Jun 21, 2022Not ready for the next technology cycleIt has happened before. Our relationships, the real economy and technology are not only in crisis but in a deep transformational process. With one difference: this time we are even less prepared. — During these years of technological stability — the mobile decade 2010–2020 — the estrangement between people and real technology has been promoted. We have turned our relationship with tech devices into a mere act of consumption, where accessibility, privacy, and security are purposely conflated with keeping the user ignorant.Google4 min readGoogle4 min read
Nov 16, 2021Google, Apple and your technological awarenessThese are the three things responsible for making our smartphones more similar to Television than the land of opportunities that the Internet represented in the 2000s or the Computing of the 80s. This week, thanks to documents made public in their respective antitrust lawsuits, we now know that both companies…Google Play6 min readGoogle Play6 min read
Jul 2, 2021Google is turning Android into IOS and getting full control over devs to save you some KBsWell played Google, so App Bundles gives you full control of developer private key (they won’t ever have access to that signing key), will force devs to deal with multiple official signatures making distribution more difficult. So far a user can get either app from any legitimate source and be…Developer3 min readDeveloper3 min read
Jun 25, 2021We take apart Apple’s desperate defense of its monopoly on App distribution, point by point.Indeed, European regulators and the US Congress are now close to the major technology companies and considering a decision on the multi-billion dollar monopoly in the distribution of mobile apps (One of five planned US antitrust bills targets Apple’s App Store). The chain of events in recent months, which may…Apple8 min readApple8 min read
Mar 23, 2021Uptodown becomes the new member of the Unity Distribution Portal (UDP)This is an exciting moment. We’re inaugurating what we hope will be a new era for Android. Today we announce what we’ve been secretly working on for over two years. Unity and Uptodown. A project that will change the way Android games are created and published around the world. It…Mobile Game Development2 min readMobile Game Development2 min read
Jan 10, 2021Today we remove Parler from UptodownThis is the second time the “red button” has been pressed to wipe a large-scale application off the map. And although we have had many other minor cases, this new “experiment” has been one of the most devastating after the elimination of Huawei products. A few hours ago, following the…Parler4 min readParler4 min read
Jul 19, 2020Give power to Developers. Not Stores, Mobile Makers, or Operating Systems.How big platforms disempower Developers and Users building walled gardens. There is nothing revolutionary in this idea, just the old concept of the tech industry (let’s say the 80s IBM, 90s Microsoft) as an open space that provides capabilities to the Developer and Users — not the stores, the manufacturers, or the operating systems. Historically, the reasons given for disempowering…Mobile App Development3 min readMobile App Development3 min read
May 28, 2019Let us reclaim the role that historically belongs to EuropeThe fact that China and Russia have been working hard at “balkanising” the Internet for some time is nothing new. What has been a hard blow this week is to see how the US — abusing Google’s domain of Android — now has its own button to short circuit any…Startup3 min readStartup3 min read
Published inThe Uptodown Paper·May 20, 2019Just exactly how fucked is Huawei without Google?Mobile manufacturers’ main problems are not limited to the potential absence of Google Play or its most famous apps — those are the least of their worries. Google Services actually includes everything from location technology to voice assistant, push notifications, video/audio casting — essentially, a whole series of tools and…Android3 min readAndroid3 min read
Mar 2, 2018Silicon Valley and the mobile era foundationIt’s not at all uncommon to miss the signs of change as they unfold. We are currently experiencing a turning point for the mobile industry…MWC4 min readMWC4 min read
