291–300 of 564 posts
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.
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.
Maybe it’s because I’m European but I’ve never understood what iMessage even is or what it offers above either sms or WhatsApp/signal. And I’ve used an iPhone for the past 15 years.
Edit: that said, nowadays, maybe because I'm back in the EU, I use WhatsApp way more often than iMessage.
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Let's say that Google implements this restriction, but allows F-Droid a permanent permission to disable it for apps installed through their store. Then there is both increased protection and accountability.
Time to figure out how to live without a phone - gotta find some sort of ultramobile pocket pc with 5G and run your own FreePBX for text and calling, etc. I've been wanting to do this forever, anyway. Using Starlink 5G would make it palatable, or maybe even preferable, assuming the performance is solid.
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Check UbuntuTouch, it's really a nice third option. The OS is refreshing and the dev community active. We do not have to choose the lesser of two evils this time.
Yeah... Does it support WhatsApp? If not that's a deal-breaker in most of the world.
Maybe there will be options arriving in the market to re-introduce this concept.
Dare I say it, I think we're being too harsh on Google here. When you own a massively successful consumer product like Android, which is foundational to users' lives, you have an obligation to your users to keep them safe*. Sometimes you will have to choose between protecting users who don't know what they are doing at the expense of limiting users who know what they are doing. In this case, they have chosen to err o…
If I buy a Google Pixel device then I AM a consumer. You don't have to choose, you could release a separate device for those who know what they're doing, just like Mozilla releases a separate edition of Firefox that doesn't require signatures. And yes, I while I can still install some alternative OS on my older Pixel (now Google has stopped providing device trees for the newer ones which I therefore won't buy), Googl…
Yeah, that sucks. I don't know if they made any official statement on that. I hope they will continue releasing device trees. It's a feather in their cap that the best mobile device to use for de-Googling so far was a Pixel device (with alt OSes). I hope they won't lose that distinction.
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.
It's become my go-to for "I need a utility for X task".
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The toolbars don’t just magically appear there. They are the product of a technically illiterate user.
Yes because technically literate users shouldn’t have trusted mainstream companies to not install bundle ware back in the Day? They shouldn’t have trusted Zoom not to install a web server on Macs surreptitiously that caused a vulnerability? They shouldn’t have searched Google for printer drivers not knowing that it was a fake printer driver? They shouldn’t have trusted Facebook when they installed VPN software that t…
Just to be clear, are you claiming that we would be better off if PC hardware and OS vendors had the level of control that smartphone vendors do today?
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>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.
WhatsApp became popular specifically because it was a multi-platform replacement for BBM.
BBM had little else to offer in terms of apps. It was a corporate ecosystem and good at that part of it.
iMessage also came out after BBM, and did their own device lock in, except iPhones were designed for the many instead of the few, especially beginners to smartphones.