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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

#201

Post by qball »

lucideer wrote: post #170
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…

I'm similarly baffled for the reasons you state but your breakdown of the market differentiations is a little hyperbolic. > Apple has had better mobile hardware for years Apple has never had better hardware (on mobile). Apple has had better software support & integration for their hardware that has lead to e.g. strong camera quality advantages (iOS camera app has been able to use the hardware better to produce photos…

>Apple has never had better hardware (on mobile).

This is just straight up false. Qualcomm's current top of the line processors are about 3 years behind what you can get in Apple's cheapest product (that being the 16e), and the budget phones (and by "budget" I mean "the 600 dollar ones") are another 3 years behind that.

iPhones don't generally become too slow to realistically use until their support lifetime expires. Androids are like that out of the box unless you spend over a thousand dollars, and those only last for about half the time (a combination of inferior hardware and inferior software). It doesn't matter if you have a 120Hz screen if the UI only updates at 20.

This is why the only killer feature for Android (outside the cameras) is adblocking- which, of course, is what Google wants to prevent. They don't want you to run real Firefox (with the only effective adblock remaining), and they want you to pay for YouTube Premium rather than using NewPipe (or some other ReVanced successor) so you can't get out of paying 10 bucks to listen to a video with the screen off.

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

#202

Post by psii »

trinix912 wrote: post #185
deaux wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese phones sold in China ship without Google services. Chinese phones sold outside of China include them.

That's false. The ones you can get here in Slovenia don't have them. I've personally helped quite a few friends sideload them. I also remember how shocked people were to find out there's no YouTube or Play Store after buying a Huawei or Xiaomi phone when that first came into effect.

Correct, same in Germany. Here is a photo I shot last December in an electronics store. Aurora Store is now official, I guess.

https://imgur.com/a/v6zaRYo

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

#203

Post by synergy20 »

Derbasti wrote: post #180
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…

Camera apps. Everything else I agree with, but the Android camera APIs do not allow developers to build good device independent camera apps the way they are available on iOS.

first time hear this, any more specifics? i used android to develop video conference software and don't recall camera limits

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

#204

Post by tommica »

skerit wrote: post #174
leminimal wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu Touch so far has the best hardware compatibility for things like camera and battery life. But it also insists on doing a lot of its own thing like using Mir instead of X and click packages. Running programs inside Libertine often crashes for me and is cumbersome. It makes developing for it harder. clickable needs Docker installed just so you can build and run your own apps on the device! Instead of letting you…

> like using Mir instead of X X11 is dead. It's over. At least Mir is now a Wayland client.

XLibre exists - it keeps x11 alive

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

#205

Post by middayc »

I was never an iOS user, or developer - exactly because Android was more "open", exerted less control over a user of the device.

The same reason I use Linux for 25 years (not ideological, but it just makes most sense by far). In time where this view (win11 vs. Linux) is starting to make sense to more and more people, few rare config nuances are getting easier to solve due to LLM-s, going into the opposite direction with a mobile OS calls for users to also start seriously considering more open alternatives and making a path for users of our app to do the same.

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

#207

Post by B1FIDO »

goldenarm wrote: post #196
B1FIDO wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're infantilising the users. It's untrusted by Google, but it's trusted by myself. I actually trust the Termux and Kodi devs way more than Google, yet they Google has been blocking their updates. Note that the term sideloading is exclusively used by mobile OSes. On Windows MacOS and Linux you can install anything.

What I'm talking about is actual trust. Like, there are cryptographic measures taken, certificates involved, code signing, that kind of thing.

You claim that you "can install anything" on Windows, but that is simply false. The system's Driver Signature Enforcement will prohibit the install of unsigned or invalid signatures on device drivers. Windows SmartScreen will also give you trouble by blocking unsigned apps.

So yeah, you can bypass these protective measures and "install whatever you want" ultimately, but it is basically the same process as sideloading on Android, isn't it? Disabling a bunch of protections that are there for your safety?

Your trust, honestly, doesn't mean jack shit. There is cryptographic signing, and certificate authorities, and processes to approve the certificates that authorized developers use. You don't got jack shit with your "trust" of Termux and Kodi. It means nothing to the end-user.

We do not work in "trust me bro" territory when it comes to signing software, anymore. I am sorry/not-sorry to say. It is very important to have a chain of trust that goes up somewhere above "goldenarm @ HN".

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

#208

Post by KolmogorovComp »

onli wrote: post #56
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…

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.

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

#209

Post by jakub_g »

wiseowise wrote: post #102
karlgkk wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, you’re so wrong about the app situation that it’s almost staggering. iOS apps tend to be more stable, better polished, have better integration with system features (like the Dynamic Island), and even often have more features. This isn’t even an unfounded opinion, it’s a material problem for Google and led them to vastly investing in automated testing and quality efforts App addressable user base is another…

> browser is deemphasized on iOS, and so it’s weaker feature set matters less That's precisely the OP's point. They gimped their browser so there's bigger incentive to use their proprietary system frameworks. > iOS is generally easier to develop for because of less device differentiation That's nonsense. What year are you from? I've heard this like 10 years ago when there only 1 or 2 current iPhone models in circulat…

Re: iOS apps being easier to develop: device sizes are the minuscule of the problem.

The real problem is that Android vendors mess up with the OS in weird ways by adding custom ultra battery savers, removing APIs etc. which is much less predictable than dealing with a few Apple devices, that are more homogenous.

Then many vendors ship their own apps which are buggy and you need to know that vendor's Z Calendar app has a weird bug to account for.

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

#210

Post by socialcommenter »

trinix912 wrote: post #120
gambiting wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Apple has had better mobile hardware for years Are you joking? Look at the latest Xiaomi, Oppo and other Chinese manufacturers, Apple would love to have the hardware they are shipping right now. From batteries to cameras and screens, apple is way behind on hardware tech. Yeah they are better than Samsung - but Samsung has also massively fallen behind what's the state of the art. >>is another customer Google has to…

> Look at the latest Xiaomi, Oppo and other Chinese manufacturers, Apple would love to have the hardware they are shipping right now. This is true, but their phones don't ship with Google services out of box (at least the last time I checked). So in reality, "Google's Android" is really mostly Samsungs and Pixels.

They do when purchased outside China (largely EU, UK, also Singapore and others)
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