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Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

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Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#201

Post by _ea1k »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #151
itg wrote: post #2

Installing any app I want outside the Play Store was the primary reason I decided to go with Android, despite most of the people I know using iPhones. If I can't do this anymore, I may as well switch and be able to use iMessage and FaceTime with them.

You can still side-load signed apps. It's a similar limitation to macOS which won't let you run apps that Apple hasn't signed without command line or control panel shenanigans. Compared to iOS, Android still has the advantage of installing your own full browser (like Firefox) with full-fat ad blocking (uBlock Origin, not Lite). iOS is Safari-only right now though, in theory, some alternative engines may be available…

Agreed. While I do not like this move, ti is weird to me how far people are going in their criticism.

The perfect should not be the enemy of the good.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#202

Post by constantcrying »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #92
jadbox wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still install apps outside the play store, but the developer does need to verify their signing information. Effectively this means that any app you install must have a paper trail to the originating developer, even if its not on the app store. On one hand, I can see the need for this to track down virus creators, but on the other, it provides Google transparency and control over side loaded app. It IS a conce…

So let's pick a random example app that might be popular on F-Droid today. Oh, I dunno...newpipe. Given that Google both owns Android/Google Play Store and YouTube: what do you think they would do with the developer information of someone who makes an app that skirts their ad-model for YouTube?

Exactly. I don't think Google is doing this so that people don't install some random FOSS alternatives through F-Droid.

Things like Newpipe seems much more of a target, especially if you want to take legal action. More so than stopping users, this gives Google fat more leverage about what Apps can exist. If they ever want to stop Newpipe a serious lawsuit against whoever signed the APK seems like an effective way to shut down the whole project. Certainly more effective then a constant battle between constraining them and them finding ways to circumvent the constraints.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#203

Post by btown »

api wrote: post #101
ta1243 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when in reality it is what we have been able to do on our computers since forever You do realise that's been changing right? Slowly of course, there's no single villain that James Bond could take down, or that a charistmatic leader could get elected could change. The oil tanker has been moving in that direction for decades. There are legions defending the right to run your own software, but it's a continual war of…

> The vast majority of people on this site (especially those who entered the industry post dot-com crash) ridicule Stallman. I've been in tech and startup culture for over a thousand programmer-years (25-30 normal years). It wasn't dot-com or the crash. It was mobile. The mobile ecosystem has always been user-hostile and built around the exploitation of the customer rather than serving the customer. When the huge mob…

Ironically, to take it full circle, I think that the thing that led to mobile being so user-hostile was the lack of sideloading of apps.

I remember sites on the early web like Hampster Dance, where monetization happened as an afterthought. But if you have to pay $99 annually and jump through hoops just to get your software even testable on the devices of a large number of consenting users, the vast majority of software is going to be developed by people who seek an ROI on that $99 investment - which wasn't cheap then and isn't cheap now. Hampster Dance doesn't and wouldn't exist as an app, because Hampster Dance isn't made as a business opportunity.

Similarly, outside of a few bright lights like CocoaPods, you don't get an open-source ecosystem for iOS that celebrates people making applications for fun. And Apple doesn't want hobbyist apps on its store, because Apple makes more money when every tap has a chance of being monetized. Killing Flash, too, was part of this strategy.

Apple certainly could have said "developers developers developers" and made its SDK free. But it realized it had an opportunity to change the culture of software in a way where it could profit from having the culture self-select for user-hostility, and it absolutely took that opportunity.

It's not a bad place, the environment we live in. But IMO, if Apple had just made a principled decision years ago to democratize development on its platforms, and embraced this utopian vision of "anyone can become a programmer"... it could have been a much brighter world.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#204

Post by stackskipton »

vivalahn wrote: post #170
jamesnorden wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I may as well switch and be able to use iMessage and FaceTime with them I, too, love vendor lockin.

Another road that leads to BBM it seems. It’s utterly bizarre how BBM could have been the iMessage and WhatsApp and who knows what else. But rich out-of-touch people thinking exclusivity is a perk in a commodities market just shows how business savvy and wealth are in reality disconnected from eachother.

BBM could have been great lock in IF OS and Hardware experience was not so bad.

For vast majority, Android vs iPhone is not massively different so iMessage availability is a draw for some people.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#205

Post by numpad0 »

kypro wrote: post #9

As someone who doesn't really care about apps, if I wanted to move away from Android what phones and OSs are worth considering?

They all died. There were Linux phones until Android and there were some non-Android phones until Android 8 or so, such as Qt Extended, RIM BlackBerry OS, Palm webOS, Mozilla Firefox OS, and Microsoft Windows Phone, to name a few. They all died from numerous footgun wounds as well as pressures from competition.

VoLTE was one of major contributors to the situation, by the way. Only iOS and Android supported voice call on 4G LTE for first 3-5 years, due to it being a huge pile of TBDs and transitional hacks. There were political fights in whether the LTE is to be 4G or it was to be 3.9999G and superseded quickly by a completely separate 4G standard. This meant that companies and consortium that maintained alternative OS could spend unrealistic amount of lobbying and engineering effort trying to get into it, risking investments needed for it, or give up and start procurement process for a white flag. All chose the latter, and we ended up with an iOS/Android duopoly with unprecedented totality.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#206

Post by vbezhenar »

dangus wrote: post #178
stronglikedan wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly cheaper when you compare phones with like specs.

Not by much these days. The Pixel 10 actually gives you half the storage as the iPhone 17 at the same price. The only Android phones that are significantly cheaper than equivalent iPhone tend to come with some kind of compromise (and don’t forget that Apple’s phones start at $600 - the iPhone 16e exists).

Try Xiaomi.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#207

Post by lieks »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #151
itg wrote: post #2

Installing any app I want outside the Play Store was the primary reason I decided to go with Android, despite most of the people I know using iPhones. If I can't do this anymore, I may as well switch and be able to use iMessage and FaceTime with them.

You can still side-load signed apps. It's a similar limitation to macOS which won't let you run apps that Apple hasn't signed without command line or control panel shenanigans. Compared to iOS, Android still has the advantage of installing your own full browser (like Firefox) with full-fat ad blocking (uBlock Origin, not Lite). iOS is Safari-only right now though, in theory, some alternative engines may be available…

You can install full uBlock Origin in the Orion browser, on iOS. It also has decent built-in ad blocking (though uBlock Origin is still better).

I had been thinking for a long time to switch to Android (GrapheneOS, probably) when my current iPhone 13 dies, but this whole thing with "sideloading" on Android is making me reconsider. If I can't have the freedom I want either way, might as well get longer support, polished animation and better default privacy (though I still need to opt-out of a bunch of stuff).

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#208

Post by vivalahn »

stackskipton wrote: post #204
vivalahn wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another road that leads to BBM it seems. It’s utterly bizarre how BBM could have been the iMessage and WhatsApp and who knows what else. But rich out-of-touch people thinking exclusivity is a perk in a commodities market just shows how business savvy and wealth are in reality disconnected from eachother.

BBM could have been great lock in IF OS and Hardware experience was not so bad. For vast majority, Android vs iPhone is not massively different so iMessage availability is a draw for some people.

BBM itself should not have been a lock-in. It would have taken incredibly little effort to open it as a desktop messenger that can seamlessly interact with people who have BBM numbers for example.

I doubt they learned their lessons. Apple walked all over them in so many ways and, if memory serves me right, they even mocked Steve Jobs over the iPhone.

Edit: just so I’m clear I’m discussing it from the perspective of early to mid 2000s. iPhone hadn’t yet come out, but iPods were popular. Trillian and Pidgin were dominating the online landscape of software that could support multiple chat protocols - seamless ICQ, AIM, IRC, Yahoo, MSN Messenger, all in one program. If there was a time for RIM to corner the market here it was right then and there because BBM was the real deal, being available on phones and they could have signed agreements with others to bring it to, for example, Nokia and Motorola and whoever else.

But no. They’d rather be arrogant and stupid.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#209

Post by JohnFen »

gabrielhidasy wrote: post #184
JohnFen wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> currently this is far from 'killing' non-appstore apps for most of the market. It means that Android is no longer suitable for my own private dev projects.

If it's for your own projects, for yourself only, ADB still works without this verification.

True, although using adb requires the use of the usb port, which for some of my projects is highly impractical.

Also, with this move, Google has made it very clear that they don't want people to have any real control over their machines -- so I'm not inclined to think that using adb to work around the problem will always be possible.

It's fine, though. My hobby projects will continue into the future, just probably without using Android.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#210

Post by cortesoft »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #151
itg wrote: post #2

Installing any app I want outside the Play Store was the primary reason I decided to go with Android, despite most of the people I know using iPhones. If I can't do this anymore, I may as well switch and be able to use iMessage and FaceTime with them.

You can still side-load signed apps. It's a similar limitation to macOS which won't let you run apps that Apple hasn't signed without command line or control panel shenanigans. Compared to iOS, Android still has the advantage of installing your own full browser (like Firefox) with full-fat ad blocking (uBlock Origin, not Lite). iOS is Safari-only right now though, in theory, some alternative engines may be available…

> It's a similar limitation to macOS which won't let you run apps that Apple hasn't signed without command line or control panel shenanigans

Can you do something similar to load unsigned apps on Android?

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