AppStore Makeover
December 6, 2009
Posted by: Butterman
Craigix has posted a mock-up AppStore on the forums and he needs your help giving it a fresh look.
I have a version of the appstore working, but it looks awful as I’m no good with graphics.
The site is very minimal right now, at only 11k per page on average (screen shots make that higher though).
Remember it is totally web based, this isn’t an application you run on the Pandora, you just browse to it with firefox.
Anyway, after seeing the great launch skins you did, let’s see some awesomeness for the app store:
I admit I did not see this coming. Good move though! =)
Can we make this THE source for all Pandora apps, free and paid? For casual users, this would be preferable to browsing some sort of repository. This would help anyone wary about downloading apps from just anywhere feel more secure, too.
And it would be one more bullet point for potential retailers and consumers. Nice move, guys.
A seperate app would have been more beneficial as something like Cydia could have been made. This would allow developers to make their own repo and users to add these repos.
^^ if you look at the timeline, this feels like something really last minute, so it’s not surpising that it’s designed in such a simplistic manor.
As I start to think about it, it wouldn’t have been hard for craigix to create a Pandora repo and we all just use apt-get with a pretty front end for the Pandora.
Which is with Cydia is? Right?
Speaking of last minute app store…. anyone have any idea when any software of any sort will be available for the pandora? Like.. lets say I want to get together a collection of emulators and such to be ready for when the pandora does ship — is that at all possible right now? The pandora file archive seems pretty sparse.
I imagine when the Pandora does start shipping, devs will begin uploading their software. At the moment, no one but devs have Pandoras, so there’s no point uploading beta/untested software until there are users that can actually use it. And they can just send stuff to other devs in the mean time if someone else wants to test it. And of course with this appstore, they won’t pay as much attention to the File Archive anyway.
How long till a Pandora Warez scene emerges then?
not long. i’ll give it a week after paid for content becomes available, we’ll see cracked versions hitting the ftps.
This community tends to be pretty supportive of devs, especially homebrew devs. Pandora is bringing a lot of new faces in though, and I suppose this stuff is bound to happen. Without getting all morally superior (we all play old ROMs etc), people who pirate commercial Pandora software will find themselves short on friends in the GP32X community.
Good points Gruso. I can see people more willing to pirate an emulator than a shiny commercial game though.
To me, there’s something about paying for an emulator that just doesn’t feel right. Don’t ask me why, it’s just natural instinct. You might as well pay for the roms too… but who the hell does that? Funny really – even with complete collections I always find myself playing games that I actually own (or have owned). I must have played the first section to say, Super Mario World, 30 or 40 times by now!
I can’t even NAME a paid-for emulator that’s currently developed (could just be out of the loop) but really, I don’t see where people are coming from worrying about emulators etc. going commercial just because the app store lets you charge for stuff. If they’re GPL anyway, one person will pay, get source, re-release it free probably anyway. Commercial devs is what this is for, not for OSS devs to start charging for stuff.
How about the emulators for OSX by Richard Bannister?
http://www.bannister.org/software/index.htm
Or the numerous commercial emulators on the N-Gage (some of which were cracked)?
http://www.vampent.com/
I believe he’s still working on Windows Mobile versions.
@HTL2001 – That’s pretty much it.
How about the infamous PCE/FX-emulators MagicEngine and MagicEngineFX?
It always made me angry that they abused their niche as the only PCFX-emulator to make some quick bucks and I hope the free Mednafen will catch up as soon as possible.
This is not the first time that devs got away with this. Those early NES emulators back in the days used to be commercial as well, before they eventually got superseded by free ones. But it was and is aggravating to know that the ability and willingness to spend a few extra bucks was and apparently still giving you a headstart in the emulation world.
My point was, at least now, there are good GPL ones and while GPL lets you charge money for downloads, you need to include source with it so realistically you can’t charge for emulators.
What’s been pointed out seem to be device-specific ports and not entire emulators on multiple platforms (that is, you can buy it for windows, linux, mac…..) so… since we have devs porting GPL emulators I really doubt there will be a problem.
why not rep à la : APT-GET ?
So 3 December waiting green light.
6 December still waiting.
oh please don’t use “app”-le
An apt repository for commercial and free software would be a huge boon to this system, when updated it would contain a complete list of software, possibly with screenshots. Integrating this with the device would be a necessity, just add it to the game browser.
make sense
It would be nice if apps installed from the app store either registered themselves with an apt-like system or were even just scripts to trigger an apt-get install. The nice thing about a system like apt is it will notify you when updates are available, and can even be configured to download updates automatically.
Yes, but how does APT work with PND files?
It should work fine, if my understanding of PND files is correct (which is unlikely, but there you go). APT is a mechanism for finding out about, pulling down and installing packages (well, strictly speaking dpkg does the installing bit), while PND files are metadata files identifying already installed apps, on an SD card or whereever. So as long as the package includes a PND file and the PND system knows to look for it, it should work fine.
Though there’s no particular reason to use APT, except it’s a mature system and is well understood by many devs. Any system that can run on the device and check for updates, then pull them down and install them would do the job. You can’t do that using a website.
The queue list is a complete hoax!
Just look at the forum subject on this: total bullshit.
The first 103 will be friends and the 900 others some lucky one if they got it before end of January.
Don’t expect yours before Feb.
Hope the screenshots of today 8 December will be awesome.
A handful of the first 105 (or 102, whatever) will be sent to the devs who have made this project possible (Notaz, DJWillis, Cpasjuste, Skeezix etc). Others will be kept as demo units, or press loan units. You don’t want one of those PCBs; they’ve been stress tested and knocked around.
The order queue begins with the next 1,000, which are currently getting ready to go into cases.