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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

#91

Post by gjsman-1000 »

mariusor wrote: post #85
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses die. Cathedrals don't. IBM is 114 years old. Microsoft is 50. Google is 27. Disney is 101. Nintendo is 136 (they'll outlive Steam and the next nuclear war at this rate). The COBOL running banks is 65 years old. Windows NT architecture is 32. The platforms become infrastructure, too embedded to replace. How many bazaar projects from even 10 years ago are still maintained? Go through GitHub's trending repos…

Any of the BSDs (well 2BSD is the oldest on a quick search), the linux project, the GNU C lib and GCC, etc. Just because you can't think of it, it does not mean it doesn't exist.

> Any of the BSDs (well 2BSD is the oldest on a quick search), the linux project, the GNU C lib, etc. Just because you can't think of it, it does not mean it doesn't exist.

Did BSD defeat Linux? No. Which BSD is even the right one? BSD's biggest success is living on as the foundation of Apple's Cathedral in XNU, and PlayStation's Cathedral in the PS4 and PS5.

Did Linux stay a bazaar vendor? No - 90% of code has been corporate contributed since 2004. Less than 3% of the Linux Foundation budget goes towards kernel development. Linux is a Cathedral, by every definition, and only exists today because Cathedrals invest in it for collective benefit. It's a Cathedral, run as a Cathedral joint venture, to be abandoned if a better thing for the investing Cathedrals ever came along.

GCC? Being clobbered by Clang. Less relevant every year. Same with GNU coreutils, slowly getting killed by uutils.

Firefox? Firefox only still exists because a Cathedral called Google funds it.

LibreOffice, Apache, PHP, Blender? Professional foundations that get very picky about who is allowed to contribute what. They aren't amateurs and they all depend on Cathedral funding. Blender only got good when it started collecting checks from Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and Adobe. Blender is a Cathedral funded by Cathedrals.

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

#92

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

jadbox wrote: post #7
itg wrote: post #2

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.

You can still install apps outside the play store, but the developer does need to verify their signing information. Effectively this means that any app you install must have a paper trail to the originating developer, even if its not on the app store. On one hand, I can see the need for this to track down virus creators, but on the other, it provides Google transparency and control over side loaded app. It IS a conce…

So let's pick a random example app that might be popular on F-Droid today. Oh, I dunno...newpipe.

Given that Google both owns Android/Google Play Store and YouTube: what do you think they would do with the developer information of someone who makes an app that skirts their ad-model for YouTube?

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

#93

Post by natch »

RedComet wrote: post #49
viktorcode wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call "running unsigned binaries"

They are signed, though. Just not by Google.

“Running binaries signed either by yourself or by whoever wants to spy on you.”

That last part there is the problem.

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

#94

Post by blackbear_ »

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.

GOS allows you to install and use apps from the Play Store and the vast majority of them works flawlessly.

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

#95

Post by bigstrat2003 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #67
nerdsniper wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definitely bazaars which have a very old history. Being that the word "bazaar" has middle-eastern origins it feels appropriate to highlight middle eastern bazaars. Al-Madina Souq in Aleppo is one such bazaar with quite a few shops/stalls/"souqs" dating back to the 1300's or 1400's, such as Khan al-Qadi (est. 1450). Khan el-Khalili in Cairo has its economic marketplace origins rooted in the 1100's-1300's.

Name a single bazaar vendor that's still going more than 50 years in any of them. The bazaar as an institution remains, as it does today, but there's no permanence with a bazaar, just as open-source will never have a permanent victory without becoming a cathedral. Bazaars persist through constant replacement, churn, not victory. Windows NT will be with us longer than systemd and flatpak.

Cathedrals change organizations too. You can't compare the longevity of a physical edifice (a cathedral) to an individual or organization (a bazaar vendor). They are different classes of things.

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

#96

Post by observationist »

chasil wrote: post #64
sidewndr46 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read anything about this? What you are proposing is exactly what is being disabled.

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.

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

#97

Post by nerdsniper »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #67
nerdsniper wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definitely bazaars which have a very old history. Being that the word "bazaar" has middle-eastern origins it feels appropriate to highlight middle eastern bazaars. Al-Madina Souq in Aleppo is one such bazaar with quite a few shops/stalls/"souqs" dating back to the 1300's or 1400's, such as Khan al-Qadi (est. 1450). Khan el-Khalili in Cairo has its economic marketplace origins rooted in the 1100's-1300's.

Name a single bazaar vendor that's still going more than 50 years in any of them. The bazaar as an institution remains, as it does today, but there's no permanence with a bazaar, just as open-source will never have a permanent victory without becoming a cathedral. Bazaars persist through constant replacement, churn, not victory. Windows NT will be with us longer than systemd and flatpak.

No I meant there are individual shops inside the bazaars that are still going under the same brand name for hundreds of years. The El-Fishawy Cafe inside Cairo's Khan el-Khalili bazaar has been operating under the same name since the 1700's[0]. Bakdash ice cream parlor inside Damacus' Al-Hamidiyah Souq was established in 1895.

For me, walking through an old Souq gives me a similar feeling of awe / mortality / insignificance as viewing a cathedral or looking from the Colorado ranch land up to the Rocky Mountains.

Also some cathedrals have remained "Catholic" since their raising, but there are a lot that have changed from Christian to Islamic to Protestant ... both the cathedral and the bazaar's physical buildings are still present from the same era and both are used for their original purpose (marketplace or worship). And both have delibly shaped their regions by being engines of culture, innovation, and power.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El-Fishawy_Café

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakdash_(ice_cream_parlor)

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

#98

Post by SoftTalker »

like_any_other wrote: post #68
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a world of difference between "the OS throws up a bunch of warnings" and "the OS won't let you run unsigned software"

But Apple will change those "warnings" into straight-up lies, and fail to mention the user can override them, and hide those overrides in non-discoverable places: Whenever I try to open an unverified app, this popup comes up saying "[AppName] Not Opened" "Apple could not verify [AppName] is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy." Then there's only two options to either press "Done" or "Mov…

This also implies that Apple does verify that app store apps are free from malware, when that's not the case. It only verifies that they are from a developer who paid the fee and whose apps pass Apple's automated screens.

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

#99

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

omnimus wrote: post #31
jadbox wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still install apps outside the play store, but the developer does need to verify their signing information. Effectively this means that any app you install must have a paper trail to the originating developer, even if its not on the app store. On one hand, I can see the need for this to track down virus creators, but on the other, it provides Google transparency and control over side loaded app. It IS a conce…

Yeah... no. This is normal with desktop computers. Let's stop handholding people. If I trust the source, I trust the domain... I want to be able to install app from its source. Googles/Apples argument would have been much stronger if their stores managed to not allow scams/malware/bad apps to their store but this is not the case. They want to have the full control without having the full responsibility. It's just pow…

And you are completely ignoring viruses, ransomware, keyloggers, the 50 toolbars etc that has been the staple of Windows and before that DOS for over 40 years.

Scam apps are rife in the iOS App Store. But what they can’t do easily install viruses that affect anything out of its sandbox, keyloggers, etc

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

#100

Post by array_key_first »

Aachen wrote: post #61
63stack wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, I'm tempted to call android just a shittier iPhone now

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

1. Not cheaper.

2. I think it's better, I like the UX but that's subjective.

3. Not open source. AOSP is open source. Android is not open source.

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