Re:Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on Se...
by d1zzy on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @02:16PM
(#24424010)
You don't need to root an Android device to load applications from outside the Play store. The security warning is pretty accurate and useful for most people but if you want to load apps from outside the store then you aren't most people so it shouldn't matter.
There's a reason alternatives to iOS and Android haven't picked up, some of those reasons are because for those that care to side load apps they can already do it on Android (or can go further and replace their OS) so not much incentive for a third mobile OS. If there was a strong enough need for an alternative then that would exist already.
Re:Apple Disabling 'Sign in with Apple' for Epic Games on Se...
by heavyset_go on Wednesday September 09, 2020 @02:52PM
(#24424396)
In future versions of Android, you will need to enable developer mode on Android to install applications outside of the Play Store.
Google has hindered Android so that it doesn't allow third party app stores to install apps in the background, upgrade apps or batch install apps like the Play Store can.
A console is designed for a specific task (playing games and similar software), the market is somewhat competitive and you are free to buy a PC/Mac/Linux and get 99% of the functionality (minus a few exclusive titles). In fact consoles nowadays are just PCs running a custom build of a general-purpose OS.
The mobile market is different. There are only 2 dominant players (Apple and Google), they both have similar anti-competitive restrictions (side-loading on Android is a non-starter given the various security warnings, and even then the lack of officially-supported root access on Android means there are things official Google software can do that you can't do without resorting to exploits, plus Android requires you to accept Google's terms & privacy policy which does not comply with the GDPR). There are no other players; the open-source alternatives such as Pinephone are not viable alternatives as they cut you off from the vast majority of apps out there. Let's take a period-correct example, are there any Covid contact-tracing clients available for platforms besides iOS and Android?