151–160 of 206 posts
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>On top of that, it would be hard to design an API for every possible camera hardware, apart from a high level API for apps to acquire an image. APIs themselves are hard to make, but why is a camera one especially so? The language is well understood, the math and science are well understood. There are only a few ways that cameras themselves work, and even few ways that cell phone cameras work. Why is it hard? In adva…
>There are only a few ways that cameras themselves work, and even few ways that cell phone cameras work. Have an infrared camera that augments the image from a normal camera? Have a rotationally pop up camera that allows using the same 3 cameras for back and selfie, but also use it to take panoramas. (I miss my Asus ZenPhone flip) Create photos that allow users to change focus when viewing? Have two cameras back to b…
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It’s a little oversimplified, but I wouldn’t call it misleading. There is little point to getting an app like perplexity AI pre-installed on a phone as a non-default. Changing defaults isn’t exactly trivial, and any user motivated enough to go through that will have no problems installing the app from the App Store. So of course the deal fell through. And it’s accurate to say that “Google blocked a deal to put Perple…
> I’m thankful for anything that reduces pre-installed bloatware on phones Except that I still get all the google bloatware on my phone.
Of course, most commercial apps won’t run due to Google’s monopolistic bullshit. You can partially fix it by installing (sandboxed) google play services, but that halves the battery life back to what stock android gets.
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At this point, an Android phone without Google Play Services is mostly useless. You can't use maps, you can't even use notifications!
No one is forcing these other companies to make and sell phones. They don't even have the choice with iOS. I'm really struggling to see where the consumer harm is.
> I'm really struggling to see where the consumer harm is.
Imagine a world where it's illegal to grow crops unless you use a particular brand of seeds. Nobody is forcing you to make cereal, but you're going to have a bad time if you can't get the needed components for it.
It's not that far off base, either. Heard of Monsanto? Google is basically going down the same path.
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Android is open source and Google play services is technically possible to avoid. What other major operating system vendor for consumer electronics goes out of their way to make this sort of thing possible? Apple and Microsoft sure don't.
Legally or illegally? If you don't care about doing it legally, sure you can make a stub Google play service and fake the device integrity by extracting certificates from other devices. If you care about the laws though you cannot really get rid of the play services.
If the certificates were used for copy protection, the DMCA might apply. If they weren’t part of the API, copyright might apply. Patent law doesn’t apply, and trade secrets don’t enjoy legal protection.
They could argue you’re in violation of their terms of service, but their remedy for that is to kick you off the services you’re actively avoiding.
Is there some other law I’m missing?
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> Imagine Microsoft "open-sourcing" Windows (by doing some source drops at regular intervals) but you wouldn't be able to run all the existing Windows applications on it without licensing closed source software and online services from Microsoft. Or building your own services, presumably?
building your own services doesn't help any existing app OSes live and die from 3rd party apps so unless you can convince 10k developers to port their apps to a platform with no users, you're dead in the water
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But what stops Amazon from making these things? What's stopping them?
What's stopping you? Reflect on that and you'll have your answer.
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> Open source Android vs. closed iOS https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on... This article lays out in painstaking detail in one place most of the criticisms about Android you'll find in this comment thread. And this was published in 2018! That Google still maintains "a better actor" aura despite all that we know now is the greatest trick they ever pulled.
the comment doesn't say that is good, it says that it is better than ios. do you think android is more closed than ios?
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I'm not talking about the Google Maps app or the YouTube app here. I'm talking about the API's which Google Play services offer which all apps use. API's which for example allows your app to get the location of the user. Or allows your app to be updated. Simply said probably none of the apps you installed on your phone are going to work without Google Play services installed. Google Play services are closed source. W…
Can you name an OS that gives more support to OEMs than Android?
Incidentally, version 8 was vastly superior to current iOS or Android, even after those OS’s stole a few UI innovations.
If only the team responsible for that got to run Windows, and not the other way around!