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Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

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Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#151

Post by COGlory »

vodkapump wrote: post #123
pyeri wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a very clean solution but if someone (power user) wants to avoid the playstore entirely, they can perhaps do so by simply force-disabling the app (using tools like adb), and then use something like apkmirror[1] or apkpure[2] or aptoide to install the APKs for the apps directly and bypass the store entirely? [1] https://www.apkmirror.com/ [2] https://m.apkpure.com/

Have you looked at Obtainium? https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium It can use apkmirror and apkpure as sources. Along with lots of others.

I'm not particularly security conscious, but this seems very vulnerable to malware.

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#153

Post by candiodari »

mavhc wrote: post #117
eloisant wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but this title is much more clickbait than just "Google stops developping 2 open source apps".

if only they were open source, then anyone else could take over

Yeah it really shows why the GPL is necessary.

"You can see this apps, and you can develop for them. But you can't use them on your own device ..."

GPL explicitly demands that a method is provided to replace the binaries on devices that the software runs on. Which is one of the reasons the tech giants are so opposed to it. The other reason is cloud.

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#154

Post by activiation »

codethief wrote: post #149

I'm not particularly worried; GrapheneOS is already replacing/improving plenty of AOSP apps, so Messaging & Caller will likely just be added to that list.

you should be worried is you are using GrapheneOS though... why do you trust it?

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#155

Post by elforce002 »

DeathArrow wrote: post #133

How are Google and Apple not monopolies? Just because we have two vendors instead of one?

You can make a case for Google tbh. Apple has what, 30% of the market at best, while every phone manufacturer uses Google by default. Heck, I don't know where to begin to brake Google's grip without seriously fragment everything.

You can't escape google even if you want to, whereas with Apple you only need to switch phones.

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#157

Post by izacus »

elforce002 wrote: post #155
DeathArrow wrote: post #133

How are Google and Apple not monopolies? Just because we have two vendors instead of one?

You can make a case for Google tbh. Apple has what, 30% of the market at best, while every phone manufacturer uses Google by default. Heck, I don't know where to begin to brake Google's grip without seriously fragment everything. You can't escape google even if you want to, whereas with Apple you only need to switch phones.

Apple has more than half of US market share.

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#158

Post by hbn »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #57

The real concern is not the loss of the AOSP apps but the lack of new but mandatory features in AOSP and even more undocumented APIs. For example, RCS only works with Google messenger and there's no sign of that expanding (unless your Samsung). Even Visual Voicemail which should/is an open standard has a lot of carrier specific code (I think it can still be extracted from the Google Phone app but I'm not sure on the…

> RCS only works with Google messenger

I don't get how Google can continue to call RCS an "industry standard" and do their campaigns publicly shaming Apple for not implementing it when this is the case.

Not to mention RCS messages are mostly being routed through Google's own servers anyway because no carriers have implemented it. No wonder they want Apple to get on board with this "standard," it replaces SMS with a Google service.

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#159

Post by nologic01 »

Ok, naive question but I would dearly love to have an informed answer as another phone of mine is dying, it is still TINA and I can't for the life of me project how this will play out:

The first iphone was released in 2007. That's like 15 years ago. People were probably toying with "smart" phones already few years before that. Its not that the world doesn't know how to manufacture smartphones and/or write software for them.

How come in 2023 there isn't an open source mobile phone that is reliable as a daily driver phone? With a financially healthy entity behind it. NB: It doesn't matter if its android or linux or firefox os or anything else.

Surely there is a market for such a device. 1% of a billion is a big number.

Is it because (pick all that apply or please add the true reason):

* Are manufacturers a cartel and won't allow breaking the duopoly? (Doesn't seem plausible, Samsung toyed with Tizen)

* Are governments happy to strike deals with the duopoly? (Doesn't seem plausible, at least in the EU)

* Is it the telecoms that somehow don't want this to happen? Why would that be?

* Is it the FOSS community that can't get its act together? (Doesn't seem plausible, both F-Droid and e.g., KDE mobile communities seem more than on top of supporting this)

So where is the bottleneck? A free mobile device is maybe the most important piece of technology one could have at this moment. I can imagine various actors that would not want it to happen but at the same time all sorts of other actors that would very much want it to happen.

Re: Google is about to make life more difficult for custom ROM fans

#160

Post by flyinghamster »

maksimur wrote: post #143
nickelpro wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99.9% of consumers do not care about this and are totally willing (and expect) to connect their phone to their Google/Apple account Not saying the grievance isn't valid, but don't fool yourself

It's part of the recurring pattern of blindness towards the actual level of caring among average service users. Reddit is another example of this pattern. Mind you I say this as the minority who cares.

Less "blindness" and more "active hostility" in my opinion. Unpopular updates? Bad licensing? Privacy problems? Just double and triple down. There's no realistic alternative, so why listen to those pesky users?

I absolutely loathe today's smartphone landscape. You can have a semi-locked-down phone from a company that wants you to put all your data in the clown, or you can have a fully-locked-down phone from a company that wants you to put all your data in the clown. Worse, the only alternative that had a chance just had to be Microsoft. Watching the horror show of post-7 Windows, I think we dodged a bullet with Windows Phone going nowhere.

The masses aren't going to flock to any potential alternative unless it offers something they find truly compelling.

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