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Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

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Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#551

Post by kernal »

odo1242 wrote: post #343
onli wrote: post #56

Earlier 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 consistently get updates a few weeks to months earlier than the Android version. Including some of Google’s own apps, sometimes. To give examples: - https://www.phonearena.com/news/google-photos-update-to-reac... - https://www.t3.com/tech/iphones/google-maps-gets-an-iphone-u... Both of the above are updates to Google apps that released on iOS but are planned on Android. Haven't seen any examples of the rever…

The iOS and Android app teams at Google don’t coordinate their releases. They ship it when it’s ready for publication. Why inconvenience the other base just because the other team has other priorities and schedules. That said, Google apps have always been superior on Android than iOS. Just look at Keep.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#552

Post by _vqpz »

PlatoIsADisease wrote: post #401
_vqpz wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Slow phone with slow animations" is a crazy assessment, I switched from Galaxy S7 to iPhone XR in 2018 because the Galaxy was (like every other Android I had) slow to do everything, applications would crash randomly and my phone would just give up and reboot without warning. Not to mention all of the killer Android features that Google had gotten rid of up to that point (RIP notification ticker, I miss you so much).…

Samsung is the Apple of Android. They are fake luxury and use a big marketing budget. Not surprised the same kind of person that buys an iphone also fell for samsung.

In early 2016, it was by far the best Android offering available and it was a pitiful display for the operating system.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#553

Post by lpcvoid »

miki123211 wrote: post #470
AlotOfReading wrote: post #12

Google'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…

This isn't about pure revenue, it's about scams. Android has a reputation for being unsafe precisely because of sideloading (as well as low Google Play fees, looser app review, accessibility services and remote access). This policy is bad for us HNers, but objectively good for the 95+% of people who will never sideload a legitimate Android app, but are extremely likely to get caught by scammers. The heavy US skew of…

The Play Store was riddled with scam apps last time I used it. Be it fake apps that pretend to do something while doing at best nothing ("system optimizers", "antivirus" apps) over user data mining apps (often targeted at children or young people) to hundreds of clones of commercial or open source apps - you do not have to search very long to find the real scams.

Making sideloading harder has only one goal - growing the wall around the garden a bit higher, piece by piece, layer by layer, while everything within slowly grows more toxic.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#554

Post by mexicocitinluez »

clickety_clack wrote: post #472
mexicocitinluez wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I can be a user separate from being a developer. The user experience of Safari is basically perfect for a browser. The development experience is completely irrelevant from that perspective.

> The user experience of Safari is basically perfect for a browser.

This is such a wild, absolute statement it's not even worth discussing this with you anymore.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#555

Post by kernal »

Archit3ch wrote: post #443
onli wrote: post #56

Earlier 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…

> In which category are there better iOS apps? Audio, and it's not even close. On iPadOS you get full-fledged DAWs like Cubasis and Logic.

The Android audio latency issues were solved long ago with Pro Audio. Whether Android audio apps chose to use it is on them and the significance of latency on their audio app.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#556

Post by mexicocitinluez »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #434
mexicocitinluez wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not sure what you are trying to say here. Even if that was true, my point was that an ad driven business like Google, would be incentivized to monetize all the aspects of my life they could have access to. If that’s not what Apple is doing, compared to Google, then that’s a win I guess?

> would be incentivized to monetize all the aspects of my life they could have access to

You're literally describing Apple's business model.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#557

Post by privacyking »

palata wrote: post #519
al_borland wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I tried Android I had to sign my rights away to everything the app wanted just to install it. In contrast, on iOS I get prompted to allow or deny access to my information when the app tries calling Apple’s API to fetch that information. For example, if an app wants access to my contacts to find other people using the app. On iOS I can simply say “no” when it prompts me to allow it to read my contacts. I los…

> Last time I tried Android I had to sign my rights away to everything the app wanted just to install it. Sounds like it was years ago... I remember that it was being introduced like... more than a decade ago? Of course maybe it took longer than iOS because of how Android works. iOS can just force everybody to use liquid glass with one update, Android has to think more about backward compatibility.

You still have the same things on android. If an android app requests eg exact location it can refuse to run and there’s nothing you can do. That sort of behaviour is prohibited on iOS and an app won’t be approved if it does that sort of thing. They have to allow declining location permission or at least approximate location

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#558

Post by einsteinx2 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #548
AlotOfReading wrote: post #12

Google'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…

"Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. " How does one know there is a long-term strategy History has shown that so-called "tech" companies often act in a reactionary manner^1 1. Often, the act is of one of copying what someone else has done. Other times it might be response to regulation One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS This is one example of the reactionary copying phenomeno…

> One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS

It quite literally was a reaction to iOS considering it was originally a copy of the BlackBerry OS (the older one in their keyboard phones) until the iPhone came out and they pivoted to copying iOS instead.

EDIT: to get ahead of any negative replies about them copying iOS, I’m fully aware that they work quite differently under the hood and Android has had various features before iOS, etc. I mean they were creating from a UI/UX standpoint a copy of the BlackBerry when Google bought them, and then when the iPhone came out they completely changed the UI/UX paradigm to match.

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#559

Post by mannycalavera42 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #548
AlotOfReading wrote: post #12

Google'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…

"Google's long term strategy with Android is baffling to me. " How does one know there is a long-term strategy History has shown that so-called "tech" companies often act in a reactionary manner^1 1. Often, the act is of one of copying what someone else has done. Other times it might be response to regulation One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS This is one example of the reactionary copying phenomeno…

> One could argue Android itself was a reaction to iOS

and it definitely was, to mitigate the risk of losing sight of the web users behaviour

Re: Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

#560

Post by mexicocitinluez »

JimDabell wrote: post #456
nerdix wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's core business is trapping users into their walled garden so they can rent seek. Whichever one you think is worse is really just a reflection of your own personal values. I value computing freedom above all.

> Apple's core business is trapping users into their walled garden so they can rent seek. Apple’s core business is selling hardware. Their services revenue is not even close to their hardware revenue.

Yes, trapping users into their walled hardware garden so they can rent seek.

You buy a phone, and you're forever forced into buying only their peripherals.

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