611–620 of 764 posts
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Yes it is, and no they didn't. Apple has to allow (heavily restricted) alternative app stores, and I'm not clear on whether any actually exist right now.
What Apple restricts and is legal are not the same. Apple is doing malicious compliance and the legal system ain't buying it. But it takes some time and iterations to shake out.
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The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using). I don't think this is true, right? An AOSP build can just decide to still allow installing arbitrary APKs. Also see this post from the GrapheneOS team: https://mastodon.social/@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social/116103...
You can’t really do that long-term as Google will change code that will not match however you are not enforcing this policy So at the very least you’d have to keep patches up to date. Long term divergence could be enough that’s it’s just a hard fork and/or Google changes so much that the maintainer can’t keep the patches working at the same pace I couldn’t read your link as it asks to join mastodon.social
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It is not 'largely the same as OTA' on phones with downgrade protection. Once you lock the device again, it's game over because the bootloader refuses to boot an older version of the OS, and you cannot unlock the phone anymore. Happens all the time in the /e/OS and Fairphone forums. It really depends on the device. E.g. Pixel is quite hard to brick. Though they do sometimes increment the anti-rollback version: https:…
It is still largely the same, those downgrade protections apply to OTAs as well. Those anti-rollback don't brick the device, either. It might not boot to a working OS, but you can still get back to the bootloader to flash something newer. Unless you blindly lock the bootloader without testing if it boots first and the bootloader can't be unlocked again I guess, but that's quite a sequence of bad choices all around
But the Android SPL versions of OTA updates from Android vendors monotonically increase.
It might not boot to a working OS, but you can still get back to the bootloader to flash something newer. Unless you blindly lock the bootloader without testing if it boots first and the bootloader can't be unlocked again I guess,
This is false. As long as the boot loader is unlocked, many phones will boot the downgraded image fine. It stops booting it when you lock the boot loader and on many phones, you cannot unlock it again. You need to boot the OS to enable OEM unlocking again, but you cannot boot the OS because the bootloader refuses to.
The Fairphone community is full of people who though 'oh it boots, so I can lock', locked it and they were in a boot loop and had to send their phone to Fairphone to get it repaired for 60-70 Euro (I don't remember the exact price, but that is the ballpark).
There is an adb command that can fairly reliably detect whether the boot loader can be locked. But I'm not going to post it here, because people have to read the full flashing manual, plus in the past there was a bug where the anti-rollback would trigger even with a newer SPL.
At any rate, flashing is not for most people and it was much easier when there was no rollback protection. Of course, rollback protection does make phones much more secure.
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I wonder if your experience is based on Pixel or older/other Android devices that do not have rollback protection.
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So you're saying that if I open a restaurant I'm free to poison the food and you can just decide whether to eat there or not and no government should be able to forbid me to do this?
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Well, Google has marketed Android as an open source operating system (AOSP) and openness about the system [1] and encouraged manufacturers and developers to build on it based on the premise of openness and of course being "free". People advocated for Android because it was open source compared to other alternatives. But with this change they are simply ending that openness. People that have developed F-Droid and othe…
I want Google as an app, not OS. Hear me out. Imagine an open device where you can run Google as just another sandboxed app. Inside, they can exert all the control they want. My bank and government can force me to use Google. Then, at least I control my hardware and my OS. It's just nasty to have your device and OS controlled by an antagonistic entity. I see this in people why have used antagonistic software for deca…
But Google doesn't want you running their app and not their OS, this is the whole idea behind Android and their hardware in general :)
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Why won't they just use Bank Transfers? Using Checks or Credit Cards for Payments between companies sounds completely insane and stupid
Yes, it is completely insane and stupid. Direct bank-to-bank transfers require significant administrative work to set up, and may still incur bank fees. For individual consumer accounts most people can use Zelle but it's not universally available.
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I’ve found the mobile websites for a lot of these cases to be fine. Not a great UX but not a blocker
Wait till you see how hostile Reddit is when you try and access via a browser on a phone
Reddit is the epitome of enshittification.