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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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Android
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No. This will conflict with EU laws.
Yup! Sideloading is legally required to be available by the EU Digital Markets Act by March 2024. Both Apple and Android must comply!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act
Does apple comply? Just asking as I do not have an iphone and was under the impression its not possible.
It is rumored that Apple will allow sideloading in the EU in the next big iOS update.
The las was recently paseo, shock be followed by march 2024
side loading has always been available on apple Iphones, it's just been locked exclusively down to their developer program for debugging and testing purposes and said installed apps are only valid for a limited amount of time. I expect it will use the same framework that the dev program uses, just not as restricted. That being said i can forsee them region locking it.
Ahh, so the only thing saving us from a corporate dominated future is laws...
Well I'm an American, I'm sure if they wanted, they could always make a EU version and US version. I'm a bit worried for the future.
Edit: Spelling
Android is open source, and there are many forks of it already. If they were to try this, those of us who care would just run a fork of Android.
Assuming that there will be phones with unlockable bootloaders sold in the US in the future. There are precious few of them now. Importing's always an option (and quite easy these days), but then you run into the problem of band support.
But the vast majority won't, and that's an issue.
Burning a new ROM is just as hard fora regular user as jailbreaking an iPhone, so practically it doesn’t make a difference if android is open-source or not.
Also, even though core android is OSS, what you and i run on our phones heavily depends on the play framework which is Google proprietary. Amazon has tried and failed to fork android before with its fire devices and that hasn’t worked.
FYI GrapheneOS is trivial to install (you don't need to do all that exploit and root nonsense you used to have to!) and runs entirely without Google Play Services (unless you want to install them in a less-invasive way, which is also officially supported)
Thanks, bug. It’s gotten better for those of us with some background, but I’d definitely not say it’s trivial for a regular android user to use. GrapheneOS only supports Google Pixels launched after August 2020 for starters. The recommended easy way to install GrapheneOS still needs you to OEM unlock and may need a factory reset as well. Jailbreaking might technically be harder, but this is hard enough.
The only way something like this can become mainstream is if popular smartphone manufacturers intentionally supported an alternative distribution (like GrapheneOS), which i don’t see happening for business reasons including the possibility of a fallout with Google.
Even though android is open-source, the hurdles for running an alternative are around the proprietary stuff we depend on in the ecosystem.
I'd say having a Pixel is the only real blocker, as unlocking the bootloader and factory resetting the phone are both a couple of clicks in the settings that anyone can follow. I remember the days of rooting and installing cyanogenmod on early Android phones and compared to that the process today is really trivial!
You’re glossing over a lot of complexity that the GrapheneOS team is doing for you. The reason that they only support Pixels is because Google is relatively open. Their FAQ says the following:
You can’t expect Android users to be able to en masse move to a fork if Google decides to close the tap.
I have LineageOS (CyanogenMod) running on one of my spare phones and it is easier now than it used to be ten years ago (speaking from experience), but you still need to have a phone that is supported, and the OEM needs to allow unlocking. I had to wait a couple of weeks to be able to unlock. So it’s definitely not trivial.
Not meaning to gloss over, it's their hard work that makes it a nice experience! It's always been the case that some devices are more moddable than others, comparing the ones that are simplest is the only comparison that really makes sense though.
As for users moving en masse it obviously wouldn't be trivial, but the theoretical removal of side-loading wouldn't happen overnight so there would hopefully be plenty of time for more solutions to pop up.
EU laws (btw, afaik, India has similar requirement now) is one of the reasons which will make disabling alternative installation option very complicated if Google would want to.
I do not think it will want to do this, though.
I love the EU.
Hoe does Apple comply ,
Law comes into effect march 2024. Apple will need to comply then
Watch how they will act like it was their decision.
AFAIK they have no way of doing that. This would be a huge undertaking.
Doesn't Apple already allow side loading to some degree?
You can just put an app onto a iDevice through iTunes, without having to run it through the App Store. Apple even puts out a specifically outdated version of iTunes that still retains much of the App functionality.
It's not as though they're trying to build the feature in from scratch.
I have a few side-loaded apps on my phone through TrollStore. iirc they don’t support anything relatively new though.
Why would it be a huge undertaking? Allowing installing apps from package files obtained from anywhere seems like a trivial change to the software for a company with a lot of resources.
They have until 2024 to comply
Unreal Engine returns with a vengeance.
Until there is US, until there is android, until there is google, until there are laws...