VLC: App Stores Were a Mistake

https://twitter.com/videolan/status/1771104206872555660

by bundie • 2 years ago

91 68 2 years ago

twitter.com

reaperman• 2 years ago

Would really love to know more details about their struggles on Android Play Store and Windows Store.

Edit:

Windows Store - https://twitter.com/videolan/status/1759688788232523788?ref_...

Android Play Store - https://twitter.com/videolan/status/1771102415279763909?ref_...

ryandrake3• 2 years ago

For those who don't want to follow even more Twitter links: It looks like for Windows Store, they are unable to contact a human at Microsoft for technical help, and for Android Play, the store itself is insisting on obtaining their private signing keys and that they drop support for older API versions.

KingMob• 2 years ago

An important note about their Windows store issue: they've been trying to get help for two years now.

orf2• 2 years ago

What specific technical things do they need help with? Being more clear than “we just need a human to talk to” is better.

emj2• 2 years ago

With Play App Signing, Google manages and protects your app's signing key for you and uses it to sign optimized, distribution APKs that are generated from your app bundles

There is no meaning of having a private signing key if is not private. Why does Google need me to upload a private key if they are then free to use it on their own?

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

orf2• 2 years ago

Sure there is. You’re increasing the scope of the key to include a third party, but… it’s one that controls the OS, distribution channels, publishing platform, SDK, the tools used to publish APKs, even the device drivers on your phone.

If they want to maliciously modify the VLC apk, there isn’t anything you can do to stop them.

ur-whale• 2 years ago

App store were a mistake

Like most thing on the internet that are designed to make the end user's life easier while boiling the frog behind the scenes, centralizing control and taking away end user freedom.

Story as old as the world, if you think about it: relinquishing control and freedom in exchange for comfort and ease of life.

The list is endless (iOS, Android, App stores, Windows, censored search engines, YT ...).

Just yesterday there was a HN story about gitlab taking down the source code for some game emulator.

Exact same premises, exact same outcome: you can either be free or be lazy. You can't be both.

lotsofpulp4• 2 years ago

Yes, my grandparents and parents, who barely had schooling and are not fluid in English are lazy because they have not spent their time learning the ins and outs of spotting malware.

They should have spent their time browsing the internet, reinstalling Windows over and over, and reading HN, hopefully learning the signals that can ensure they won’t have some program steal their login credentials to their bank accounts.

So lazy of them to do other things in life such as cooking, cleaning, raising a family, and building a business as immigrants in a foreign country.

idle_zealot3• 2 years ago

This isn't a free or safe choose one scenario. As a platform owner Apple could offer a vetting service for known-safe popular applications, make those easy to install, and create a clear scare-screen when enabling installation from other sources, as well as management profile settings for disabling unvetted or 3rd party app installation all together. Then the only education anyone needs is to not install unvetted apps.

As a bonus, they could make the app curation system extendable, so other groups could run vetting programs. By default your device would only have Apple as a trusted vetter, but as part of a management profile or something you could also trust apps vetter by some security research group, or Epic, or Valve, or whoever. That way security isn't all-or-nothing.

And of course, if anything slips through and your layman user OKs all the warnings and installs a malicious app, it's still operating in a sandbox, and can't do much more harm than clicking a shady link and ending up on a scam website can.

majkinetor2• 2 years ago

Actually, probably lazy :) I know grandparents who actually try to learn IT stuff.

Eisenstein3• 2 years ago

you can either be free or be lazy. You can't be both.

Absolutes and dichotomies make appealing phrasings, but rarely in life is anything that cut and dry.

ccppurcell• 2 years ago

I think it would be fair to say: there's (often) a trade off between freedom and laziness. From there it follows that, in such situations, you cannot be both maximally free and maximally lazy.

sixdimensional5• 2 years ago

Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure it all takes hard work/effort.

Which App Store would we say is the “open” one? I don’t know that one truly exists.. and I feel confident it would be hard work to make such a thing (but it might be worth it).

woadwarrior01• 2 years ago

Does anybody still use iOS 9? If someone hasn't updated their OS in 8 years, is it reasonable for them the expect app updates on it?

ryandrake3• 2 years ago

I have a device (an O.G. iPad) that is stuck on iOS 5.1.1. The hardware still works beautifully, as well as the day I bought it, but thanks to Apple, it's pretty much a brick now. 3P apps refuse to support it because they've all moved their minimum OS version beyond that. Perfectly working junk purely because of software choices.

MissTake4• 2 years ago

“Thanks to Apple”?

The original iPad was a 32 bit A8 single core CPU that topped out as 1Ghz and with 256MB Ram and used the ARMv7 instruction set.

How do you expect a modern day OS with requirements to deal with real world sensors, and user requirements that didn’t exist back then, to run against that?

The latest iPads have 2GB Ram, are 64 bit, run multiple cores and have embedded motion coprocessors and neural capabilities running a much later instruction set.

Let’s be reasonable here - that device is now about to be 14 years old.

And, if “the hardware works beautifully” how is it “pretty much a brick”?

iPads are not the same as laptops or desktops. Sure, you can still run some Linux distros on older 32 bit hardware, but everyone who does knows of the limitations of doing so and realize that they lack the horsepower of modern day computers and use them accordingly.

VagabundoP• 2 years ago

I'd love a minimal ios/linux variant to run software on old Apple devices. I have a bunch of devices that I could repurpose for PDF reading, light video or radio streaming etc.

The hardware is well built but the apple lockdown says I can't get alternate OSs on this thing. You can even go back to the original ios version - because of jailbreaking.

cykros• 2 years ago

If you wanted to do it on really old Apple devices, I had Linux running on an iPod photo back in 2005 or so. It ran Doom, and also worked as a Redbox (there were still a few payphones around back then).

But yes, it'd be nice for something not quite that old too.

LocalH• 2 years ago

Apple should be forced to fully open up TSS for a device when they move them into "vintage" or "obsolete" status

pquki4• 2 years ago

I know a professor who was still using iPhone 3GS just a few years ago. So there you go.

hexagonwin• 2 years ago

My iPad 3 with its high res retina display is still very usable for watching videos, but is stuck on iOS 9.3.6.

thiht• 2 years ago

On the other hand, VLC goes out of their way to give updates to users of old OS versions. Why won't Google and Microsoft let them do it?

According to VLC there are still millions of users of outdated Android TV and I agree with them: it's unreasonable to ask all these people to buy a new TV if it's still working. I get that manufacturers don't update the OS for more than n years (if at all). I get that some developers decide to not deliver updates for OS older than n versions. But wanting to deliver updates for these users should not be impossible.

Turing_Machine3• 2 years ago

To be fair, iOS 9 wasn't EOLed until July 2019 (only about 4.5 years ago).

Still, that's a... long time.

ForHackernews• 2 years ago

VLC is one of the most impressive pieces of software I've ever used. I still remember the time in school when an older kid showed me he could launch VLC from a usb stick, without "installing it" and play torrented movies on the machines in the computer lab, without admin rights or the ability to install codecs.

Runs everywhere, plays anything is not an understatement.

alecsm• 2 years ago

And don't forget all the money the founder refused to keep big corps out of it.

It's a unique piece of software.

HlessClaudesman• 2 years ago

That's why the butthurt big tech companies hate it; it blows their bloated crapware out of the water, for free!

sp332• 2 years ago

I didn't realize this until I saw it in a comment there, but if you download an app from the Windows Store, it will often run its own updater instead of updating from the Store. So even if you download an out of date version of VLC to begin with, it will at least prompt you to upgrade when you start it.

grishka• 2 years ago

Another thing why I hate app stores is that they have ratings and reviews. While a good idea in theory, in practice they're meaningless. But because the rating is an "important" metric, app developers do so much to inflate it. All those annoying, incessant popups to "rate your experience", that, if you give 5 starts, would plead you to also rate the app in the store. As an Android app developer, I also have complaints about this — people would sometimes leave negative reviews because of something your app is not related to. Like "I used this app and my account got hacked", on the official app for the service that hosts the account in question.

And another tangential issue is how search in Google Play is a ridiculous mess lately. It would show you WhatsApp and some other popular apps for literally any search query, while not finding the app you're actually looking for, even if you enter its exact name.

doruk101• 2 years ago

And another tangential issue is how search in Google Play is a ridiculous mess lately. It would show you WhatsApp and some other popular apps for literally any search query, while not finding the app you're actually looking for, even if you enter its exact name.

I think this applies to any Google product's search these days. As a company that started with a business in search, it is quite ironic.

donatj• 2 years ago

An app I wrote has a single written review complaining about how it can’t read data from another app. I have no way to read data from that app, that’s not a thing I can do.

viraptor• 2 years ago

All those annoying, incessant popups to "rate your experience",

To be fair this is also a behaviour the stores could regulate. (If they cared at all...)

PaulKeeble• 2 years ago

The combination of store and update service isn't a necessary approach and splitting the two is a lot more open and windows installer like anyway. Chocolatey does just the updating but I don't love how it works but it separates the concerns and allows hosting where ever you want.

sixdimensional5• 2 years ago

Marketplaces are either open or closed. For open marketplaces to thrive, they must be under the control ultimately of decentralized, federated authority. This means light governance based on interoperability standards, followed by independent, autonomous organizational units and individuals participating in open standard process frameworks.

That doesn’t mean closed marketplaces don’t work - they do, and well (to a point and certain scale) and are necessary, and there is an interplay between the two.

That said, open marketplaces and standards are for certain the superset of closed ones, this is where we get the interplay of public and private.

App stores as a model aren’t necessarily the problem, they are just a distribution model. The control and operation of app stores as they are currently controlled mainly as closed/private could be perceived as an obstacle. But, why not then pursue what an open App Store/marketplace might look like?

I believe the above is like physics, and some may label me a heretic for the strength of my belief in the above.

I truly believe that the sooner humanity advances to this understanding more broadly and we can more easily converse and cooperate in decentralized, federated, open marketplaces as an everyday pursuit, the better off all will be.

The Internet, and me being able to post this right now on the open forum of HN is proof of the value in fully understanding and being comfortable with the concepts.

sixdimensional5• 2 years ago

Seeing the downvote, let me add relevant context - VLC is one of the most awesome products I have ever seen that is open.

My feeling is that an equally great “open App Store” that is popular enough does not exist (and if it did, I suspect Apple for example would actively have prevented it from being an option on iOS). Probable Google too for Android? I am not as sure in the second one.. is there an open Android App Store/marketplace/catalog?

kyleee• 2 years ago

Yea, fdroid

thunderbong• 2 years ago

The text:

App Stores were a mistake. Currently, we cannot update VLC on Windows Store, and we cannot update VLC on Android Play Store, without reducing security or dropping a lot of users... For now, iOS App Store still allows us to ship for iOS9, but until when?

sixdimensional5• 2 years ago

So what should change?

thisislife2• 2 years ago

Developers shouldn't support App Stores to begin with. Have you heard of Minix, Windows Mobile and Sailfish OS - without developers a platform dies / cannot survive.

politelemon• 2 years ago

Fdroid handles this pretty well. They don't impose the restrictions that the larger tech firms do, you can build for very very old devices.

wkat4242• 2 years ago

At least on Android you can simply use another store or sideload the app itself directly. I love that about Android. I don't even have a Google account on my phone.

sys_64738• 2 years ago

It's about control and OS companies want to return to the old days where the ISV was not a thing unless blessed by them. Sony was a big proponent of this in recent years.

nojvek• 2 years ago

App stores were definitely a mistake. I see the arguments for we gotta vet and ensure security, but it’s been so political and poorly done that Apple and Google play king makers and rent-collecting empires.

Turing_Machine3• 2 years ago

iOS...9?

I actually went to the link to check if this was a mistake.

VLC: App Stores Were a Mistake

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