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I, too, hate web dev being the standard. It's inevitable though. Mostly OS agnostic, easy to learn, etc.
I don't see why it's inevitable at all. Browsers are incredibly useful and will always have their place, but they don't have to be everything. Why would you say it's inevitable? There are plenty of other OS agnostic frameworks on which to build programs, and not everything actually has to be OS agnostic imo. I don't write anything with Windows in mind
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I don't know about you, but my Pixel 6a already does this. When I go to install an APK not from the app store directly it warms me, requires me to acknowledge that the APK was downloaded through Firefox, and acknowledge what permissions it is requesting.
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I don't see why it's inevitable at all. Browsers are incredibly useful and will always have their place, but they don't have to be everything. Why would you say it's inevitable? There are plenty of other OS agnostic frameworks on which to build programs, and not everything actually has to be OS agnostic imo. I don't write anything with Windows in mind
If you write desktop software and don't ship a Windows version, that's like 90% of users you're missing out on. Android vs iOS you lose half. Not everyone wants to learn C++ for qt and by the time you get to things like Flutter, might as well use Tauri and some lightweight js framework.
Not an issue if you only do FOSS, but commercial software is always about lowest possible cost to build
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wrote last edited by [email protected]
I think they're both pretty big problems. An open OS and hardware that supports it seems to be a huge hurdle, but at least there is a clear vision of how to solve it. The problem you bring up though... It seems like we've almost gone too far at this point and it's gonna be really hard to put the cat back in the bag. It seems like something we need to solve with legislation potentially?
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Bad analogy with cars there. A catalytic converter doesn't change what you can or can't do with your car. It would be equivalent to, say, government mandate a minimum energy efficiency for phones. Most people including me will have no problem with that.
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Even people who are not being supported by any IT department at all? For example, home users. If they break their device they will learn how to not break their next one and therefore become more technologically proficient.
they will learn how to not break their next one
Lmao
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my take on it is that it was a mistake to push end-to-end encryption on every chat. now the government wants to remove privacy for everyone, because some people are going to abuse it.
it would have been a better approach to make privacy through encryption possible, but somewhat technical so non-techy people aren't going to use it much.
context: EU tries to implement "chat control" (again) which is basically removing user's privacy on private chat messages by letting the government spy on it.
governments are trying to take away privacy from regular people so we never should have tried to give it to everybody
Wtf?????? That's completely asinine.
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I finally want to switch to android and boom: Custom ROMs and "sideloading" gets swept off the platter. Well ok I guess I‘ll just wait for a good linux mobile OS
SailfishOS. Fun fact, it's also finnish.
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Some of these comments are wild.
The OS should not at all stop me from doing what I want to do. Ever. Not even if that means I can fuck it up.
They can warn me when I attempt to do things that could fuck shit up. They can make it a bit harder to navigate to certain things so I'm less likely to fuck shit up. But it's my god damn hardware. I should be able to run and configure the software on it as I see fit.
From a personal freedom POV, I agree. But, if it was easy it would be a support nightmare.
Google and Apple scan every app that gets loaded into their app stores for malware. There's also a lengthy review process, even just for updates. Some malware does still slip through, but it's a trickle compared to what gets blocked. If sideloading apps were easy, my younger sister would be in so much trouble. She'd have various accounts phished within a day. She'd install something that drains the battery within an hour and not understand what was going wrong. And, she's relatively tech savvy. I have no idea how the older generation would survive.
Of course, since Apple and Google make 30% of every sale on the app store, they're not purely motivated to just keep their users safe. The real problem is that there is a duopoly in smartphones. Apple and Google have essentially the same policies, and if you don't like them you have no other options. If there were a dozen OSes, there could be smart phones for Granny that had everything locked down, and smart phones for h4x04z that didn't. Companies that struck a good balance between protecting their users and allowing their users freedom would do well in the market. Companies that didn't would shrink and fail.
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Can't IT lock things down if they so desire? That is the owner of the device using it as they see fit: Locking it down so the non technical users of the device can't break it. That you keep suggesting that devices should come out of the box restricted would make your IT job obsolete and in fact impossible to perform.
Edit: And before you ask yes I have worked in IT support, although I currently do not.
Not corporate IT, but IT for home users, back in the days when things were much less locked down basically every computer i got access too was completely crawling with malware. Had tons of people lose all of their data including family photos and the like because they dowloaded something dodgy off limewire and their system just let them run it.
Why cant you guys understand that the vast vast majority of computer users are not technical? And as such need those safety rails in place to save them from their own ignorance?
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A hidden option to unlock power user mode solves this
Yeah exactly. Though i would personally say a bit more obfuscation is needed then a simple hidden switch.
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Because making a power user take a more complicated path to achieve something is better than having an incopetent user brick their entire machine by accident?
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If you write desktop software and don't ship a Windows version, that's like 90% of users you're missing out on. Android vs iOS you lose half. Not everyone wants to learn C++ for qt and by the time you get to things like Flutter, might as well use Tauri and some lightweight js framework.
Not an issue if you only do FOSS, but commercial software is always about lowest possible cost to build
wrote last edited by [email protected]Sure, but imagine a world where you could run a JVM (just as an example please don't focus on that lol) on your phone (and yes I know Android is JVM-esque, but you aren't just running JVM code on there willy nilly due to the way it's designed). There is no longer an Android vs iOS in that case with respect to JVM and even desktop or laptop applications. Of course there would need to be work done on the development side to deal with screen size and all that fun stuff, but these are all solvable problems and things you already have to deal with. QT has very easy to use Python bindings if you want an easy entry to that so that's no big deal. I don't write a lot of GUI code so I don't know the landscape that well, but I've had success with PyQt6 and Kotlin + JavaFX.
Anyway that's all kinda besides the point. We know how to build VMs; we've done it plenty of times. There is nothing magic about JavaScript; it's just a VM. Are browsers incredibly complex and well designed programs? Yes, but they're not special and their role as the backbone of everything doesn't seem inevitable or wise to me.
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They claim this is about security but when your system is compromised there is fuck all they will do to help you.
Fucking hypocritical, control-hungry pricks.
It's about the security of their brand. No sane company wants people walking around, talking about shit their phone is because it keeps getting infected.
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I argue that would be even more of a use case for the device owner to have such control.
Then you'd have rights to control which software your mom can install on the phone.
Why, in the love of all free tech support would I ever want to do that?
I swear, people just don't grasp how normies use computers. I don't want my normie relatives to have me micromanage their devices, I want their devices to be foolproof and do the five things they need to do.
That's not what I want for every device, though, so there needs to be an alternative for people who post on federated social media and performatively use open source software. If there are only two providers in a segment and both lock down all sideloading that's not acceptable, but the concept of locked down devices by itself is not.
This is not such a challenging concept. I am convinced most people in this thread would get it just fine outside of the context of having a knee-jerk reaction to the last thing they read online.
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Not corporate IT, but IT for home users, back in the days when things were much less locked down basically every computer i got access too was completely crawling with malware. Had tons of people lose all of their data including family photos and the like because they dowloaded something dodgy off limewire and their system just let them run it.
Why cant you guys understand that the vast vast majority of computer users are not technical? And as such need those safety rails in place to save them from their own ignorance?
wrote last edited by [email protected]We'll always need safety rails, I think the thing you're missing in most of the arguments you're seeing here is that people want ways over or around those safety rails, and that those safety rails do not need to be as strict as they're becoming. That is not the case currently and that is definitely not the direction AOSP or iOS are interested in going.
Also, just for the record, comparing the modern era of computing to the limewire era is bananas.
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Exactly. Locking basic services behind apps should be illegal. Services must be accessible to everyone.
Yea.. Like some of those parking applications. Ugh.
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Have you people never worked in IT support? Like its all fair and good that you, a power user, dont want the OS to restrict you at all. But for your averrage person to be treated the same is just asking for disaster.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I have worked in IT. People still manage to screw up shit that's locked down. Babysitting everyone because some people are just technologically incompetent is stupid and does not solve any actual problems.
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Yeah exactly. Though i would personally say a bit more obfuscation is needed then a simple hidden switch.
Don't hide it. That's pointless. Make it so someone has to type "I understand what I'm doing and my username is blah" into a box to activate "advanced" mode, after reading a warning, sure.
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wrote last edited by [email protected]
It's an option you have. Personally having to do the same thing for my family, I configure an idiot-proof setup and I don't get random calls from my parents / grandparents.
Blocking sideloading won't help you here either though. You can just leave your mom using Google play store which vets the applications on the store.
You can lock down a device security-wise without locking down a device freedom-wise.
That said, I don't think there ever will be a foolproof device, that's not realistic.
If you want to guarantee someone won't fuck up their device that's what Administration is for. That's what child controls and safety features are for.
Its not that I "don't get it" its that I've been there and done that. And I use the tools given to me to make my life better. Those tools are for managing what my normie grandparents can and can't do, because in reality, they just want to face-time their grandchildren, check emails, and print photos. But they're also targets for scammers.
