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Comment by josephcsible

4 years ago

> Another competitor would need to make it really, really easy to make apps performant when ported over with minimal work

But this is completely impossible, and Google helps make it that way. Their SafetyNet API lets apps verify that the device is running an official, unmodified Android build, and a lot of very popular apps will refuse to run otherwise.

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josephcsible

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heavyset_go  4 years ago

SafetyNet makes it impossible to run most Android apps on Linux using a container-based solution like Anbox.

SafetyNet is also stifling innovation.

Linux/*BSD/macOS can run many Windows apps without emulation via WINE, and those innovations allowed Steam to create potentially billions of dollars in value by making many of their games cross-platform with Proton, and allowed them to create new products like the Steam Deck. SafetyNet precludes ever creating value like that with mobile apps.

Although they use emulation in WSL 2, Microsoft has done something similar with WSL and Linux apps, creating an untold amount of value for not only their platform, but for millions of developers, as well. SafetyNet prevents using something like WSL to run mobile apps on Windows.

For those reasons, you can't build an alternative OS and run many Android apps on them with a compatibility layer, despite apps without SafetyNet working pretty well using compatibility layers like Anbox.

matheusmoreira  4 years ago

There's no way to fake this? I just looked it up and it seems Magisk is able to fake these attestations somehow. I remember using it to get some mobile games to shut up about my rooted phone. How would rooted devices and custom ROMs work otherwise?

I hate it when these fucking companies use cryptography to control us. Cryptography should be empowering us...

  • josephcsible  4 years ago

    Magisk can fake them for now, but only because Google still supports some pre-TrustZone phones. On newer phones, you can't fake TrustZone, and eventually older phones will just always fail SafetyNet.

    • matheusmoreira  4 years ago

      That sucks. If this is what the future holds for Android, I think I'm just gonna switch to Apple already. There's no point to Android if Google insists on destroying everything that made it great.

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