Apparently this "high friction" is a term entirely invented by Android Authority based on finding a few new generic warning messages about sideloading in the Android source?? I guess if there's no news, you have to play word games to make some.
Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android
361–370 of 762 posts
Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
NewPipe (FOSS available on F-Droid) is nice alternative to ads-infested YouTube. I disabled YouTube and YouTube Music apps on my mobile, and I use NewPipe instead. You can even download YT videos or audio from YT videos using it.
So entitled. How do you expect Google to pay it's content creators that you watch if they didn't have ads?
You’re implying that YouTube being limiteZ to creators that don’t care about getting paid would be a bad thing.
Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android
#363I'm with Google on this one. Idiots and old people (the public) use these devices daily. These are the very same people that send money to Nigerian royalty and expect to hear back about a great reward. This is mostly a CYA move with hard data behind it. If they completely removed side load, that would be a different story.
I don’t think calling people who don’t really understand computer security a can be tricked “stupid” is fair or helpful.
Designing a product so that almost all of it’s intended users can operate it safely seems like the right decision.
Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because things like Safari ...work really well Are we living in the same universe? We manage a fleet of tablets (both Apple and Android) for a healthcare company whose EMR is web-based. And because of that Sarafi has made our lives miserable. So much so that we're migrating to Chromebooks. I've been developing for the web for 15 years. The first half was spent battling Internet Explorer. Now it's Safari.
I’m a developer too, but the developer experience doesn’t matter to users. As a user of the app, it’s fast enough, cleanly designed, seems to be reasonably private and secure, and I haven’t hit any website with it where I’ve had to download chrome to view it or something.
You're a developer but you can't connect the dots between features being hard to build and the inconsistencies between other browsers vs Safari to how that might effect the user?
Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore. That was maybe true in the very beginning, during the gold rush time of the app store. But not since then. In which category are there better iOS apps? Browsers? No, strictly worse. Youtube app? No, worse. Texting? Worse or equal (Whatsapp). Podcast client? I assume worse, since there is no Antenna Pod. Social media apps? The iOS variants of those apps are afaik in…
> Social media apps? The iOS variants of those apps are afaik in no way better. What else is there, where is the advantage? This is incorrect. The IOS versions of social media apps extract way less data from the device than on android, and is thus more privacy friendly. Sure the best way would be for people not to use them, but if you "have" to, then it's better to use those on IOS.
>This is incorrect. The IOS versions of social media apps extract way less data from the device than on android, and is thus more privacy friendly.
Source?
Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
In what manner do they extract less data
Unless you're running Graphene or a similar security minded distro the sandboxing isn't very good. Okay let's be honest it's fairly abysmal at preventing fingerprinting. It could almost be accused of not even bothering to try. But one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43518866
>Unless you're running Graphene or a similar security minded distro the sandboxing isn't very good
Grapheneos doesn't prevent the installed apps fingerprinting you linked either.
Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Personally, I’d rather not have Google buried deep inside all aspects of my phone. I mean, one could say the exact same thing but swapping Google with Apple.
Google core business is ads. It is not the same.
The difference between Apple vs Google is that with Apple you ARE the ad. They don't need advertising when they know people will adopt them and then be forced into their ecosystem.
Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android
#368Sideloading is a neologism to scare users and lawmakers, it just means "Installing software" and should be a basic right. Also software installation in Android has been high friction for a while. Installing an APK on my phone is at least 10 clicks.
I think what is missing here is the growing trend of scammers convincing people they are their bank (or whatever) and walking them through enabling side-loading and then installing malware (sometimes to address some urgent security issues with their account).
This is meant to counter an actual issues that is affecting many many users.
Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android
#369Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. Apple has had better mobile hardware for years. Apple has higher consumer trust. Apple has better app selection (for most people). Apple has been increasingly implementing the core features that differentiate Android devices, like USB-C and RCS. Every Android user lost to the increasing iOS market share is another customer Google has to pay exorbitant fees t…
Advertising folks not engineers are now in charge of Google, and they are gaining influence at Apple now as well.
Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see any iOS advantage with the apps anymore. That was maybe true in the very beginning, during the gold rush time of the app store. But not since then. In which category are there better iOS apps? Browsers? No, strictly worse. Youtube app? No, worse. Texting? Worse or equal (Whatsapp). Podcast client? I assume worse, since there is no Antenna Pod. Social media apps? The iOS variants of those apps are afaik in…
iOS apps are truly sandboxed, they cannot carry out stunts like this: https://localmess.github.io/
For this particular exploit, it's not really because "iOS apps are truly sandboxed", it's because iOS is more restrictive with background activity, so you you can't keep a server running in the background. If your app is in the foreground it can create a listen socket just like in android.