If you are a small team [...] don't bother with Amazon Appstore.

<i>"In my opinion, the users should be educated about the very sophisticated permission system on Android instead. The user should learn to determine whether a permission should be required by an app"</i><p>That's just ridiculous.<p>[editing to expand...]<p>Software firewalls never took off on the windows platform because asking regular users about just one permission (should app X be able to contact the internet?) proved impractical.<p>Expecting end-users to be able to understand BROADCAST_STICKY ("Allows an application to broadcast sticky intents"), MANAGE_APP_TOKENS ("Allows an application to manage (create, destroy, Z-order) application tokens in the window manager"), and REORDER_TASKS ("Allows an application to change the Z-order of tasks") is pure fantasy.

I tried putting a free app of mine up on the Amazon store just to see how quick it would move compared to Android Market. It sat in the approval queue for 2-3 weeks, long enough that when I got an email from them about it, I totally forgot I had even submitted it.<p>Their response was that I had improperly signed my binary; I misread their instructions and uploaded the same APK I sign for the Market. This is stuff Apple catches immediately upon upload so you don't wait a week to find this out.<p>I then had to wait 2 more weeks for the re-signed version to get approved. That's no fun.

I, as a user, think the slow review process is a good thing. He complains about it being rejected for a single letter, but that letter was a lack of security for ME, the user. That's very important to me, but apparently not to them.<p>I'll agree the rest of the failings were stupid on Amazon's part, though.<p>However, I doubt I'd have pulled the app. I'd have found ways around the problems, like creating a US account, using a proxy, or having a fan post a review giving the email of the developer and asking upset people to contact them.<p>And he never did answer why it doesn't work in airplane mode if it isn't connecting to a server.

Ok I am going to attack these points one at a time:<p>- 2 week approval process --&#62; this works in the Apple app store model, sure its slower but they just need to work on it. I would hope they also do things like battery life test given that recently it has come to light that most android apps murder battery life for no good reason.<p>- No consumer contact --&#62; amazon needs to fix this asap. It is critical for vendors to be able to contact their clients.<p>- No refund policy --&#62; is this even legal in the US? I think we just need to take it to court to find out :( It is quite refreshing to hear that app developers actively refund to make frustrated customers happy. However on that note, the main reason for this is because Apple can FORCE your app to be removed from your device if you get a refund, google/amazon cannot. therefore amazon is trying to prevent people from just downloading and then asking for a refund thus legally getting a free app. Not to mention the fact that rooted devices (htc is going to allow rooting without hacking bootloader now) can do things like give amazon/google the finger when it comes to asking the device to uninstall apps, even if its built-in.<p>- Cannot quickly deploy fix in 30 minutes --&#62; this is true for the Apple store too. I think going with the release cycle, this can be either a good or bad thing. Ensures you test your fixes and try releasing asap. I think in many cases the approval process is justified because it prevents things like malware from being pushed as an update.<p>tl;dr<p>- I like Apple App Store approval process - Amazon needs to heavily focus on client &#60;-&#62; developer communication channels. Even if not email and in-app store. - Refund policy is possibly legitimate due to uninstall concerns.

I actually like the decision by Amazon to require secure communication. This is something that is very hard to verify as an end user and incredibly important in the days of Firesheep.

Long review times, the inability to reply to user reviews, getting ridiculous erroneous comments, and lack of manual refunds? Sounds like iOS/Mac App Stores.

(Warning: this really doesn't have much to do with the author's Appstore problems.)<p>This is more from a proficient user perspective than a developer's, but...<p>I absolutely loathe the Market. I'm pretty sure I have never had a positive experience with it.<p>The simplest thing is its packaging. The Amazon Appstore will run on anything - install the APK, and you're done. I've had a grand total of one app (Peggle) tell me that my device (CM7 Nook Color) was unsupported, and even then I could still manually install it from the My Apps list.<p>Compare that to the Market, which doesn't come in a nice little APK. Instead, if you're on an AOSP-based ROM, you have to install a separate gapps package through the freaking recovery menu. That is a huge pain in the ass. Then, there's the whole "unsupported app" crap. I don't care if you haven't tested your app specifically for my device, there's a fairly good chance it'll work perfectly fine. Having the Market restrict apps like that is quite irritating.<p>Then there's the installing. Somehow, even the simple act of installing an app doesn't work right. On multiple devices, running multiple ROMs (official and un), I have had the exact same problems: An app will, after pressing the install button, take forever to actually pop up in the notifications bar, and even then there's like a 20% chance the download will fail if you have more than one app download going at once. The worst thing the Appstore does when you're downloading more than one app is that the UI gets a tad laggy.<p>Also, Google's "unique" software license management. On both the iOS App Store and Amazon's, if I "purchase" a free app, it's mine forever. Period. Even if it goes to being a paid app. On the Market, if I purchase a free app and it goes paid, I basically get to keep the copy on my phone and that's all. If I go to another device or wipe my existing one, app goes bye-bye.<p>Google's awful management of the Market doesn't help, either. If you look outside the top fifty apps or so, it's all garbage- redundant soundboards, extremely poorly-coded games that wouldn't pass any sort of quality checks, that sort of thing. It's a little hard to look for good apps when there's so much complete crap.<p>Apologies for the rant... it's a bit late.

Just a point of clarification: the T-Mobile Comet is a Huawei device (a variant of the Ideos), not a Motorola device.

I downloaded this game from the Amazon AppStore when it was free, and am sad to learn I'll not be getting future update, but I totally understand why and support the dev here.<p>One thing that does shock me is that the dev was unaware that Amazon could change the price to whatever they fancy (99c minimum) as that was pretty widely explained and discussed when the Amazon AppStore launched.

My experience (trying to install Peggle) was being told, after lots of hoop jumping, that I live in the wrong country.<p>It would be nice to be told at the start. Now I'm so annoyed with the AppStore I removed it.

This sounds more like a clueless rant than anything else.<p>&#62; much like pretty much any website does not use HTTPS.<p>Apart from that just sounding line an awful sentence, that sentence is pretty much the same as saying "well bobby doesn't eat his vegetables, why do I have to!"<p>The author then claims his server would be burdened by the additional overhead of SSL. Funny, because I remember reading an article back when FireSheep was in the spotlight from Google stating that SSL only adds an additional 1-2% overhead tops. Over-exaggerate much?<p>&#62; It turned out Amazon fails to filter out devices that should not be supported according to the Manifest file.<p>Welcome to the world of fragmentation. Honestly, that is the biggest difficulty with coding for Android. I really don't think you can blame Amazon for this, however. Even the Apple App Store lets iPod Touch users download applications only designed for the iPhone (unless they changed it recently). But this is an issue you have to deal with on every platform. Apples had the big PPC/Intel issue with requiring 2 binaries, one for each processor type. It's up to you to make it as clear as possible to the user if their device is supported or not.<p>&#62;3. Where are my customers?<p>Put your email address in the description? How about in the app itself?<p>&#62;Since there are so many devices available, supporting them all is difficult.<p>That's like a car mechanic saying "There's so many types of engines, I don't think I can learn how to fix them all!" Programming isn't something your mom can do on her way home from a soccer game. It can take an enormous amount of time, dedication, and skill. Once again, the author is blaming Amazon because coding is "hard".<p>The author then goes off about a review that was left filled with inaccuracies. That's yet another problem you'll have to deal with in a service like the Android Marketplace or Amazon Appstore. If they let you cherry pick reviews, it would lead to developers burying negative reviews that reveal their application does something "evil". The more time you spend getting all upset about a comment a user left, the less time you're spending improving your game or application and the less I actually would want to spend money on it.<p>As for the price change, the author provides next to no information on this.<p>Don't get mad at Amazon because you found out what Fragmentation and trolling from commenters is.