Kinda depressing that all of big-tech seems to have given up “innovating” (finding applications for publicly-funded research), and have become rent-seeking dinosaurs.
Capitalism baby
That sounds illegal.
Depends. Are you from the EU or not?
I am, that’s why it sounds illegal. :D
“Purism makes premium phones…” Haaaaaaaaa 😂
Correction: purism sells mediocre phones for premium prices.
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Not bothered if necessary Il patch every apk before installing it, one more stupid American move that will ultimately give the entire market to the Chinese.
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As a person who experienced the customer support regrading preorders I can confirm this firm is extremly sketchy.
Never had an issue with them. Writing from my Librem 5
…in Singapore…
This article is a thinly veiled ad paired with fearmongering to get gullible users to buy the shit phones they sell (or not, some people have been on “waitlists” for 5+ years after providing a full payment).
Granted, their phones are fully open, but have next to no apps.
Personally I’ll stick with Android 12, rooted, and see what the future brings.
In parallel, Google has rolled out its Play Integrity API, which allows developers to limit app functionality when sideloaded, effectively pushing users to install apps only through the Google Play Store.
All of this while EU forbids Apple to do the same, what is the idea here? Measuring how EU reacts?
Is it the same though? Google is allowing the developers to choose to prevent sideloading. I thought Apple’s issue was that they prevented side loading completely.
…did you read the ad…? It quite obviously answers your question and calls out the difference. The large, glaring one. The one that probably even a first grader would grasp.
Why is it so hard to “Don’t be Evil”
That would mean less money, at least in the short term, but also in the long term as it grants the user the autonomy of optionality, the power to choose some of Google’s edicts. Really it’s about the power to shape the choices of the users in the future. Take their power away. And in the future this will be conducive to leverage this power against the user for more money.
I asked the AI about it, in case anyone is curious https://chatgpt.com/share/68454a70-5cd8-8005-8075-3579244f0ce4
I’m tired of this evil is related to money. When did our species die on the hill that money’s more important than humanity itself?
The moment money became the only way to get food.
That is bullshit, the economy is created to force you into the labor market. This is just a symptom of capitalism.
Degoogled ROMs are gonna be the bomb in the future.
Maybe you should curb your enthusiasm a bit. have you seen what it take to unlock the bootloader from most manufacturers? you might even need your grandma’s birth certificate before you’re allowed to do so in the future
Depends on the manufacturer. Ideally, they’re forced to allow choice, but until that happens, we can at least prefer phones that don’t lock you in.
Certainly depends on where you live.
Unlocking a Samsung phone is trivial here.
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In Singapore, lots of boomers are downloading scam apps from facebook lured by promises of discounts and free gifts, handing out accessibility privileges, and they’ll even argue vehemently against loved ones and bank staff when confronted. When it all inevitably blows up, they blame absolutely everyone except themselves, including praising Apple for some reason.
Being the largest voting block, they managed to get banks responsible for reimbursing their losses and there was even an idea floated of getting everyone to contribute to a shitty scam insurance fund. Many major banking apps are paranoid af and block usage from simple things like usb debugging turned on.
Absolutely stupidity. And there’s nothing we can do about it when the politicians love them so much.
Usb debugging is sketchy as shit. You should almost never turn that on, and immediately turn it off once you’re finished with whatever it is you’re doing with that on.
I have it on all the time in tcpip mode. I need it for file sync and remote streaming my phone with scrcpy. Especially when I use my phone as a wireless webcam.
agree completely. But I recently broke my phone screen, the usual Samsung green screen of death, and I wish I had that turned on to copy the data over lol.
There is exactly one app I use that is available only on play store - my bank.
I don’t really need the app.
They have a website.
I have a few phones, just got one that now has grapheneOS.
I’ve been using it for a few weeks to see how it works before I switch over anything to use it as my main. it has a lot of very interesting privacy/security features to test out.
Either way, I don’t get anything from the play store anymore.
It’s F(L)OSS or a website.
As god intended.
Yikes this really doesn’t look good. Is there any reporting on it from independent journalists (or anyone else who isn’t also advertising their own competing operating system)?
Not that I’ve seen and I’d take what Purism say with a grain of salt: they’ve acted like pretty shitty gatekeepers themselves. Nothing they mentioned in the article seems too egregious in truth and they’re exaggerating the scale of it: Play Store app DRM exists already, and the restrictions on browser-downloaded apps they mention can be bypassed (albeit by having to go into settings) and don’t apply to apps installed through other apps stores (F-Droid, etc).
Nothing they mentioned in the article seems too egregious in truth
Doesn’t it? To be honest, if the article is telling the truth and not exaggerated, I find this pretty egregious. How you installed an app should be irrelevant, so the idea of an API to say “did this come from the Play Store” is fucking shit. And the ability to block installation of apps that call certain APIs entirely is even worse.
I haven’t seen proper reporting but the Play Integrity install source thing is accurate. There’s a reasonably good overview straight from the devil himself.
Lots of things that have very valid reasons on paper that also just happen to give Google a stupid amount of control and will backfire for a somewhat small percentage of people in very bad ways. We’ve been at “you can’t use pretty much any bank unless you agree to either Google or Apple terms” for quite some years now, now we’re giving those same app developers ways to detect if their device has accessibility APIs enabled (useful to protect against bot farms, but also a functional check for “you’re able-bodied”) or is in security support (also a functional check for “not reliant on hand-me-downs”).
effectively pushing users to install apps only through the Google Play Store
I wonder what this will mean for Aurora and Fdroid etc.
This is my immediate first thought seeing this. This fucking sucks. Part of the whole benefit of something like LineageOS or e (OS?) was being able to use Fdroid to stay away from Google as much as possible. Now this is going to potentially make things weird.
doesn’t do anything to f-droid, but probably kills aurora a bit. the developer can prevent their app from being sideloaded. why would one prevent that if they are distributing via f-droid too?
I hope f-droid has nothing to do with Google play store, thought they are their own store without connection to Google.
Well, both will be unable to install certain types of apps.
Aaaaand now I’m carrying around a laptop again, at least mini pcs are tiny now, maybe a small handheld would do…
if any of this shit hinders me, I’ll get a dumb phone and the cheapest iphone available for manditory work-based things and say so-long to being a mobile OS user.
That doesnt appear to be true, the restriction seems to be on apps being installed from file managers, web browsers, messaging, etc.
F-droid and the like are not part of that list.
This still isn’t good, but it doesnt stop you from having F-droid manage your messaging apps it would seem.
Edit: If you’re down voting because you think its using the same method as a file manager as the user that replied to me, this is incorrect. This is also an issue going back several versions.
F-Droid uses a session installer method for 3rd party app stores, it does not use the same method as a file manager.
For an article about a similar issue brought up by similar restrictions in previous updates, you can refer to this article:
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-15-restricted-settings-sideloading-3481098/
You can also refer to this thread in the F-Droid forums which covers this as well, from 2 1/2 years ago:
Which also includes a merged discussion from the last time this came up 9 months ago.
F-Droid has been using the session installer method for quite some time.
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No idea. Play Store then update itself via its at store rev? Preinstalled on a ROM? Via adb?
That said, all the link refers to is a few sample permissions (which would not include F-Droid from that list) and only via certain methods being downloaded. Or they have it wrong and its “opened from”.
Its still shitty, but as of now I’m not sure if there is any impact to installing F-Droid, but I can say the method of installation has complied with previous versions of googles “protections” (as in forced limitations) and that appears to continue to be true.
