Those who complain about iOS being a “walled garden” should understand why Apple doesn’t allow sideloading.
We already know. It’s because Apple wants their 30% cut, you fuckin’ dunce.
What makes Apple think they’re the only ones who can “keep their users safe” from malware? Google can’t do it just as well? Amazon can’t? Samsung? Sony? Wal-Mart? F-Droid? Plenty of malware on the Apple app store.
I don’t know why this is news. Most consumer Android phones, Google’s included, require you to acknowledge a warning before the ability to sideload is enabled. Their stance has always been “at your own risk, we don’t recommend it” and we always just laugh and say “okay, whatever dude” before we do it anyways.
we always just laugh and say “okay, whatever dude” before we do it anyways.
The thing is for people who aren’t used to modding and you try to side-load a random cool app on their phone (or somehow they end up doing it themselves) they might be frightened and may even cancel the installation.
A family member always downloaded and installed APKs from the internet and didn’t know about the Play Store cause that is how you did things on Windows.
The person is question has low tech literacy, and they were doing this for years
Yup. Some people try out Linux (and to some extent MacOS, although their app store is a lot less all-encompassing) and attempt to do the same thing, finding random executables online that may or may not cause issues and may or may not even be from the actual developer themselves.
The ubiquity of Windows means that MS’s software decisions - good or bad - have knock on effects to other software, such as people doing as you say to find apps, as well as things like ignoring security prompts because of how poorly they implemented Window’s User Account Control dialogues.
It’s not always a bad thing, sometimes it can act as a positive pressure to improve - e.g. Window tiling/snapping becoming a much more widespread feature after Win7 included it. But man it really can be a bad thing sometimes.
I will with you halfway through with this, here is how I view it.
If you have little experience with telling between safe sources and sketchy, then yes, stick with the defualt.
If ypuu know about some safe appstores or repositories then that’s when you could say you are qualified to make thes decisions. Like I know Fdroid is safer and better than the defialt on everyway for the users best interest, but if you dont know your sources then you should not sidelode untill you do know how to make good decisions.
What he really means is “we want to take your freedom away and lock you into our proprietary ecosystem so we can mine all of your data and extract as much profit from you as possible”
I agree with him. If you don’t know what you are doing and just blindly install something off the Internet, it’s a security concern. I would not recommend that most users side-load apps, either. You have to remember that this crowd is not representative of the average user.
Just don’t take the option away from those of us who do know what they are doing.
Fuck you Pichai, fuck you Google, fuck you Big Tech. I’m not doing what you are telling me, I’m not using your crappy proprietary services that are built to spy on everyone, I’m not watching your shitty advertisements, I’m definitely not giving you any of my data. I hope your piece of shit company goes bankrupt and you end up on the street, that’s where you belong to. I’m not a slave of your totalitarian system, I’m free to choose where I download my software and what software I want to run on my devices. I do everything to avoid your surveillance capitalism, I use FLOSS software wherever I can. Your business model is a piece of trash, it will inevitably fail at some point. I am sure that you will try to do everything to mislead the public and to get them to believe your lies, but not everyone is as stupid as you would like them to be.
“We’re trying to strike a balance. Apple’s iPhone only allows the App Store, but we believe in choice, so on Android we allow you to sideload and install additional applications.”
I’m so conflicted about it. I don’t want people to have to suffer for intentionally or unintentionally installing garbage on their phones, but I can’t let that take away from how I use my device as well.
Google Chrome isn’t on the Microsoft Store on Windows or macOS Store on macOS. Should I stop “sideloading” it according to his advice?
Yes, actually no one on this planet should be using Chrome or any proprietary browser when superior FLOSS alternatives like Firefox and LibreWolf exist.
Clearly this is BS. Sideloading is perfectly safe if you just reputable resources.
What he’s really saying if that the average user is too dumb and will install any rubbish from anywhere. He’s not wrong but that shouldn’t prevent competent users from sideloading.
At least they’ve made the process scary enough that the average user don’t even bother to do it
It’s a non issue that shouldn’t be given any time.
I’ve sideloaded for years and never had any malware.
He doesnt want to name specific types of people or it might make it seem like google attacking specific people. So instead all users get bundled in this. They will use the most careless users as a reason to take it away from all users. It benefits them.
I think that Google really just wants to get less and less people to sideload and then shame others that do through public shaming. ‘oh that’s dangersous son; you shouldn’t be sideloading that Fdroid app! Google said so.’ That’s why they brought it up to begin with, this is as google goes over court with epic games over the app store fee.
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