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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

#461

Post by abeyer »

gruez wrote: post #417
abeyer wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why did TSA recently start requiring REAL ID Immigration politics

Source? The wikipedia article makes it pretty clear that it was in response to the 9/11 attacks. It got delayed several times so it ended up taking 2 decades to implement, but Trump had little to do with it. The May 7, 2025 deadline was set back in 2022, under Biden. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act#Legislative_histor...

To my knowledge the deciding factor between which state ids were considered compliant and which were not was whether the state required disclosing and documenting immigration status to get a drivers license. In theory there are other rules, but the rest of them were pretty universally followed already anyway.

In addition, the source you linked explicitly points out that the id standards were just one part of a bill that "would repeal the provisions regarding identification documents in IRTPA, replace them with a version that would set the federal standards directly rather than in negotiation with the states, and would make various changes to US immigration law regarding asylum, border security and deportation."

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

#462

Post by akimbostrawman »

pkulak wrote: post #79
Aachen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of cheaper, better, and open source is shittier exactly?

> What part of cheaper The iPhone 17 is the same price as the Pixel 10 > better But the iPhone 17 has better hardware features, like UWB, better cameras, and a _far_ faster CPU. > open source Only if you install Graphene, and then never install anything that requires Google Play Services, which is basically every commercial app.

>requires Google Play Services, which is basically every commercial app.

Not my experience at all. Only some banking apps or apps that otherwise hard depend on play services feature like google pay. GrapheneOS offer isolated unprivileged sandboxed Google play services for those.

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

#463

Post by duskdozer »

divegeek wrote: post #244
freefaler wrote: post #60

Yes, it's a very unfriendly decision by Google. However, I don't think they haven't measured the number of users installing apps outside of the Play store. May be they just don't care about the small % of total users who are a large % here on HN. This is a part of a bigger trend, Cory Doctorow spoke about 13 years ago in his "The coming war on general computing": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg And this w…

It's unfriendly to developers and power users, but very friendly to the other 99.999% of users. I used to work for Google, on Android security, and it's an ongoing philosophical debate: How much risk do you expose typical users to in the name of preserving the rights and capabilities of the tiny base of power users? Both are important but at some point the typical users have to win because there are far, far more of…

In that case, an ID-gated play store and a developer settings toggle with a scary warning message would serve the same purpose for that 99.999% while leaving the rest minimally affected. Clearly that's not enough for google.

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

#464

Post by [deleted] »

divegeek wrote: post #244
freefaler wrote: post #60

Yes, it's a very unfriendly decision by Google. However, I don't think they haven't measured the number of users installing apps outside of the Play store. May be they just don't care about the small % of total users who are a large % here on HN. This is a part of a bigger trend, Cory Doctorow spoke about 13 years ago in his "The coming war on general computing": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg And this w…

It's unfriendly to developers and power users, but very friendly to the other 99.999% of users. I used to work for Google, on Android security, and it's an ongoing philosophical debate: How much risk do you expose typical users to in the name of preserving the rights and capabilities of the tiny base of power users? Both are important but at some point the typical users have to win because there are far, far more of…

[deleted]

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

#465

Post by the-scrabi »

divegeek wrote: post #244
freefaler wrote: post #60

Yes, it's a very unfriendly decision by Google. However, I don't think they haven't measured the number of users installing apps outside of the Play store. May be they just don't care about the small % of total users who are a large % here on HN. This is a part of a bigger trend, Cory Doctorow spoke about 13 years ago in his "The coming war on general computing": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg And this w…

It's unfriendly to developers and power users, but very friendly to the other 99.999% of users. I used to work for Google, on Android security, and it's an ongoing philosophical debate: How much risk do you expose typical users to in the name of preserving the rights and capabilities of the tiny base of power users? Both are important but at some point the typical users have to win because there are far, far more of…

It's not even about power users. The article describes this pretty well: It is about the fact that this action will destroy or at least severely harm the open source app ecosystem. What I can see is that this already has a chilling effect on app developers releasing apps on F-Droid. You might say why should I care about that when I am one of the 99 % of normal users. But it all comes down to freedom. If you destroy alternatives to the Play Store, you remove the freedom of choice that even the 99 % of users would have if they were willing to switch to proper open source solutions.

Does anyone know if there is a concrete evidence that bespoke measure violates the EU's digital markets act?

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

#466

Post by stavros »

XorNot wrote: post #304
ronsor wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the world loves being shackled by a Meta product for some reason. The allegiance to WhatsApp is mindbending.

Signal desperately needs "Signal for Business". Sell a way for businesses to send trusted communications to their customers in sensitive industries - i.e. healthcare would be a big one. They need both an actual revenue stream, but also that sort of professional messaging can drive adoption which ultimately furthers the Signal mission. Plus all those things could desperately use good secure messaging systems.

Huh, that wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

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

#467

Post by pg3uk »

Of course as rubbish as this is, it could spawn a bunch of new commercial app stores and trigger competition there.

My understanding is side loading is only limited if play services are installed and Google mandates it.

This may give some room to some smaller phone makers to launch less encumbered phones.

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

#468

Post by pg3uk »

spwa4 wrote: post #455
Palmik wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disabling the ability to install arbitrary apps, like ReVanced, etc. benefits other parts of Alphabet. In general, making anti consumer decisions is also easier when you know you can fall back on income from other units.

Then why does Google make so few anti-consumer decisions? I mean, compare Google with Facebook. Surely we can agree Google is the better behaved of those two. Apple only allows software on their macbooks and mac mini, and every release of MacOS it's more locked down. Everything else, from iPhone to the watch, is 100% locked down. Likewise, every version of Windows tries, again and again and again, to lock down progra…

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

#469

Post by mrsssnake »

divegeek wrote: post #244
freefaler wrote: post #60

Yes, it's a very unfriendly decision by Google. However, I don't think they haven't measured the number of users installing apps outside of the Play store. May be they just don't care about the small % of total users who are a large % here on HN. This is a part of a bigger trend, Cory Doctorow spoke about 13 years ago in his "The coming war on general computing": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg And this w…

It's unfriendly to developers and power users, but very friendly to the other 99.999% of users. I used to work for Google, on Android security, and it's an ongoing philosophical debate: How much risk do you expose typical users to in the name of preserving the rights and capabilities of the tiny base of power users? Both are important but at some point the typical users have to win because there are far, far more of…

> in the name of preserving the rights and capabilities of the tiny base of power users

These are the rights of all the users. Take that perspective.

Remotely pushing a code to billions of devices to lock their baisc function (running code user loads) unless the device owner pay and provide sensitive info is a full-scale global malware attack by itself.

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