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Comment by Dilettante_

3 months ago

>Sideloading has a negative vibe

Maybe you've just been drinking the propaganda? "Sideloading" to me rolls off the tongue no worse than "hotswapping" or "overclocking".

We've always called it "install".

  • There is a distinction between installing something via the primary or a secondary mechanism. If someone said I just had to "install" a windows program and it turned out I had to compile it from scratch and set all the registry entries myself, I would be "astonished"(as in: The Principle Of Least Astonishment).

    I fully understand that language matters and if this was an attempt by Google to de-legitimize this way of installing, that's no good. But for Christ's sake, having different names for different things is not inherently malicious.

    • I don't see why you'd be astonished here. The Play Store downloads the APK and installs the APK. If you've downloaded it already (eg with a browser), you just install the APK. How is that comparable to compiling from scratch and setting the registry entries yourself?

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