
How can Google Play be so inept? - curiouslyme
The Google Play store lacks any ability to sort search results on mobile. It can&#x27;t download in parallel, and waits to start downloading the next app until the former is done installing.<p>I could go on. How can such a widely used service be designed like some sort of joke? Where is Google&#x27;s legendary obsession with speed?
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ggm
As a s/w maintenance experience, I completely agree. However, all of the
package managers on UNIX I use tend to have global lock issues: apt-get update
in parallel with apt-get install on Debian, or pkg install in parallel windows
on FreeBSD exposes this. (that said, the _fetch_ phase could be parallel and
should be)

There is a bit of a consistent story about google products: things a computer
scientist takes from granted like BOOLEAN LOGIC are just .. not there.

So you can't say in the google play store search (omnibox)

"SSH AND NOT origin:.cn" to try and get apps which do SSH but don't come from
china.

or "SFTP or SCP but not FTP" somehow. (ok. that one might fail for a number of
reasons)

I also think the marketplace of 'designed for phones' in a tablet world is a
bit odd: where is the button to show me apps designed for tablets?

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quickthrower2
Never been a problem for my workflow. Maybe it's not a problem for most users?

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nvr219
Wow that sounds horrible. And I thought iOS App Store is bad (which to be fair
it is)

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puzzle
Why would parallel downloads be a good thing? I can think of so many
drawbacks.

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curiouslyme
Many times, total throughput roses with the number of connections.

I can see the argument why one might not want it - total time to getting an
app to play with can be increased.

What I really can't understand is why they pause all download activiry while
installing an app. That's truly maddening.

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puzzle
The real reasons for both have probably more to do with flash writes being
slow and increasing the chances of running low on space. Probably more chances
for the CPU to go into thermal throttling, too. Not everyone has the latest
hardware.

Parallel downloads increase contention at all levels: CPU, Flash, FS, local
network, ISP, server. Serial downloads make the store a better citizen.

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superasn
My biggest pet peeve is to not to be able to filter the search results by "in
app purchases", "ad supported", etc. Being able to check or uncheck those
boxes will make it 100 times more useful.

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maxwin
Search is so bad on google play. For example , if you search wechat, you will
see list and list of unofficial wechat related apps,but not the official
wechat app.

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j4n4
I could not agree more, but Google has no incentive to make it better. Why
would they waste the time when you have practically no choice but to use what
is provided?

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nkkollaw
Well, it's not that hard—at least compared to iOS—to just go to the
developer's website and install an APK (which I often do).

There is some choice, maybe not enough?

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flukus
Then you lose the update mechanism because that's tied to the play store and
not the OS. One of the more subtle ways that google maintains hegemony over
android.

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owebmaster
Your android phone already comes with most if not all apps Google want you to
install.

But the UI is nice. I'm using it as "inspiration" for my new material design-
app.

