I have no idea why so many of those commenters are anti consumer rights. Android proves that it’s not a security issue. Why are they so brain broken that they are actively against opening up their walled garden, like it compromise their apple product purchases in some way.
I definitely like my computers (including my phone) being open to me, and I love having f-droid on Android.
Even so, I think there’s a genuine case for security of a walled garden, even though I prefer the alternative.
Having the option to install 3rd party is another attack surface, and gives a chance for the market - or authoritarian control - to to veer towards not being vetted by that walled garden.
I.e. if a popular enough developer chooses not to publish through the app store, you either accept their personal guarantees or refuse to use that software. If your job or school decides not to… then what can you do, even if your school is not competent to keep up to date the security of their lowest-bidder bespoke app store?
But if you can’t side-load, there is no option, which makes them use Apple’s one with its protection.
I agree, that hasn’t turned out that way on Android… except for phones that don’t support Google Play. I hope it never does…
Having the option to install 3rd party is another attack surface, and gives a chance for the market - or authoritarian control - to to veer towards not being vetted by that walled garden.
Authoritarians are always going to be prefer authoritarian app stores where any app that threatens them can be swifty removed.
Authoritarians rule in part via suppression of information. All governments can mandate that specific things be or not be installed on devices, it’s typically only authoritarians that are afraid of unknown things being installed on devices.
You’re forgetting that authorities don’t always work together. Authority sometimes threatens authority.
I’m an anti-Apple advocate and an Android user. And I’m against this law. What good does it bring? These are Apple’s devices; let them do whatever they want with them. Don’t like how Apple does business? Buy another brand. Advocate against Apple. Suggest alternatives. But do not force them to do things how you like. It’s just toxic. I believe that the most anti-consumer thing is when governments try to decide what customers want or need. I hate it when they take me for an idiot (I might often be, but let me make my mistakes and learn from them).
These are Apple’s devices
But that’s the thing - they aren’t. Not once they’re bought. At that point, they’re my device, or your device.
Surely you can see how having a single supplier can be a bad thing, right? That supplier has no incentive to deliver quality. Why would they?
If you want to start baking cookies and sell them, you need to beat several bakers in your town and several companies in the rest of the country if you ever want to be successful and profitable. This is because there are already several well-established suppliers who have proven they make great cookies - why would anyone buy from you?
On the other hand if you’re the only one selling - you can reduce cocoa content in half to save costs, you can replace quality ingredients with cheaper versions for the same reason, you can increase prices as much as you want - the cookie-seeking customer will still buy, because there are no other options.
Sure, you can also be the best baker in the world. You can put love and care into every cookie that leaves your shop. You can care about customers and make sure they get the best stuff, because you have a monopoly and you can enforce that view.
But in reality, what actually happens is that those decisions don’t belong to you. They belong to the soulless company that only has one purpose: maximize profits. And you can be the best person ever, but if you’re working for a publicly traded company you’re at the mercy of shareholders.
Why would you want this? Forget about apple, why would you want this in any field?
But that’s the thing - they aren’t. Not once they’re bought. At that point, they’re my device, or your device.
Well, you may want it to be completely yours, but in fact, there are many things that you can’t and sometimes don’t want to control on your phone. But Apple never claimed that you can control everything. Apple never advertised their phones as having many application stores; quite the opposite, actually. You don’t expect a satellite connection from a phone that doesn’t have it; you don’t expect a phone without water resistance to work underwater. I understand if some product does not meet your expectations, you’re frustrated, but in this case, you received exactly what you asked for. Want something else? Buy from another company. Why force this company to do things your way?
Surely you can see how having a single supplier can be a bad thing, right? That supplier has no incentive to deliver quality. Why would they?
Of course, I can see that having a single supplier can and will cause many issues. The problem for me is that I don’t believe in monopolies. Monopolies are very unstable. Firstly, for a monopoly to form, a few things with low probability should happen: in your analogy, there should be no other cookie provider (neither now nor in the foreseeable future), and customers should be willing to buy cookies that I produce at any cost. In reality, there’s always someone else who’s willing to (or at least can) produce more cookies, and customers are not complete idiots. If I increase the price or lower the quality beyond their limit, very quickly I will be left with full warehouses and a bad reputation and go bankrupt. Secondly, you always have a choice. Present me with a situation, and I will tell you which choices you have (they all may be bad, but whatever they are, they are options). In the case of Apple, there are obviously plenty of choices. They’re not the only company producing smartphones. And even on their phones, there’s Cydia. So, what monopoly does Apple have? Well, they’re the only corporation that can produce iPhones. Should we allow other companies to produce iPhones in this case?
Bill Gates would love you. Microsoft used its position to kill of Netscape. Could you imagine how rich they would be if they could strong arm everyone into only using their products?
To be honest, if Microsoft didn’t give a shit about anti-trust laws and if they just let Apple die instead of investing in them, we wouldn’t have Apple today. Which - to be clear: would be a great thing.
Maybe we should actually all strive to be more monopoly-oriented, the laws be damned.
Because Apple and Android are a duopoly and virtually a global one. And you throw all the pro-consumer laws at monopolies and duopolies, to strip them of any leverage they might have over consumers
But why though? I’m serious. People willingly want to be customers of this. They know that *polies are going to have leverage on them and still buy their product. Why should we say, ‘No, we’re not going to let you do that’? Or maybe you think that people are just not informed enough and don’t understand the consequences of their actions? Then maybe we should educate them instead of trying to control?
This logic makes literally zero sense
In this case, the government isn’t forcing the customer to do anything at all. If you don’t care about it, then absolutely nothing will change for you. The only thing it does is provide more options for people who want more options.
except it is a security issue for those not tech savvy I had to enable parental controls on some family members phones cause they enabled side loading somehow and managed to royally fuck up their phone
Not really, it’s not much of an issue on Android. iOS will probably do the same, but on Android if you sideload an app that could be malicious, the Play Store has play protect and scans malicious apks like an anti virus. But also phones are much better sandboxed and secured then desktop, so their security against malicious software is much stronger.
While not impossible, you have to try fairly hard to fuck up your phone like this. I’d be actively impressed if your story is true (particularly as you used the plural), and if so I’d like to know what they were specifically trying to install that fucked up their phones.
It’s just statistically more likely they downloaded a malicious app from the Play Store than had any chaos side loading.
The plural is I just do it now cause i don’t wanna have to deal with it again and I don’t trust them but it was a obvious scam they clicked on and guy over a phone talked her through it
Moves like this always assume that location equals citizenship. As an EU citizen living in North America, a move like this means that I would not get the remedy that Apple legally owes me (or would owe me if I owned an iOS device)
The main thing I’ve been sideloading on Android for a decade is a fan implementation of the Dominion card game called Androminion. It was trademark cease and desist removed from the Play Store a decade ago, but you can still get the apk on Github
There’s a couple other things. One big gap in both the Google and Apple stores is the complete absence of adult content. I’m amazed there’s not more of a clamour for adult apps among either userbase, given that most people don’t own a normal computer. Sideloading could plug that gap
Reading the comments from that article is a prime example of how a cult functions.
In reality this will have a 0,002% impact. Most phone users are tech-illiterate and have no idea how to use their devices. You expect these people to go to a different store? On Android you can have other app stores, why don’t you have? Because Play Store is default and all app developers want to be where most users are, not on a 3-4% user share store.
It will most likely be background noise in the first months and everyone will go back to the App Store. The only people that will use an alternate store will most likely be the same ones that use F-droid, so 0,002% of the users.
But hey, it’s better to scream how this whole thing is making their devices less secure, because Apple told them so.
I think that’s exactly the problem. The real user benefit will be very small, but in order to enable those changes, functionality will be implemented on everyone’s phones to support sideloading. In my eyes, this increseas the attack surface against iPhones. Time and time again alt stores have been used to distribute fake apps and malware on Android, and the victims are often those users who haven’t asked for sideloading and are unlikely to use it intentionally.
Yes, maybe this will enable an F-droid equivalent on iPhone and it will be great to have direct access to open-source apps. But is this niche addition worth potentially reducing the security of all iPhones? I’m not convinced.
But here’s the thing - side loading, even on android, is an opt-in feature. The user has to actively go out of their way to sideload an app. Even if an app tries to do it behind your back, you must first enable its ability to do so.
Yes, this doesn’t exist when ADB is involved, but in that case you have to go out of your way to enable USB debugging (and be stupid enough to plug your phone into someone else’s computer). The vast majority of iPhones will never have sideloading enabled by their users. The EU isn’t grabbing their balls and saying that all users must have it enabled by default, otherwise they’d be going after Android too.
Sure, I get that. The issue is that as soon as you introduce the ability to install apps from outside the App Store, it becomes possible to trick unsuspecting users into clicking buttons they don’t understand. By designing a web page to look like an actual Apple page, a malicious party could convince users to “opt in” to outside sources, in a similar way in which phishing websites harvest users’ online banking credentials. Currently, this kind of attack is entirely impossible on iPhone.
Doesn’t this argument essentially boil down to “people are stupid and we should take away their freedoms to protect them from themselves”? I’m not going to say that most people would make use of being able to install 3rd party apps, or even that it won’t give malware more chances to get people. But people can get themselves hurt or compromise their electronic security in any number of ways taking away people’s choices until they can’t make bad decisions anymore just doesn’t seem worth it to me
I would rather have a “all users must have root access to their devices” or all software must be user replaceable integrated into the law. We let Apple do their own thing, but adventurous users could try installing android and such on the iPhone (similar to how the asahi project is making Linux on M series macs a reality)
