51–60 of 564 posts
Google have over-reached.
It is unacceptable to software developers to be unable to install software on their own phones, and this will lead to a successor to Android.
It will take time, but it will now happen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder where the term started? Android itself calls it "install" when you open an APK file, there's not mention of "sideload" in Android at all as far as I can tell.
There is, actually, but in a different context. The `adb sideload` command allows you to boot a device from an image without flashing it.
There is an option in the TWRP recovery tool to sideload any capable .ZIP file.
We need to stop calling it "sideloading", we should call it freely installing software. The term "sideloading" makes it sound shady and hacky when in reality it is what we have been able to do on our computers since forever. These are not phones, they are computers shaped like phones, computer which we fully bought with our money, and I we shall install what we want on our own computers.
As someone who doesn't really care about apps, if I wanted to move away from Android what phones and OSs are worth considering?
If you want to install software on your Microsoft Windows computer, it has to be signed by a verified developer, otherwise you get an overridable warning that the developer cannot be verified, the software may contain malware etc. If you want to install software on you MacOS machine, the same thing applies. It must come from a verified developer with an apple account, otherwise you get a warning and must jump through…
No, this is just false. There's numerous, well-documented instances of malware making it past gatekeepers security checks. This move is exclusively about Google asserting control over users and developers and has nothing to do with security or safety.
The only "huge safety win" comes from designing more secure execution models (capabilities, sandboxing, virtual machines) that are a property of the operating system, not manual inspection by some megacorp (or other human organization).
We need to stop calling it "sideloading", we should call it freely installing software. The term "sideloading" makes it sound shady and hacky when in reality it is what we have been able to do on our computers since forever. These are not phones, they are computers shaped like phones, computer which we fully bought with our money, and I we shall install what we want on our own computers.
If Google provides a permanent mechanism to disable this in developer settings, then this devolves to an inconvenience. The setting to allow unsigned apps could be per appstore tracked by an on-device sqlite database, so a badly-behaving app will be known by its installer.
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 will creep out to the major desktop systems too, Apple is doing it with their stupid "non-verified app" and Windows looks more likely to do so with their "need Microsoft account to login" to windows.