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And this is why having 3rd party app stores is important. It’s why it matters that Google is killing side loading, if two fucking companies get to decide what you can do on your phone, we’re in a bad spot technology wise
We're in a bad spot technology wise
And the open source movement is such a blind spot to the 'left' as well, even though technology freedom is critical if you want to be able to organise any type of resistance in the digital space.
Lemmy users largely get it, obviously, but centre left people will happily let themselves get locked into the Apple/Google walled gardens even though you're just giving that company a ridiculous amount of power over you.
Right? The collective dismissal of Mastodon from leftist influencers when the Muskening happened was eye opening.
Like, there's a collaborative, volunteer-based platform right over there. You want mutual aid? Open-source is as mutual-aid as it gets.
But it's nerd shit.
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No doubt. I’ve gotten to the point where I have like 6 apps on my phone and it’s in lockdown mode on iOS. And I’d be on grapheneOS if I wasn’t required to use iOS for work.
Can you have your job pay for an iPhone while you have a different personal phone? I’m a big fan of keeping a work device that’s separate from a personal device.
I probably could, but I’m also a recovering drug addict and my partner is pretty hesitant about a second device as it’s another way to hide things. However I’m the head of the MDM team so I’m not really nervous about what the company can see
I thought you were head of the MDMA team for a second and thought that could be rough as a recovering drug addict
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We rapidly need to switch to Linux Mobile. PostmarketOS and Mobian are the two most promising projects, and I would highly recommend anyone reading this to donate to them if you have the means.
Both projects directly use your donations to hire developers to build and polish the critical essentials to get this alternative viable as a daily driver.
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"Sideloading" is their term, invented to make it sound like something it is not. We should not use this word. The correct word is "installing".
You don't "sideload" on Windows when you install software outside of the Microsoft Store™️. There is no real difference or distinction with software on phones, so there is no need for a special word.
I can see Microsoft moving to the same sort of thinking as well. Apple already made Mac OS users jump through hoops when you want to install something from the internet or even through a third party package manager like homebrew.
Microsoft has been trying this for years already. That eventually led to Valve incresing their efforts in the Linux gaming front and releasing the Steam Deck.
See this
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If people were more aware of how to make and install mobile web apps it would be less of a problem.
At least on the iPhone you can still add a site to your screen that can behave a lot like an app, including camera access, location services, and even gyro. And it’s just a website like most “apps” are.
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I don't understand why society accepted that the hardware maker gets to decide what software you run.
That'd be like your car deciding which roads you can take, or your blender deciding you're not allowed to use strawberries in your smoothie.
Are you nuts? Why the fuck would your phone decide which apps you can run?
Maybe our phones are their f’in phones too
Apple welding their phones to their own store, exclusively, is just like paying workers with scrip instead of dollars. This used to be a common practice for capitalists. The scrip is spendable only in the company store.
We have to stop all such anticompetitive practices.
Just a reminder, to stop the practice of getting paid in scrip the American workers had to take up arms and shoot some people. Look up Battle of Blair Mountain. It's not like the capitalists stopped the practice just because it was unpopular, lol. Nor did the anticompetitive practice of paying wages in scrip stop because people called their senators and wrote angry letters.
Agreed, too many people defend the App Store monopoly.
Is it that non tech people have a hard time understanding this? Or is it just all the corporate lobbying bribes?
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"Good thing I got revenge though on Google's sideloading ban by buying a phone that never allowed it to begin with"
We should make webapps for everything. When done properly they are as fast as native apps, can work on any device and do not require a dev license or account.
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Keep on buying, y'all. Show 'em we mean business when we're appalled at their actions. Giving them more money will surely let them know how much we want change!
Oh we are way passed the point where "voting with your dollar" means literally anything. These billionaires are making more money than they ever have in human history. They have literally turned all of society across large swaths of the world into a gigantic personal capital generator. It makes literally not a single difference if all of us here boycotted them or not. It's meaningless.
Tell that to Disney.
A big problem is that people need smartphones for so much of modern life. You can stop watching Disney and your life won’t meaningfully change but it’s really hard to avoid evil smartphone companies. Part of me wants to switch from Apple but what would I go to? Samsung who’s just as bad about right to repair? Google who’s Google? I’m not saying it’s impossible but I’m not going to say that the choice is as easy as cancelling a streaming service.
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they would have been perfectly fine it was simply that the optics were bad enough to warrant a response
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Who could have seen this coming from the company whose CEO gifted Trump a literal gold plaque in celebration of his reelection?
I’m surprised it stayed up as long as it did. I thought Apple would have taken it down within days.
Anyways I’ve seen this as a non app alternative: https://www.stopice.net/
I mean yeah honestly probably the best, but I’ll take any chance to rant against the idea of walled garden tech
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Something sensitive like this really should be a PWA (and web app for iOS users)
Between Apple walled garden and the new dev signature thing from Google, those big players should do like control over what we can do as users.
I agree with you, PWA is the way but Apple has been slow walking integration for years now (see https://brainhub.eu/library/pwa-on-ios)
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What's objectionable about it Apple? Hmm?
They can only buy a politician so many gold statues.
Google's sideloading restrictions seems almost like its perfectly timed... 👀
Anyways, Google can gargle my:
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It's really sickening that every corporation has thrown in with the new fascist regime.
At least these assholes used to pretend to be "not absolutely awful". Now they're just mask-off oppressors.
It's no accident that capital is aligned with fascist. Line must go up.
Line must go up.
It's such a stupid axiom but it explains everything perfectly
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This sucks, and they shouldn’t have to do this, but could they make it a webapp?
Did you mean "web site"? Because, according to Cory Doktorov an app is just a website wrapped into enough IP to make it a felony blocking ads in it.
apple and the us government and ice can all suck a dick
I’m gonna play devils advocate here (and probably be monstrously downvoted);
ICEBlock stored the location data of all its users on Apples iCloud Servers. This the perfect target for ICE; a complete database of locations of every person who doesn’t want ICE to know where they are.
One assumption is that that Apple realised how tempting this data is to the current demonstrative administration and purged it before ICE could get their civil-liberty-abusing mitts on it.
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Does anyone remember how the Devs from there didnt want to release for Android because ApPlE iS sOoOo mUcH mOoOrE sEcUrE
Get rekt.
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Why not just make it a website? We're not doing censoring yet, right?
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remember when Tim Apple gifted tRump a golden statue? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
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this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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