Hi guys, It's a great news about the store, and a great name, too. I have 9 applications ported to Sailfish OS from Harmattan/Symbian, but they're commercial, so I hope that submission of paid apps will soon be allowed as well...
Anyway, I also have a few remarks regarding the current specification of the store (in a good purpose, so that the store is as good as possible, both for publishers and customers). I know that it's just the beginning, but I also know that if something isn't done at start then either it never comes or it takes ages to add it... 1) *PLEASE* allow more screenshots than just THREE. It has always been a major problem with the Nokia store that only 3 screenshots could be posted. It is way too little to properly present even just part of functionality of more complex applications. I am not saying that it should be up to 64 screenshots like in the BlackBerry store but *FIVE* is IMO a minimum. 2) I could not find what's the character limit of the application's description, but I hope that it's bigger than Nokia Store's 400 characters, for the same reasons as above. It is nearly impossible to properly describe a complex application's functionality within 400 characters. Using abbreviations like "&" instead of every "and", skipping spaces after commas, etc. only to manage to fit a few more words is a common practice at the Nokia store due to their tiny limit, and it still doesn't help much. Just to compare, the BlackBerry store allows 4000 characters. 3) PLEASE, allow publishers to post replies to customers' reviews in the store, like e.g. in Google Play. No such possibility in the Nokia store, along with no access to any reviewer's contact data, prevents ANY communication between publishers and their users/customers. It often happens that in the Nokia store a customer complains about a trivial problem (often at the user's end) that could be very easily resolved if a reply could be posted, but lack of such possibility causes that the reviewer stays with his problem and his negative comment also remains and scares away others. In the worst case, please at least allow publishers to accept/deny reviews, like in the Blackberry store... 4) Please, distinguish native applications from Android applications in the store, even just with some kind of icon. RIM does so with "Built for Blackberry" apps - a small BB icon is shown on lists and in the description. Native Sailfish OS applications should be distinguished and promoted somehow - this will surely stimulate native development... Well, that's all for now... Or maybe one more question: is there any news regarding availability of developer units? All my applications use sensors, the GPS receiver, one also uses the camera.... none of which can be tested in the emulator. I'd like to make sure everything works fine prior to publishing the applications (especially that they're commercial, so it is important to make sure that what people will be paying for really works perfectly). Maybe you could offer some kind of PRE-PRE-sales to developers who have several projects ready for publication? I'll happily pay for a developer unit if I can only get access to it as early as possible so that I can have all my applications ready before the phone starts shipping... Many thanks and kindest regards, Michal _______________________________________________ SailfishOS.org Devel mailing list
