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

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522 points josephcsible | 2 comments | 13 Oct 25 15:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.545s | source
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itg ◴[13 Oct 25 16:13 UTC] No.45570037[source]▶
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.
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gdulli ◴[13 Oct 25 16:59 UTC] No.45570668[source]▶
Then you'd be rewarding the company that pioneered and normalized taking away these rights. The next rights you'll lose will probably originate on Apple again years before Google takes them away too.
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dangus ◴[13 Oct 25 19:38 UTC] No.45572461[source]▶
I think this isn’t true at all, before the iPhone existed cellular carriers controlled software on consumer phones.

Remember when GPS navigation was a $5/month app that was a cellular plan addon?

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1. ptx ◴[13 Oct 25 20:22 UTC] No.45572920[source]▶
Only phones sold by carriers were controlled by carriers. You could easily (in Europe at least) buy an unlocked phone and put in a SIM from any carrier of your choice. You could then easily install (i.e. "sideload") Java apps from anywhere you wanted, e.g. from a storage card or over Bluetooth, although some permissions were restricted unless you bought an expensive code-signing certificate.
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2. dangus ◴[13 Oct 25 23:13 UTC] No.45574325[source]▶
As I recall, in the US at the time the best networks were CDMA and had more strict device activation requirements, especially Verizon.