Technology

Making users wait 24 hours doesn't improve security; it's an anti-competitive change designed to make the Google Play store seem like less of a hassle in comparison.

Can someone please come out with a phone that's an actual computer and help stop this nonsense?

Phones cost a lot of money at this point and I'm completely sick of them being some locked down, surveillance ridden pile of crap. A reasonably built one would be able to replace a laptop at this point if it weren't for these artificial constraints imposed by the stupid fucking suits running things.

""""sideloading"""", oh look who cant say installing software

I do not consider a win, and I will continue applying pressure where I can.

No we didn't win. This is Google making it harder to install the programs you want, rather than the programs Google wants you to have.

It’s not side loading. It’s installing software on the device you probably paid multiple thousands for that you no longer own.

So, we will have to enable developer mode for that? How long before banking and government apps refuse to run if you have "sideloaded" apps installed? This will be the same as not allowing the majority of people to sideload. No win in here, just an advanced strategy from google to make us conform

To call the install of apps of your choice as «sideloading», means that they have won.

Microsoft appeared to walk back Recall until they suddenly brought it back unannounced and doubled down. So I'll believe it when I see it

I'm writing an app that I will distribute only through f-droid. The people I would like to share it with are typical, non-technical android users. Before those changes I could just send them a link to f-droid apk and explain it's just another app store or send a link to the apk directly and probably most of them would be able to install it. Now I would have to tell them to do all those weird things first, things that look suspicious and that they would not understand the purpose of. I don't think anyone will be wiling to do it. This is not a win. The effect will be exactly the same - serious limits on distributing apps though alternative channels.

If antitrust was being enforced, Google execs wouldn't even dream of attempting this bullshit.

Antitrust regulation is probably the easiest way to fix the biggest problems in our society, it is 100% bipartisan, and it is easy to explain to the average US voter. The only group that is against it is the billionaires/ultra wealthy. Instead, politicians are all hyperfocused on culture war mudslinging and bullshit that makes no difference.

Break up Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta (just to start), and watch how the tech industry explodes with innovation again, and the tech billionaire becomes an endangered species. The AI bubble will burst as companies actually need to compete to survive, and thus won't be burning as much resources on crap that clearly doesn't work.

I, as the owner of my device, don't want to wait 24h.

I hope this will popularize the ROM community again. It gradually faded out due to mainstream ROMs having every perk of the custom ROMs but now the custom ROMs can start offering freedom, which no official ROM will offer.

We will win when nobody can tell you what you can or can’t put in your own fucking device.

This isn't a win, this is Google making things shitty for the benefit of no one but themselves.

• enable developer options
• confirm that you are not tricked
• restart phone and re-authenticate
• wait one day
• confirm with biometrics that you know what you are doing
• decide if you only want unrestricted installs for 1 week or forever
• confirm that you accept the risks
• enjoy the few apps that still have developers motivated to develop for a user-base willing to put up with this

It is always like this. Make a very anti consumer decision that everyone hates, then tone it down so the half of those people will say “we won”. This is a loss.

Still worse than it was before. There's no win in that

still just not gonna update my phone for a while until they've for sure have allowed side loading. Got my pixel because it's just a nice phone, and i can put graphene on it when it's paid off. Half of my apps are all from f-droid, too.

Of course we didn't win. the more hoops you have to jump through, the fewer people who will install their own apps and then you lose all of the community support. And Google didn't promise not to change their plans in the future. So you know that they'll promise this now. Maybe they'll backtrack a little if they have to and they will try to ratchet things up six months later anyway.

Real solutions involve either breaking up monopolies or breaking up monopolies, which is why some of the other cell phone vendors' actions recently look positive. If there are two versions of Android that are popularly used, then the banks will have to support both of them and then everyone can run away from Google whenever they feel like it. But if there's only one popular version and Android itself gets more and more locked down then that is Google seizing the entire market and they will cut out all of the other cell phone manufacturers as soon as they can. that will be just as bad as Apple.

My galaxy will let me install but then I get this when I try to run the app:

"side loading" == installing

Narrator: No, they did not, in fact, win.

no.

i'll look into this, but they seem to have used the old strategy of announcing something absurd then back down to what they wanted because of "community pressure"

bonus for not looking bad in comparison, while still being bad.

So fucking glad that GrapheneOS will probably be available for the new Motorola phones next year. I've been on pixels since they were Nexus, and if not for GrapheneOS, I would have jumped ship after the Pixel 4 and moved to Crapple.

Time for another OS. Android is over.

The square app will not run on a phone that has developer mode enabled. I turned developer mode on to disable annoying animations, so now I can't take card payments unless I carry around a second phone.

If Google goes through with this, my payment phone won't be able to run any third party apps.

I kind of wish they hadn’t. Fully blocking these apps would’ve really lit a fire in the open source world to create a serious alternative. Now people will just put up with the 1 day wait and carry on.