Google Play Starts Reviewing Apps

“We started reviewing all apps and games before they’re published – it’s rolled out 100%…And developers haven’t noticed the change.”

– Purnima Kochikar, Director of Business Development for Google Play

File this one under “things I never thought I’d see in my lifetime”. I don’t know how I feel about this yet. The Apple review process is an insane PITA for developers to deal with, so all I can hope is that Google doesn’t follow their lead.

[episodes count] == 2

Episode 1 of Topical is out (links: web, Pocket Casts). This brings our total to 2, because hey, we’re programmers and that’s how we roll.

Our plan is to release a new episode once a week, on Friday. If you’re in America that’s probably Thursday for you, because you don’t live in the future like we do. It’s ironic, after explaining in episode 0 about how we weren’t just going to be talking about tech that we did, but rest assured the next episode is something else entirely.

Our hope is that we can make a show that doesn’t attract partisan support. We want Apple people, Google people…and hey…even People people! Whether we get there or not is anyones guess. In the meantime it’s been fun reading the various feedback we’ve received so far.

We Shipped!

Shipping is hard. So hard that sometimes I like to make joke websites about it. My personal favourite would have to be http://www.hasbjangoreleasedskala.com/, for my friend Marc, who I honestly believe will ship the most amazing design app we’ve ever seen. Just not today, well let me refresh, yep, not today. A close second was the one I made for my co-founder Philip, when he said he was feeling a bit de-motivated. That’s how this site was born. It’s half Silicon Valley joke, half long running office gag, but I still go there from time to time to have a laugh.

But today, today we actually shipped a real thing. Pocket Casts 5.0 for Android. An amazing effort spanning many months of development, with some truly awesome design and features. If you want to read more, you could do worse than start here: http://blog.shiftyjelly.com/2015/03/05/its-finally-here/.

 

These Aren’t The Clones You’re Looking For

But it’s only from that angle. Every other look at the Galaxy S6 reveals a phone that is markedly different from the iPhone 6. And some of the similarities are thanks to those being the most optimal ways to manage this sort of construction. You want a phone that’s made out of metal? Well, your speaker grille is going to be a series of circular holes. Want to use that metal frame as an antenna? Alright, you’ll need to divide it up with some plastic strips so you can properly manage Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and LTE.

iMore

I don’t want my blog to turn into a place where I just quote other people, but Derek Kessler puts the whole ‘THE GALAXY S6 IS AN IPHONE CLONE. OMG. OMG. OMG.’ outrage to bed.