Verizon To Shut Down App Store By January 59
Posted
by
timothy
from the dog-won't-hunt dept.
from the dog-won't-hunt dept.
alphadogg writes "Verizon Wireless is closing down its app store by January next year, it said in a notice on its developer community portal. The operator said it will start removing in January the Verizon Apps application from all compatible Android and Research In Motion devices. It anticipates completing the process by March 27. The carrier's app store, launched in March 2010, has been overtaken by popular online app stores from tech companies like Google and RIM."
Tagged it "sudden outbreak of common sense" (Score:1)
Oh, and frost pisst.
Yay! (Score:2)
And there was much rejoicing.
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Indeed, perhaps I can finally set Google Nav to be the default and have the setting stick instead of constantly offering Verizon's pay service every time.
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It's nice when a bloatware provider removes their own crap!
The new weakness of App Stores? (Score:3)
In the old days you just downloaded programs. Now they want to tie programs to App Stores. Except when they get grumpy because they're only 4th best, they shut down the App Stores leaving you with all the hardware locks and nowhere to go.
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The most popular app in the Verizon app store was the "App Store Map" which helped you find a different app store to shop in.
Re:The new weakness of App Stores? (Score:4, Informative)
On Android, you can still manually download and install software. Blackberry too, I believe.
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And we liked it!
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Like?
It's the one thing I truly love about Linux more than anything else. I can download the entire source for something like Asterisk, make changes (database field names that store passwords, etc.), and compile the program and run it.
Nothing comes close to that feeling of freedom in computing.
Re:The new weakness of App Stores? (Score:4, Funny)
in the snow, uphill both ways?
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In Soviet Russia, source downloads you! In Korea, only old people download source!
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Or if Jason Scott happens to get a hold of them and puts them on archive.org.
Re:The new weakness of App Stores? (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the future, or as we old greybeards call it "Hey remember when everything was locked down black boxes?" because we are doomed to repeat our history. Whether we like it or not, whether we protest it or not, the big megacorps have decided the days of standards and compatibility are OVER friends, its gonna be black boxes tied to appstores. Oh its gonna be great....for them. They control the hardware, they control the software, you are just a walking wallet and every single thing can have a dollar sign attached.
And who do we have to blame for this? YOU, Apple fanboys I'm pointing a big fat finger right in your hipster faces. It is YOU that made Apple the biggest corp on the planet,even without the tax dodging, it is YOU that stood in lines like tickets to a rock concert just to get assraped on memory prices and peripherals, it is YOU that happily spent insane amounts of money in a locked down appstore. Thanks to YOU now every corp on the planet is gonna follow the Apple gameplan, so all we have is Apple and ersatz Apple, with everything locked down tighter than a nun's thighs.
So when you complain about how all your devices are throwaway black boxes and appstores please be sure to bitchslap the hipster douche sitting next to you using the iPhone, because they ARE the ones to blame for this mess. Sorry if this is a little ranty but after living through the days of proprietary power supplies and RAM I really really REALLY hoped we would see an era of standards come about, instead the iSheep are gonna fuck us all, great job guys.
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Whoa gramps! Don't grouse at everyone just because you missed your meds.
Nurse!
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and..... is grampa wrong here?
We don't need to turn this into a war against Apple, but seriously, is he wrong?
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Sorry if I made it sound like a war against Apple, its not, they have EVERY right to be as big a dicks as they want with their products.
No the war should be against the BUYERS of Apple products, those hipster douches that threw money at Apple, no matter how badly they got screwed on memory, and threw even more money at Apple for locked down apps.
It is because of THEM that we are gonna end up ALL of us trapped in Apple walled gardens, because every other corp is gonna look at Apple's financials and say "Well
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Well Pete, enjoy your world while you have it.
That world with disappearing freedoms. All of that convenience you have obtained was paid for in your freedom, and the freedom of the next generation.
If you have been programming since 1979, you should realize that people have a poor understanding of what cyberspace is, and how progressively, it affects us more and more in real life, and soon freedom in cyberspace will be indistinguishable from freedom in real life.
People will understand that far too late. They
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Actually they are doing it IRL too, not just cyberspace, which is why I have been saying for years "You better fight for the smokers! They are the canaries in the coal mine!" and sure enough we now have cities that make it illegal to smoke in your own home, or even on PUBLIC lands, and now we have states telling you how big a coke you can have and are talking about fat taxes and sweet taxes.
Remember friend, the whole nanny state "we know what is best for you" NEVER gets smaller and more free, ALWAYS bigge
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I'm not really certain that if Apple hadn't invented it, nobody would have. Debian has had it's repositories from long before Apple. Red Hat sort of copied Debian's usage, and maintains a more limited set of repositories. And I think most major Linux distributions were doing that before Apple decided to make a proprietary version of it.
So the choice is: Do you want to pay a corporation extra to censor the apps that you use? (Yeah, censor is a loaded word. But that's essentially what they are doing...a
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Do you blame a 3 year old for dropping food on the floor and not cleaning it up right away? Of course not.
I have a hard time blaming most people, because they lack the requisite sophistication to understand Apple products are highly detrimental to them in the long term.
They don't even understand enough about it to make philosophical or sociopolitical arguments about the pitfalls of such control, DRM, anonymity, privacy, etc.
That includes most developers as well...
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Right now I could use some Mod points. Mod hairyfeet up and Insightful ladies and gentlemen.
You might not like what he's saying, but he's right, and computer technology is not the only industry going this way. Aviation is too.
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Thanks but what I want even more than mod points is for people to wake the fuck up and see that this nanny state style control NEVER gets smaller and more free, ALWAYS tougher and less free, unless you actively fight it.
Take the smokers. I warned people "They are the canaries in the coal mine, they will NOT stop with just them" but did they listen? Now you not only have cities where you can be arrested for smoking in your own home, but we have NY deciding how much soda your cup can have and states on the ea
Woah! (Score:1)
In January of 2013, Verizon will start the process of removing the Verizon Apps application from ALL compatible Android and Research in Motion devices.
They can do that? :-/
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Depends how they put it there in the first place.
If its part of the ROM like the facebook app on my phone, just release a new ROM without it and it disappears. I sincerely wish this would happen...
On the other hand, if it was merely downloaded, they can't easily wipe it. I'm told google kicked the developer of "amuse" out of the program and removed the app from the store so it can't be downloaded... although my installs on devices continue to work, I can't install "amuse" on new devices (And I don't use i
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They'll get rid of those other apps at the same time as they let you use an unlocked CDMA + LTE phone on their network
So, you mean, now? [engadget.com]
good riddance (Score:2)
can't wait.
Good, Now Remove The App (Score:2)
Hopefully they'll pull the app ASAP from our phones! I hate that Motorola and Verizon force their crapware on our phones.
Yeah, I know, root your phone, blah blah blah....
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A better answer than "root your phone" is to get a phone that's unlocked. I hear Nexus is a good choice, though I'll admit I haven't yet got a phone with even a GPS, much less a smartphone.
(I'm a cheapskate, and I also live in an area with lousy coverage due to hilly terrain. For me those fancy phones would be a lousy investment with not much real advantage. So you might want to listen to someone else's advice, if your situation is different. I *am* starting to look at Nexus, though.)
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Even after rooting your phone, eliminating all that crapware is non-trivial.
Quite a bit of instructions and know-how to just to eliminate an app that seems to be more protected than the Pentagon.
Maybe they'll remove some of the bloatware... (Score:2)
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When I upgraded to ICS I was able to remove NFL Mobile, Let's Golf and Blockbuster.. I believe I had to remove updates first though.
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Root your phone and download Gemini App Manager, it'll let you "freeze" the apps so they can't launch, including carrier-marked "system" apps.
Yes, this will prevent VZNavigator from launching every time you plug your phone into a holster (this saves me like 5 seconds every time I get in my car).
You can outright uninstall them but that may make future OTA updates fail to work correctly; if you freeze them, before you accept an update, unfreeze them so the update can find them, then freeze them again.
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Customer reviews on the app store don't matter if the user doesn't go to the app store to get it.
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Verizon has an app store? (Score:2)
I didn't even know they had an app store, I guess that's because "store" implies buying and I wouldn't pay for the crap they offer.
One of the first things I tried to do with my phone was get rid of the preloaded stuff they put on it, I didn't want to root it so they had to stay. I can't think of one of them is even half as good as the Google default ones or the vast majority of the ones available in play store.
I don't need the space, but I'd love to see these disappear from my phone, even if I have to take
Good first step but... (Score:1)
ProTip ... (Score:2)
Microsoft, are you listening? [slashdot.org]
popular online app stores (Score:2)
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they will stay on you phone until you uninstall them after that they are gone, just like on PC's when you lose the install disk to you software.
And nothing of value was lost (Score:2)
(obligatory)
A horse designed by a business committee (Score:1)
Verizon has an app store? I never use other Verizon apps because every time I start one it gives me scary boilerplate clickthrus of data usage additional costs if I exceed my cap. G'bye, you scared me.
I find it humorous Verizon, the data network provider, feels a need to disclaim this possibility against accusations they might be deliberately running up data usage because getting you to exceed the cap is a desired state for you to be in in their business model.
I'm mad enough I have useless Verizon bloatwa
Huh? (Score:1)
Verizon has an app store?
But... (Score:2)