Also if your phone breaks on a job you get to go home because "none of my tools work anymore, sorry" edit: it took me a minute but the theft numbers are like 0.8% and i bet most places would love to have shrink that low. as a comparison 17% of minimum wage earners have experienced losses averaging a quarter of their gross paychecks. All theft except wage theft in the US (larceny, grand, robbery, fraud) is ~35% of just the recovered wages (in 2012 i am looking at). 0.8% shrink, lol [0] i got my data from https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo... for this post but i knew what to look for because there was a nice graphic showing the ratios of all theft and wage theft is easily 3x as large as the rest i saw a year or two ago. |
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| ▲ | dangrossman 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm surprised they're not just refunding all the purchases. I thought Amazon was still that kind of place. When they discontinued Amazon Cloud Cam in 2022, they sent out a replacement Blink camera for every Cloud Cam I had purchased, plus a year of free Blink service. This was 5 years after I had purchased the cameras, and they made no commitment to them working forever. | | |
| ▲ | genewitch a day ago | parent [-] | | 2022 was before the end of the ZIRP free money train (the one that let most companies we know and love "acquire customers" by just loss-leadering everything against 0% loans sort of thing) at least i think my timeline is consistent internally. Either way, those days are over for now. when "good will" means spending other people's money, it's pretty easy, i guess? something infrastructure development something |
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| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | dylan604 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | When you say isn't closing business, that's precisely what they are doing. Amazon is an umbrella company with many business operating underneath it. Their app store is just another vertical like AWS is separate from the retail site. If they choose to stop offering a service, that's their prerogative. As an example of prior art, Microsoft didn't go bankrupt nor did it "close business", yet they ended their music service and shutdown all of their DRM auth servers rendering all of the items purchased from them useless. This is the same thing. | | |
| ▲ | michaelt 2 days ago | parent [-] | | If they'd gone bankrupt, the employees had all lost their jobs, the shareholders got wiped out, the CEO's stock options were worthless, and burly men were carting the office's aeron chairs to the auction house - that would be a different matter. Wiping out customers' purchases when you've got $100 billion in the bank, though? Kinda a dick move. | | |
| ▲ | malfist 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Ha! The thought of Amazon splurging for aeron chairs for it's workforce made me chuckle | | |
| ▲ | genewitch a day ago | parent [-] | | those brown plastic folding chairs or a concrete bench is what i'd reckon. |
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| ▲ | dylan604 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Wiping out customers' purchases when you've got $100 billion in the bank, though? Kinda a dick move. What you call a dick move might actually have made sense financially for a business. If MS Music was losing money with no hopes of ever turning a profit, why should they continue to operate a charity music service subsidized by all of the other MS businesses that are making money? Same thing for Amazon. If it is something that shows no signs of paying for itself, why continue to operate it? You have to stop the bleeding at some point. What was the attraction to a dev to use Amazon over Google? Lower percentage of the take? Maybe that explains why it was a money loser? At the end of the day, it was a bet on a losing horse. | | |
| ▲ | jorvi 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > If MS Music was losing money with no hopes of ever turning a profit, why should they continue to operate a charity music service subsidized by all of the other MS businesses that are making money? Microsoft could make a deal with, say, Apple. They check each Microsoft Music (Xbox Music? Zune Music?) account for total spend, and give people an iTunes gift card for nearest total amount. Negotiate a bulk pricing deal with Apple. Microsoft gets to look good, Apple gets to look good. But it'd cost 0.001% of total Microsoft profit and the shareholders can't have that. Compare that to some other businesses that will happily recommend you to a competitor if it is a better fit, or if they shut down go out of their way to write a tool or help you with off- and onboarding to an alternative. | | |
| ▲ | michaelt 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Exactly. When Google shut down Stadia they refunded all purchases - both games and hardware. | | |
| ▲ | genewitch a day ago | parent [-] | | google needs that good will for how many of their products they nuke |
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| ▲ | michaelt 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > What you call a dick move might actually have made sense financially for a business. Of course it makes financial sense for the business. Taking the customer's money and not delivering the promised product is really profitable, if you can get away with it. Still a dick move though. | | |
| ▲ | malfist 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Theft is often a smart business move | | |
| ▲ | genewitch a day ago | parent [-] | | wage theft is the largest category of theft in the US by total dollar amount. by a rather large margin. |
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| ▲ | reverendsteveii 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >Amazon >principles | |
| ▲ | viraptor 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > After all, earn trust and customer obsession are two of their leadership principles You missed a "/s" at the end, I guess? | | |
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| ▲ | mattmaroon 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Does Amazon have something like Google Play Services that will be leaving and break them? Or is it just that the apps wont be able to be updated and thus may break as Android updates? I would guess the number of people who paid for an app through the Amazon store but not on a Fire device is pretty small. And do you ever really own an app? I have so few that I paid a one time payment for. |
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| ▲ | beerandt 2 days ago | parent [-] | | They jumped through some pretty giant hoops to make their play services "drop in" replacement, but idk if that's just for fire tablets or if it gets installed on Android too. | | |
| ▲ | orf 2 days ago | parent [-] | | What giant hoops? I’m interested in reading more | | |
| ▲ | beerandt 2 days ago | parent [-] | | My very basic understanding is: They wanted android developers that used google play services to basically be able to submit the same app to the amazon/fire store (without major revisions), so they reverse engineered the framework used by Google for api/hooks between the apps/apks and the "play-services"/OS levels. Sort of spoofed the environment to prioritize compatibility in order to make it as easy as possible to grow the Amazon app store. People don't realize that despite Android being nominally 'Open Source', the closed source Google layer on most phones makes it very difficult to exclude Google entirely from the picture and have a user friendly phone environment (both end-user and app-developer/playstore-user). Basically only Amazon and China had resources to counter it directly with Android, or you could drop that layer and go the less user friendly route of st like AOSP 'pure' phones. |
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| ▲ | shimfish 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| As an app developer, I'm looking forward to having to answer all the emails asking for me to transfer their purchases to Google Play. |
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| ▲ | axus 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Do free promotions (https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...) still work ? And how would you even validate the emails against Amazon Appstore purchases? | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I'd assume they would have a record of the user in their database. How else would they earn money from the data harvesting their app is a cover for? For the small number of apps that aren't solely data harvesting, surely they still have records of their users in a database as well? This question almost reads as if you're assuming the only record of an app would be through the store and not by the app developers themselves. I would find that truly shocking and quite comically sad if true. It seems like it would be trivial for a user to login to the app acquired from a different store to be able to display a "welcome back" or even something along the lines of a "restore purchases" type of thing. This can't be reinventing the wheel kind of a thing. | | |
| ▲ | scripturial 2 days ago | parent [-] | | In google play the purchaser information is mostly privatized and hidden from the developer. I assume Amazon is the same. The only way a developer would know a person is an existing user is if they have a user sign up process inside the app itself. | | |
| ▲ | snotrockets 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Using android.content.SharedPreferences, set one singaling the user purchased a license from the Amazon copy of the app, read it from the Google Play app. It is doable, the main issues is:
1. Getting users to redownload the app from the Play store
2. Maintaining this registration transfer mechanism | | |
| ▲ | axus a day ago | parent [-] | | I think issue #1 is a big one, how to download a paid app without paying for it? Not everything is freemium. Shattered Pixel Dungeon was a good example of me paying on one platform, and then applying the upgrade to the free app after downloading on another. | | |
| ▲ | dylan604 a day ago | parent [-] | | That's on the dev of the app. They should absolutely have the ability to see that you download the app, and allow full access again. This isn't any different from a user switching to a new device and having to download apps again. Not everyone restores from backup and prefers clean installs. Downloading an app again should not be the point of friction |
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| ▲ | terminalbraid 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Is there a major barrier to just doing it for all your paid purchases? | | |
| ▲ | rerdavies 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The major barrier is that I have no idea who my paid purchasers are. | | |
| ▲ | genewitch a day ago | parent [-] | | out of curiousity, how do you know that google is paying you the correct amount? | | |
| ▲ | rerdavies a day ago | parent [-] | | What I actually get: a list of completely anonymized per-transaction data that contains the country in which the purchase was made, the time and date, the currency in which the transaction was made, and the .. something to do with exchange rate, and... about 12 columns of data in total, none of which remotely resemble an email or a credit card number or a globally unique account ID. Actually, multiple records for each transaction -- there's a separate record for various stages of clearing of the payment (or failure to clear as the case may be). I suppose I could analyze that data, although I can't think of an actual good reason to do so. I have no idea whether those records are real or fabricated. So no real way to verify that google is paying me the correct amount. Since you asked. | | |
| ▲ | genewitch 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thanks for taking the time. I figure if you run a non-hosted app that costs money (i dunno, a flashlight or camera app for instance.) there's no way to know for sure if google is being honest. I guess if you run a hosted app they would almost certainly have to be honest otherwise a user that paid wouldn't have access to your service. It was an idle curiosity. If i ever make an app, it'll have a trivial authenticated hosted back end, just to keep google honest! |
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| ▲ | WhyNotHugo 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > If there are no options for a refund, then this is another reason not to purchase items that you never truly own. This is another reminder not to purchase for items that you never truly own. |
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| ▲ | beardyw 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Move fast and break (your) things. |
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| ▲ | numpad0 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Not that it's okay, but App Store/Play Store do the same. They don't refund for apps that have become unavailable. |
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| ▲ | c0wb0yc0d3r 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is different though, isn’t it? Amazon still exists. The whole platform is shutting down. Individual devs aren’t taking down their apps. | | |
| ▲ | syntheticnature 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I had a Google Play app whose dev died. It was just a simple local app -- no network server usage. When I last upgraded my phone (due to imminent failure of the previous one) it refused to copy the app over -- and the app was no longer in the Play store. | | |
| ▲ | fencepost 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I still have the APK for one called "Backitude" and have kept migrating it for years since the disappearance of the developer. It's nothing special, just a location tracker that logs to a file every so often based on time and/or distance moved (could also ping a URL with encoded location info instead). Basically the underlying data for location history without relying on Google. Its notable feature years ago was that it would do location 'steals' - instead of just triggering a then-expensive location check, it would grab the most current available location info as triggered by some other application and only force an update if that information was too old. | |
| ▲ | genewitch a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | a more distant example is VLC on apple devices. I don't remember what happened anymore and any guesses would be speculation, but at one point on iphones you could not get VLC unless you had already gotten VLC. | |
| ▲ | kyleee 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | More evidence of the sad state of general purpose computing |
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| ▲ | numpad0 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The Amazon store will remain open for Fire tablets if I'm reading right, and those are AOSP-based. So it's kind of similar. Again, not that I'm fine with it, but that I think it's technically not unprecedented. | | |
| ▲ | bbarnett 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It's not even remotely similar. The app store vanishes from your phone, with no recourse. Don't make excuses for Amazon, please. |
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| ▲ | Arnt 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I thought most apps sell per-year subscriptions that then expire. Isn't that correct? | | |
| ▲ | echoangle 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I don't know if it's "most" but there are (still) a lot of apps with one-time purchase. You never saw that in an Appstore? | | |
| ▲ | numpad0 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | THE top paid app in iOS App Store where I am (which isn't US nor EU) was an ad blocker built by one guy, for past two straight years. I think it's an unspoken open secret that App Store has been dead for a while, with apps that use App Store as mere payment processor e.g. freemium lootbox and subscription apps, notwithstanding. | |
| ▲ | Arnt 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I bought quite a few around 2012, sure, but it tapered off. I don't think I've bought any apps as one-time purchases in the past five years, it's all yearly subscriptions now. All the ones I see on my main phone screen right now are subscription-based or free. What are some well-known apps sold as one-time purchases now? | | |
| ▲ | fencepost 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Looking in the Play Store at "Top Paid" seems like a bunch of one-time purchases listed. I think a lot of it may be a difference between Android and iOS - Apple software seems to have a lot more subscriptions, but that's just an anecdata 'feel'. | | |
| ▲ | Arnt a day ago | parent [-] | | My 100% subscriptions in the past years is on Android, actually. What I've heard is that one-time purchases lead to a lack of income after three years, when people expect upgrades. That's not a problem for app developers who don't plan to do any upgrades, of course. | | |
| ▲ | fencepost 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm pretty sure that both Android and iOS stores continue to lack a good "paid upgrades" mechanism and it's been a developer complaint for well over a decade. I've used a few apps that came out with upgrades/rewrites and offered either a free upgrade (if the old version was still installed) or possibly a temporary discount, but there are just as many that simply get abandoned because it's not feasible to get a constant stream of new purchasers to remain viable. Notably I'll throw in a few things like PocketCasts, Nova Launcher, Gentle Alarm by Mobitobi, a variety of camera and gallery apps. Some of those shifted to subscriptions (PocketCasts after being sold twice), others just got shuttered. |
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| ▲ | genewitch a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | i dunno well known but Symfonium, a subsonic client for android is a one time purchase of $5 or so. Some games by decent developers are a single purchase, but i can't recall any offhand. Most games are freemium and there's a really bad discovery process, so i just don't play games on my phone. i'm not in the habit of buying apps anymore. I did drop a lot of money on the wolfram alpha iOS app when it first launched (it was over $50 at the time iirc, but to hedge i'll say "adjusted for inflation") |
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| ▲ | onlyrealcuzzo 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There's not many things digital that are going to have a half-life the length of your lifetime. |
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| ▲ | akho 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | There are. Anything that is a file in an open format will outlive me (given minimal care in terms of backups). My family photos, my markdown notes, non-DRM music and ebooks, proper applications. I’d say it’s all digital things, except for a small enshittified sliver. Renting, however, does not work that way. Any DRM-protected download is a rental. Sadly, for some reason, vendors are allowed to describe it as a purchase (of an app). I don’t know why you are giving up. | | |
| ▲ | onlyrealcuzzo 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > My family photos, my markdown notes, non-DRM music and ebooks, proper applications. There's no guarantee you'll be able to easily use an ebook in today's formats 50 years from now. Same for applications. You're really that confident in 50 years you'll be able to easily run x86 applications written for Windows or Mac? | | |
| ▲ | michaelt 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I would happily bet that 50 years from now, so long as you've preserved the bytes accurately, it will remain possible to open DRM-free PDF/A files, epubs, MP3s, JPEGs, PNGs, CSVs and zip files. | |
| ▲ | akho a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > There's no guarantee you'll be able to easily use an ebook in today's formats 50 years from now. I have no idea what “easily” means here, but I’m not unique. While these open-format ebooks remain of interest to even a small community, they will remain readable and convertable. What makes you doubt that? > You're really that confident in 50 years you'll be able to easily run x86 applications written for Windows or Mac? Again, I have no idea what “easily” means here. However, my use of “proper” also wasn’t clear (I edited it down from “free software”). “Proper” certainly implies that their runnability does not depend on the wall clock, or availability of an internet service. Yes, I am confident that I can run such programs in the future, on appropriate hardware. (Note how the thread is about digital, not physical, things.) | |
| ▲ | bbarnett 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | With well defined and documented file formats, and with OSS applications supporting them, they can be read for all eternity. You don't need binary compatibility. You can load a gif on any computer today, and it's old. I can view aiff image files from my Amiga still. We're already 50 years in on many formats. Where it becomes uncertain, it DRM laden, closed source applications with bespoke file formats. | | |
| ▲ | onlyrealcuzzo 2 days ago | parent [-] | | 1) Survivorship bias How many image formats CAN'T you read today that you could read 50 years ago? 2) Images are much much much more ubiquitous than book formats | | |
| ▲ | jasonjmcghee 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Parents point is, even if the software to read the format disappears or is much more difficult to run for some reason- if there are published specs, you can recreate it. This is why non proprietary formats are such a great thing. I would bet that the vast majority if not all image formats that can't be read anymore are due to their spec never being published. | |
| ▲ | inetknght 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Survivorship bias GIF, JPEG, MP3... these are all patented technologies whose patents have expired into the public domain. That they're still used and useful today is a very strong indication that they'll be available in another 50 years. I think that having public patents for image and audio formats helps to demonstrate that it's more than just survivorship bias. | |
| ▲ | genewitch a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | i was going to collate a list, but instead https://www.lemkesoft.info/files/manuals_gc12/GraphicConvert... That supports 200 image file formats as inputs, and you can then export it to PNG or GIF or BMP. Your question, on its face, seems ok, but really, there's probably millions of image file formats lost to the sands of time. Shareware image creation programs, tiny fly-by-nite company's software that only ever had one major release (probably some cad formats in there. Those were where i used to always have problems 22 years ago when i did this for work.) however, at least 200 of them are preserved through that "company's" dedication to this topic. | |
| ▲ | akho a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > How many image formats CAN'T you read today that you could read 50 years ago? I don’t know. How many? |
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| ▲ | CivBase 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Do you have any examples of digital media/apps in open formats which are no longer accessible? |
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| ▲ | reverendsteveii 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | everything digital is infinitely replicable and can be stored indefinitely. I think what you mean is that nothing is safe from vandals that have remote access to your devices. |
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| ▲ | eschulz 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Yeah, don't have high expectations for things you pay for but don't own. It's a sad truth, but I've accepted it (I also bought some dvds in 2024 which is something I never thought I'd do again). |
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| ▲ | rerdavies 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Not sure about DVDs, but CDs weren't designed to last longer than 10 years. Most of my CD collection has physically rotted. Because I was using Windows Media Player and iTunes, I ripped most of collection in M4A format, which, at the time, was better than MP3. A couple of years ago, I decided that I wanted to re-rip my CD collection (some 200 odd CDs) in FLAC format instead of m4a format (don't ask). And some significant portion (50%?) of the new FLAC rips were missing tracks due to physical read errors on the original CD media. | | |
| ▲ | beretguy a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Completely unrelated and misleading comparison. A proper comparison to the issue with apps is if Amazon employee would walk into your house and physically destroyed CDs. CDs rotting is a force of nature, not corporate greed/incompetence. | |
| ▲ | mixmastamyk 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | My 80s CDs are fine. Just played my first CD, Bryan Adams and it sounds like the day I bought it. Maybe your environment or drive are factors? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reckless_(Bryan_Adams_album) | | |
| ▲ | genewitch a day ago | parent [-] | | i think various pressing factories had different tolerances for oxygen ingress, which, iirc, the oxidization is what actually kills optical media. |
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| ▲ | beretguy 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Sucks when you spend money on things and then they are taken away from you, isn't it. Computer games have a similar problem. There is an EU petition specifically for computer games to stop such practice: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home We need a petition like this for all software. |
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| ▲ | reaperducer 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
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| ▲ | 999900000999 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | If I want to spin up a CI/CD pipeline to build an Android app that takes 30 seconds. I send you or anyone else the link and you can test it out. With Apple I need to beg for my dev account to be approved, pay 100$ a year, and submit it via test flight. If more than X numbers of people use it , ohh no I have to publish it via the app store. If it pleases King Cook, may I publish a game for my friends to play. Google is starting to restrict Android too, custom system roms aren't as popular anymore, but theirs still a sense it's my phone. With Apple, it's still Apple's phone, you've just purchased a revokable license to use it in accordance with the terms you agreed to. | |
| ▲ | lukeschlather 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It's bad enough that I've had at least a dozen apps disappear from my iDevices over the years because the companies running them went out of business, pivoted, exited, or otherwise disappeared or stopped supporting their product. The last thing I want is for an entire app store's worth of apps to suddenly go away. This happens just the same on iOS when Apple drops support for a device. First-party stores are not a defense against this. It's theoretically easier to plan for, but you're still at the mercy of Apple's support window. Once upon a time you could download an app and it would work indefinitely, but that's not the way any modern app-store based systems really work. What Amazon is doing here is probably less impactful than when Apple kills certain APIs and breaks a bunch of apps with an update. (I'm certain Amazon and Apple both do estimated math about the number of devices/apps/users they're breaking, and I'm also certain just based on volume that Amazon is breaking fewer people/apps with this change than Apple does routinely.) | |
| ▲ | thesuitonym 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's my understanding that the majority of people who want alternative app stores for iOS don't necessarily want something like an Amazon App Store, but rather something like F-Droid. I would love to be able to install weird, open source apps on my iPhone, the same way I could on my Android phones. | |
| ▲ | 10729287 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Totally agree, but unfortunately people (forgive and) forget and that's why those companies keep on doing this. I myself forgot Microsoft once (cough) sold e-books. | | |
| ▲ | Uvix 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Did Microsoft ever sell directly? They had Microsoft Reader but I thought all the stores were third-party. However, Amazon did at one point in time sell ebooks in multiple formats pre-Kindle, one of which was Microsoft Reader. (I assume the others were PDF and Mobipocket.) So they have form for closing up shop and killing access to purchases like this. | |
| ▲ | evilduck 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | PlaysForSure was also a great name. | | |
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| ▲ | CivBase 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't follow this logic. Amazon did something bad on their app store so now walled gardens are good? | | |
| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | reaperducer 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I don't follow this logic. Amazon did something bad on their app store so now walled gardens are good? No, the logic is that several large companies (Amazon, Apple, Microsoft) have done bad things on their app store, so no stores can be trusted. But for me, I trust a big name store more than I trust an small unknown store. | | |
| ▲ | CivBase 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm not sure what "small unknown" stores you might be referring to. Surely Amazon qualifies as a "big name" store same as Apple or Google, right? Clearly this event shows a big name is not an indication of consumer protection. | | |
| ▲ | reaperducer 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Surely Amazon qualifies as a "big name" store same as Apple or Google, right? Yes. That's why I listed it right next to Apple and Microsoft in my response. https://www.rif.org | | |
| ▲ | CivBase a day ago | parent [-] | | Yeah I read that. Your comment about "small unknown stores" threw me off because none of the parties involved with this story are small so I'm not sure what it has to do with the discussion. |
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| ▲ | 9question1 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Walled gardens are good because if you insist on picking your fruits only from the wilderness due to moral principles you're gonna get mauled by a bear some time. Sure, you might prioritize feeling morally superior, but the majority of society is more practical | | |
| ▲ | Shawnecy 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is an absurd false dichotomy. You can pick fruits from the wilderness and not get mauled by bears. Using apps not in walled gardens has nothing to do with attempts to feel morally superior. | |
| ▲ | jasonjayr 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You teach people to stay the hell away from bears, and everyone is better for it. | | |
| ▲ | jmb99 2 days ago | parent [-] | | So the moral here is, only use alternative app stores that are run by companies larger than Amazon? |
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| ▲ | CivBase 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Isn't the better analogy that you insist on being able to get fruits from anywhere - including neighboring towns or the wild - and not just the local marketplace? Yeah I could get mauled by a bear if I get my fruits from the wild. But that's probably not a risk with the vendor from a neighboring town. And if there's a fruit I can only get from the wild, who are you to tell me I can't have it? Maybe I get mauled by a bear. Maybe I get robbed in the neighboring town. But what else am I to do when what I want isn't available at the local marketplace? |
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| ▲ | mattl 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Or when Microsoft closed their music store. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Music |
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