Comment by NDlurker

> This is a very HN view of Android.

Just because you're HN dweller doesn't make it HN view. The openness, freedom, customizability and accessibility (money wise) were the tenets that differentiated Android from Apple devices.

> can I download an app off a random website and install it

This is a straw man. This change hurts third party app stores such as F-Droid the most. I vastly prefer it to Play Store for the same reasons I prefer GNU/Linux to macOS or Windows (discounting the fact that Linux no longer needs hacks to "just work").

nah it was considered more open for users.

When a platform ditches openness, you lose more than a seemingly insignificant market segment that makes no money. Using money as the only metric is stupid and myopic.

I developed my first Android app when I was around 16 years old and I remember distinctly wanting to publish it on Google Play, but couldn't because they required developers to be 18+, and this was even before they introduced strict identity verification requirements. And iOS was a lost cause as XCode famously requires an operating system that only runs on very specific hardware for which I had no money. No matter, I published an apk on a website and ended up reaching a few tens of thousands of users that way. My app ended up transforming a (niche) industry and making a real impact on the world.

If Android isn't open, we lose the last open mobile operating system, which will have immeasurable negative effects on computing as a whole. People will need permission from either Apple or Google to create any mobile program. If you don't fit into their neat little system, you don't get permission. If I hadn't been able to publish my app for another 2 years I probably would've shelved it, decided it was stupid, forgot about it, got busy with other things, and never published it.

I actually use the ability to install custom software on Android. I actually use the ability for Android apps to bundle JITs, and language interpreters, and other things that allow you to extend the app at runtime. The Apple walled garden would be unusable for me. And moves like this one to turn the Android ecosystem into the Apple ecosystem will generally be regressions.

If anything, I'd like more openness in Android. For instance, apps should not have any control over what data I can back up; I should be able to back up every aspect of every app, restore it to a new phone, and apps should not be allowed to care.

You can download torrents on an android and plug usb media devices into it. When I was bicycle touring Europe with my wife a couple years ago we constantly downloaded books for direct input into our kobos and shows and movies to fall asleep to at night you could play from random, often old and crappy, hotel and airbnb televisions. You can’t do any of that on an iPhone.

That said; iPhone is my main phone, has been for a decade or more. But I deeply appreciate what you can do with an android.

I used to build custom apps for my Android all the time, install APKs, transfer files over USB, use USB tethering on my Linux computer, torrent, use a mouse and keyboard (I think iOS can do this now though), use the integrated terminal, etc.

A few years ago, iOS lacked basic features like widgets, NFC, calculator on their tablets, etc. And iOS still has a completely inferior keyboard (I used to write code and essays on my Android while walking) and a completely inferior notification system. Androids are also the only phones still offering a fingerprint scanner, which is way better for me. These nice things all combine well with the oppenness.

What's worse is that we're clearly in a progression of restriction. Bootloader restrictions, app installation restrictions, "age verification" requirements, etc. Openness is being locked down from every angle with serious momentum, it's not anticipated to stop here.

The openness of Android also acts as a check of sorts on how restrictive the walled garden can get. If google were to clamp down on useful functionality in the play store, then you could always install apks yourself. But if the latter is no longer an option, then there's much more temptation to google for the former.

>For you, is the openness of Android appealing as a matter of principle or does it enable you to do things you couldn't otherwise do?

Both. I don't like the idea of locked down computers and that includes phones, especially now that they're so prominent in our lives.

I dabbled in Android development for fun a decade ago and I loved how there was no barrier to entry. I've loaded apps that aren't available on the Play Store and have loaded apps that my friends have made just as fun side projects.

There was a handheld gaming system in the early 2000s called Cybiko. Cybiko and Sega Dreamcast homebrew opened my mind up to the power of computers and having control of your hardware. These things should not be locked down. I liked messing around with making little programs on the Cybiko and downloading homebrew games for it and the Dreamcast. The openness of Android really excited me when it was new because I thought of it the same way as a Cybiko or Dreamcast or PC and not a locked down device where I can only run software approved by the hardware manufacturer.

I modify several apps for my own use in ways that wouldn't get accepted upstream (or are proprietary), and I modify OS components to reduce the impact of opinionated Google UI design (and Apple is worse in this context).

Both, very much both, and I would assume that the 'actually being able to use the device in whatever way I want' feeds back into the 'this should be a thing we can do with purchased-to-own hardware' feeling

I'll chime in with a really basic example. On my Android phone, I can have syncthing run as a background task. I can point other applications to use a data folder, in my syncthing share, and store their persistent state there. The Camera app, for example. Or Obsidian, my current favorite note taking app. Syncthing, by virtue of being always on and manipulating a decades old, very well understood filesystem concept, "magically" syncs all of these changes to every other device I own. Entirely offline, even if the internet is out, because the devices can just talk to each other.

So far, I have been utterly incapable of getting my iPad to do anything remotely similar. It can run syncthing, technically, but not in the background. Apps don't have a shared filesystem structure, so it's difficult to get anything else set up to "save within my shared folder" in a way that would work, and that disregards that the syncing cannot occur when anything else is open. There's all sorts of cloud backup options, but those require the internet and even when they're working, there's this awkward import/export flow that adds friction to the whole dance.

In isolation this would just be a small papercut, I guess, but these sorts of limitations are all over iOS. It's just terribly hostile to anyone not fully committed to the Cloud-first, Apple-hardware ecosystem. Android doesn't care, and doesn't have to care, because it lets me run the software I want. It's a really small set of programs too, at the end of the day. (Firefox with real extensions is the other one.)

Like not be tracked?

Not op, but I used to be a mobile app.

I use this to occasionally build and install Android apps from github.

These are often out of date and need some tweaks but I can do it on a whim (I certainly wouldn't bother if there was a paywall).

Yes.

There is still a point to making a choice. Inconvenient sideloading is still better than no sideloading.

In principle I could never reward Apple with my business for having originated and normalized this.

And pragmatically, I'd like to hold on for as long as I can to the next set of rights that Apple will take away five years before Google does.

Don't buy the FUD claiming this is about "secure app management".