Appcenter: [meta]: Future of AppCenter

[ferdicus]

Sorry, I would've loved to open a discussion ticket, however that section doesn't seem to be supported by this repo 🤷🏿

I know what you're thinking "another one of these Is this still maintained tickets?!",
however I feel it's warranted when I see the current status of AppCenter and this repo.

Not too long ago we we're blessed with:

• monthly iteration plans
• team members actively monitoring and replying to tickets

Now it just feels kinda abandoned :(

• members seem to switch on a regular basis - who is the main maintainer of this repo?!
• The last item on the iteration plan is a very general 2021 post...

I think the AppCenter App tickets [1][2] and the almost 1000 open issues that are lingering on are very indicative of this shift in perceived responsibility.

For what it's worth, there is the same type of winding down support in the code-push repo

I just wanted to get a general reply from MS on where AppCenter is moving in the coming months/ years,
as our company (and I can imagine all the others that are active in this repo) are pretty invested in it.

Thanks in advance
And sorry for being such a pain...

[akamenev]

Hi @ferdicus! Thank you for sharing your concerns about the future of App Center. Unfortunately, at the moment, I cannot share anything else rather than what is already in the Roadmap post. We are currently improving the reliability and performance of the service. While we do this we are not able to commit to any new feature timelines and provide iteration plans. We understand that there are a lot of customers relying on App Center and that's why, during the current work directed at technical debt, we also make sure that customers can continue using App Center without any disruption.

[ferdicus]

hi @akamenev, thanks for your reply.

hey, I'm the last one who would speak out against improving and refactoring a service to make it better for the community.
It's the lack of information and communication I'm rather surprised by.

Why not publish the improvements which you are working on?
Why the lack of communication on tickets?
Why the silence when removing the AppCenter mobile client from the stores?

Stuff like that is alienating existing customers and pushing interested parties towards competing products, don't you think?

It also (and I'm not saying you're doing that) smells like you're slowly preparing to sunset this service for something else instead 🤷🏿

Cheers