"When Google restricts your ability to install certain applications they aren't constraining what you can do with the hardware you own, they are constraining what you can do using the software they provide with said hardware." What a bunch of bullshit.

Pardon my French.

When Google restricts your ability to install certain applications they aren't constraining what you can do with the hardware you own,

This guy's proposed solution is legislation. But not to enforce sideloading. No, it's to enforce Google and Apple "making it easier", whatever that means, for someone to run Linux on their hardware Or maybe to write their own OS from scratch? The first seems unlikely to happen anytime soon, and the second sounds unlikely to happen anytime ever.

No one is asking Apple to change any of the core tenets of iOS. What APIs Apple and Google provide to developers on hardware are not under question, and that's the control they have over their platform an integration, the question presented is about not gatekeeping *functionality*.

The bullshit comes in them playing the morality police, or worse rejecting apps for "duplicating functionality" (if an app actually duplicated functionality then people wouldn't download it). It's about stopping the anti-trust related bullshit that comes by *policy* not by control over the OS. At no point are you able to run whatever code you want. The OS still restricts how you interact with the phone, and that's ok. But that is *ALL* they should be able to restrict.

And if a few people want the warm comforting feeling of a mega corp deciding what they should and shouldn't see they can take comfort in the warm confines of their walled garden. At no point is anyone forcing someone to sideload. If a user actively wants to deviate from the iPhone's supposedly perfect design by sideloading an app that is "wrong" in the eyes of the corporate overlord then that's on the user, the iPhone will be no less successful as a result.

I thought the new plan is that every app would need to be signed by a certified developer. You'd still be able to sideload, you just need a cert so that when app turns out to be malicious, they know who to go for.

> they are constraining what you can do using the software they provide with said hardware

It has been a VERY long time since I've seen such a textbook definition of the phrase "a distinction without a difference".

On an Intel x86 PC, even the most locked-down iterations of Windows give users a means of running whatever code they want. If the user doesn't want to run Windows at all, a user can download an ISO of Ubuntu or Fedora or Proxmox or VMWare or GhostBSD or Haiku, make a menu change in the BIOS, and install those OSes instead. Done and done. Windows can be replaced in 30 minutes or less if a user wants to, with nothing but GUI tools and youtube tutorials that are universally accurate (admittedly with slight variations on where to disable secure boot in the BIOS).

On an Android phone, one must unlock the bootloader (which some phones prevent through artificial constraints), then hope that some Good Samaritan has made a different OS for it...and then go through 101 steps involving CLIs, recovery environments, and ADB interfaces...AND those steps and software downloads vary with each model of phone, AND Google gives app developers a means of telling users "sorry, I won't run on a phone you have control over", AND that assumes that a replacement OS is available in the first place...otherwise, the user needs to replace the phone, or go all the way to doing their own compiling of AOSP, which is its own rabbit hole.

So yeah, the argument rings incredibly hollow: "we're not constraining what the hardware can do...but we ARE constraining what the software can do AND constraining your ability to replace that software if you so choose." If the argument is that the constraints are purely related to software, then Google needs to put way more effort into streamlining the ability for users to depreciate the use of whatever software those constraints are implemented to protect. If they aren't going to do that, then they are being disingenuous.

If, in a court of law, they cannot produce documentation regarding the means by which the hardware can be used to run unapproved code, then I would deem them guilty of perjury for making this statement under the current climate.

Phones are filthy and sideloading is not helping

The consumer base is not qualified to make decisions about their rotting banana let alone what they're installing on their favorite plaything.

> they aren't constraining what you can do with the hardware you own, they are constraining what you can do using the software they provide with said hardware

And because of how it interacts with the hardware, by extension restricting what you can do with it - not that even if it were somehow mystically confined to the software only the argument would be any better IMO.

What a wasely, and cunty justification, IMO.

The fact that Android and iOS control so much of the smart-phone market in the US and most other smartphone-using countries cannot be ignored. That power gives them "lock-in" and "network effect" (in the economic sense) power that other operating systems that Android-factory-loaded phones don't have.

If Android controlled 5% of the US and worldwide smartphone market, it would be much less of an issue.

Oh, and if the bootloader is locked, then the phone+firmware+bootloader+blessed operating system (typically

> forcing Apple to change core tenets of iOS by legislative means would undermine what made the iPhone successful.

This idea that apple's success relies on tight integration is only technically true. Apple's early success in the phone market was entirely because of itunes music library lock-in, which was only possible because of the tight integration. Apple fans might have you believe the tight integration was a good experience, and pro-consumer, but it was actually the opposite. They only relented on this "feature" once it became obvious that streaming services were going to replace the itunes library, and the lock-in was no longer a moat users would have to cross.

Blocking sideloading is another attempt to build a moat for users to cross, this time with their library of apps. Its great for apple and google, bad for consumers.

It's my device and software, and I have full rights to use them however I want.

If I want to install malware ... according to Google, I should be able to do so. That's the biggest issue here. Authorities are not infallible. And they have been caught abusing their power throughout our entire history. Today it's an OK app, tomorrow it's outlawed according to the powers that be. /. just recently ran a story of Apple taking down a Torrent app ... outside of their own App Store. You must be a fan of that, right?

You can hide sideloading behind the developer option flag, but leave it be. Period.

> they aren't constraining what you can do with the hardware you own, they are constraining what you can do using the software they provide with said hardware.

That's only relevant when an oligopoly - in this case pretty much a duopoly - isn't in effect, and when there are viable open hardware designs being actively manufactured at scale.

When for all intents and purposes there are only two OSs available for a bunch of closed hardware platforms - for a product which these days is pretty much a necessity of life - assertions like the one that Tunius makes are utter horseshit. Legislating users' freedom in this case is a necessity, and any government that truly wante

Why are we singling Google out here? Sure, they run the Android project, but almost nobody actually buys a Google-branded phone. Surely Samsung or Xiaomi could offer a more open Android device if they wanted to.