Comment by gpm
21 days ago
Google is doing everything in their power to make me move to an iphone... between shit like this, effectively bricking some old models of pixels with un-rollbackable patches that destroy batteries, closing down the android development process, making absurd testing requirements to publish apps, etc.
Google doesn't make better phones, they were just less hostile to the consumer. That seems to be going away :(
As mentioned in OP, Apple is doing the same thing.
I'm aware, I'm saying Google is trending towards being as abusive with their software practices as Apple already is, not worse.
And saying that for me anyways the only reason I have an Android and not an IPhone is because they were less abusive. On unrelated metrics like hardware quality Apple generally seems to do better.
Apple's hardware quality is pretty solid. Using Apple's software is basically an exercise in being a sub.
I have a stroke everytime I try to navigate settings on a iPhone each time someone asks. It's like they don't want you to try and change anything, ever.
Precisely. If I can't control what I put on my Android phone anymore, I no longer have any reason to use an Android. iPhones have normal USB ports now, and that was the other big barrier.
> Google doesn't make better phones, they were just less hostile to the consumer.
And the person you're responding to was pretty clear that the issue if they both do the same thing, Google has no edge in devices.
> As mentioned in OP, Apple is doing the same thing.
The thing is that if Google choses to make Android OS as closed as iOS, I'd rather use an iPhone than an Android phone...
If both systems are similar in terms of features and freedom, then I might as well choose the one that tracks me less and offers a more polished experience.
In the high-end smartphone market, using an OS from a giant ad company is already a compromise for freedom. But if that freedom vanishes, why bother? Apple's hardware and software outclass Google's. And with E2EE for cloud data, I'd at least stop compromising.
Is sideloading a thing on iOS?
Yep, available to anyone. It's much more restrictive though. Basically you need a valid developer certificate to sign apps. You can use your own with a free developer account but you only get so many tokens per week and apps need to have their tokens refreshed weekly.
You can also use an enterprise developer certificate that lasts forever but if Apple revokes it then the app stops working until you get another working cert.
It does require you to turn on iOS developer settings by connecting to a Mac with Xcode installed to enable but then you can manage app installation and refreshing via an App Store like Alt Store. EU has different system where there is no limit on amount of sideloadable apps but the apps still need to be approved by Apple. Alt Store also have a EU specific App Store for that purpose.
I side loaded on iOS for a long time. Get Youtube++ for ad free and I forget the Reddit client I used that was side loaded as well. You can run the server on any PC or Mac that will handle side loaded apps and being on the same WiFi network allows the server to automatically refresh the installed apps. Only big downside is updates are not automatic or simple. To update an app you have to download the new app .ipa and then sign it like you were installing it fresh. Usually it picks up the existing configs and data though. So it's not a full app wipe.
The sideloaded subreddit is where I got into it through.
In legal jurisdictions where Apple is forced to allow it, yes. They have a similar scheme for requiring developers to register and are demanding per-install fees for popular apps, though I'm not sure that will survive regulatory scrutiny in the EU.
Otherwise, I think it's possible to use developer tools to temporarily install apps on an iPhone. IIRC this requires a Mac and has to be repeated every few days.
> and has to be repeated every few days.
7 days for free account.
1 year for paid (until membership ends?).
90 days for TestFlight.
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There's a technical possibility, but it's not a thing, as in there's not a lot of iPhone users interested in that
I was way into the Cydia/Jailbreaking scene back in the day. These days, I find it hard to care about being able to do weird stuff with my iPhone. I just care that it works well.
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Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery"?
Leaving Google for Apple, and expecting a more open app store, is going to be disappointing. I’m not a Google fanboy by any means, just pointing out the landscape out there
Apple throttled devices that had a weak battery, because the alternative is the CPU trying to draw more power than the battery can deliver, the voltage sagging, and the phone rebooting.
By itself, this throttling is a good thing and keeps phones usable for longer, because a phone that is slow is better than a phone that randomly reboots.
The problematic part was that they a) didn't disclose it, and b) did this for phones within the warranty period, so instead of the phone visibly crashing and you returning the obviously broken phone, it just lost performance which you might not have noticed in time to get a free replacement.
The Nexus 6P had the same issue with random shutdowns, and although Google refused to do anything about it some users on XDA developed a patch that disabled all the performance cores completely.
> XDA user XCnathan32, along with assistance from two other users, created the fix and put it up for anyone to give it a whirl. Without getting too technical, the fix shuts down all four of the Nexus 6P octa-core Snapdragon 810 processor’s performance cores that seemingly prevent the phone from properly booting
https://www.androidauthority.com/nexus-6p-bootloop-fix-78930...
Funny how no one really complained about the random reboots but everyone noticed throttling and assumed their phone was "too old" and they needed to buy a new one. Interesting how this move greatly benefited apples bottom line versus improving actual quality of life for the user considering a reboot is 30 seconds perhaps and a slow phone is slow for every second you use it.
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Understood. Poor wording on my part!
> Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery
It wasn’t guise, it actually increased the battery life quite much. People complained about the battery of old phones. The problem was that users did not have choice to opt-out.
There was the opt-out part, but also the complete silence around the issue that comforted people into thinking they needed new phones every 2 years instead of just replacing the battery.
Apple wouldn't have had to do all the song and dance if from the start a popup warned the users their battery lost capacity and should be serviced.
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> Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery"?
It's not about 'saving battery' its about preventing undervoltage that janks everything up.
Having dealt with more than one windows phone that didn't have this feature or had it in a bad way (i.e. 520/521 would just 'reboot', 640 and 950XL would just kill an app) I wish Microsoft would have figured that crap out lol.
No one is expecting Apple to be more open. It's just that the reasons for choosing Android over iOS have been slowly chipped away over time, and soon enough there won't be a big reason to choose one over the other.
No, the batteries had degraded to the point that they could not supply enough voltage and current to stably run the chip at full frequency. Replacing the battery would restore full performance.
> Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery"?
Nope. There was an issue in iPhones and Nexus phones that had been used for a few years where a worn battery could no longer maintain a voltage high enough to meet instantaneous SOC power demand, resulting in unexpected device shut downs.
Apple got the device to quit shutting off without warning by throttling older devices and Google did nothing and just told users to buy a new device.
They both got sued, and both lost.
> If you currently or formerly owned a Google Nexus 6P smartphone, we have some good news: you might be eligible for a cash rebate for those bootloops and spontaneous shutdowns the device was known for.
https://www.androidauthority.com/nexus-6p-lawsuit-2019-97547...
It's not a bug or issue with those phones, it's how batteries behave -- over time, they lose both their capacity and the power they output. Apple decided to throttle their phones via software instead of letting them crash.
I've said this before, but it was the right idea executed the wrong way. iPhones give you a warning when they overheat, and this throttling should have gotten a similar warning with a link to an FAQ explaining the battery dynamics.
> Wasn’t Apple the one actually caught throttling devices with an update to slow phones down under the guise of "saving battery"?
That’s not a true story.
More power to Apple then..?