Google is moving away from APKs on the Play Store

-
Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Google has announced a big change for developers who want to list their apps on Google Play that could have an impact on the Android app ecosystem. Right now, the standard format for app publishing is the APK, but starting in August, Google will require that new Play apps are published instead using the Android App Bundle.

On a Google page about Android App Bundle, the company touts many potential improvements with the new format, such as smaller app downloads for users. But the format has a catch: Android App Bundles are a format that only Google Play uses, which could complicate app redistribution.

The timing of Google’s announcement also comes just days after Microsoft announced...

Continue reading…



source https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/30/22557390/google-apk-app-bundles-package-format-play-store

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Google Assistant will soon be on a billion devices, and feature phones are next

-
Image
As CES kicks off, Google has a massive presence: monorails, a booth that’s three times larger than last year, and likely a giant pile of news to announce. But ahead of all the actual product news, the company wants to beat its chest a little by announcing some numbers. By the end of the month, it expects that Google Assistant will be on 1 billion devices — up from 500 million this past May. That’s 900 million more than the number Amazon just gave us for Alexa . But just like Amazon, Google’s number comes with caveats. In an interview with The Verge , Manuel Bronstein, the company’s vice president of Google Assistant, copped to it. “The largest footprint right now is on phones. On Android devices, we have a very very large footprint,” he... Continue reading… source https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18169939/google-assistant-billion-devices-feature-phones-ces-2019
Read more

TP-Link unveils its first family of Wi-Fi 6 routers

-
Image
The next generation of Wi-Fi is starting to arrive, and today TP-Link is unveiling its first family of next-gen products. There are six devices in total, ranging from high-end routers to a range extender, all of which use the new Wi-Fi 6 standard to deliver better performance and faster speeds. At the top of the line is the Deco X10, a tri-band mesh router that’ll work with the rest of TP-Link’s Deco series to spread Wi-Fi signal throughout a home. There are basically zero devices that connect to Wi-Fi 6 signals right now, so there’s not much of a reason to upgrade yet, but the Deco X10 at least provides one: it’ll use Wi-Fi 6 to create a stronger link between routers, speeding up the overall connection. You’ll need two Deco X10 units to... Continue reading… source https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/1/7/18167185/tp-link-wifi-6-first-router-family-ces-2019
Read more

Vizio returns to CES with its most advanced 4K TV ever and support for Apple’s AirPlay 2

-
Image
Vizio hasn’t had a significant presence at CES since 2014. That year, the company actually went to the effort of issuing a press release to say it was done with the big trade show and would instead introduce TVs, soundbars, and other products at its own media briefings on its own schedule. Fast forward to today, and Vizio is making a return to Las Vegas with an all-new 2019 lineup. Not much about CES has changed; a lot of tech company executives will tell you that its importance continues to shrink with each passing year. But things have certainly changed for Vizio. It took a gamble and ditched built-in apps and the traditional smart TV experience in favor of “dumb” displays — without a TV tuner, even — that required customers to cast... Continue reading… source https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18171670/vizio-p-series-quantum-x-airplay-2-atmos-speakers-ces-2019
Read more