This view would also protect FOSS projects that emulate the iOS environment (e.g. Wine but for iOS)

And people with a pinephone will have a great phone with a great OS, but with a shitty selection of apps.

That's part of the point of using Linux -- not creating an ecosystem from scratch.

Virtually all of my computing outside of my phone is already done on Linux devices, and the setup works for day-to-day computing. Support is good enough for me. What makes you think Pinephone going to have worse support than my current Linux desktop?

My hope with Pinephone is that a decent influx of Linux phone users will improve the quality of desktop software on Linux as well, since it forces devs to stop ignoring touch screens and to start thinking about responsive design. Ideally, the desktop versions of many apps should scale on interfaces like this without needing to be rewritten. But regardless, I'm still not particularly worried that my bank website is going to stop working.

I also use Linux with my bank. All banks I know of in my country require you to install an invasive "security software" (warsaw), even when you're using the web browser; some also require the phone app to be used as a second factor (for instance, one bank generates a dynamically changing QR code after you enter your password; you have to open its phone app and scan that QR code, which the phone app uses to generate a number to be typed below the QR code).

For the government, it's easier, you just have to install the ICP-Brasil root certificates (since they haven't been accepted yet by Mozilla).

It's not just that Linux isn't going to break the app store duopoly in your case, nobody is going to, because your government is effectively reinforcing that behavior. Forcing people to install root certificates on their devices is a problem on a whole 'nother level over just commercial incentives.

I just don't see how any technology or market-based solution will solve that problem. What happens when the government starts deciding that its authentication software won't work on rooted devices? What happens when the bank decides they need contact/GPS/camera permissions on your phone for "security"? I mean, that's not an app ecosystem problem at that point, it's just full-fledged required malware from your bank.

In the US (for all of the many, many faults with our trash-dump of a banking/federal ecosystem) at most I've only ever been asked to do 2FA using completely open standards, and the worst problem I've run into is that my bank's website won't load over some VPNs. I can even disable analytics on my bank's website and it'll still work.

But getting support on a Linux phone OS for what sounds to me at first blush like malware and spyware isn't really the best solution to what you're describing. The problem isn't that the malware isn't available on Linux, it's that you're forced to install malware on any of your computers, including iOS/Android.

The government isn't forcing anyone to install the ICP-Brasil root certificates; if you don't, the government websites will just show as untrusted in the browser (since they're signed by one of the CAs which chain to the ICP-Brasil root), but other than that they should work the same. Things might be different if you are authenticating your identity to the government with a certificate stored on a smartcard or USB key, since these certificates are also signed by a CA which chains to the ICP-Brasil root; I don't know if adding the ICP-Brasil root to the browser is necessary to make that work.

As for the banks, AFAIK the government doesn't mandate how they approach their online banking security; their use of that invasive "security software" is probably mostly path dependence at this point. It was very common to see computers infected with malware designed to steal online banking credentials from the browser, and that "security software" was supposed to block that kind of malware (for instance, by blocking the browser accessibility APIs whenever the user goes to an online banking site). Things are already better than in the past (that "security software" used to be Windows-only, for instance, so Linux users couldn't use online banking).

And yeah, all the bank apps I have on my phone require contact/location/camera permissions (the camera permission is unavoidable since they have to be able to read the QR code for PIX payments, and boleto bancário barcodes), and for at least one of these apps, I strongly suspect it's using the location permission for security purposes (the location indicator always lights up whenever I log into that app). It wouldn't surprise me at all if it also rejected rooted devices.

My issue isn't that those apps aren't available for Linux. Even if they were available for Linux I wouldn't install a bank app with those permissions. I wouldn't install that on my primary Android phone (I guess there's a good likelyhood I couldn't, since I run rooted Android).

I'm not sure what I would do in that position. Maybe get a separate phone just for banking? I don't know, it's really tough. I sympathize.

But yeah, the Pinephone is not going to solve that problem, banks would need to move over to open standards for authentication through apps that are trustworthy. Just releasing their apps for a smartphone wouldn't be enough. At least any "security software" that can run on desktop Linux can also be run on your phone, assuming it doesn't freak out over the hardware, and assuming you're willing to tolerate it.

Sure, if you want an app for an open source platform like Linux, that may take a lot longer. I think there is already a common platform for this, but not many banks offer it.

Is this meant to be taken literally? I would be surprised if e.g. mBank didn't work with SMS as the sole enabled 2FA.

Personally, I would rather have an extra Android phone for cases like this, as well as for the times when one has to make an actual phone call, though. I wouldn't expect the call quality on the pinephone to be anything to write home about, even if the software was all mature already.

(I use Linux exclusively on the desktop so I know what you are talking about, but it just isn't going to work on a phone in the same way).

Currently, I don't use a banking app because I don't trust my bank to have that level of access to my phone with a proprietary app, and because my bank's app isn't particularly good in the first place. So I'm not really losing out by using Pinephone. In fact, I might have more functionality after switching, since Android development is a mess and on a Linux platform I might be tempted to build something quickly for myself that periodically pulls down the CSV data from my bank and does a few things with it.

I'm not saying that proprietary devs are going to start mass-building apps for this, I'm just saying that for a segment of the population, this may turn out not to be the problem you think it is.

----

Apps on my phone that I need replacements for:

- NewPipe

- Podcast app/music app

- Maps

- AndOTP

- Signal (and/or Matrix)

- Orgzly

- Email

- Good browser support

- Maybe a few misc utilities, probably something I'm forgetting

Do I have confidence that those apps or equivalents will be ported? Honestly, yes, I do. It would not take an insurmountable amount of work to build a Linux ecosystem that was more functional than my current phone setup.

You can find a bigger list of apps in https://www.plasma-mobile.org/. There is a few still missing that I will try to add later.

- NewPipe > FreeTube, AudioTube

- Podcast app/music app > GNOME Podcasts, GPodder/Lollypop, Elisa

- Maps > PureMaps, GNOME Maps

- AndOTP > Keysmith, GNOME Authenticator, Two-Factor-Keychain, Numberstation

- Signal (and/or Matrix) > Axolotl / various, Nheko feels most complete currently

- Orgzly > Emacs maybe?

- Email > Geary (I still use Evolution though)

- Good browser support > Angelfish, desktop Firefox has been adapted nicely, once Chromiums Wayland supports matures it will also be a viable option (it’s very fast, but has annoying issues with text input currently)

To develop apps for Android I have to set up an emulator, dev environment, learn a bunch of extra ropes, package everything. But I can throw together some bash scripts in a day, it really opens up the possibilities to solve a lot of my own problems.

Compare that with something like Windows Phone. Not having apps there is a serious problem, because I don't necessarily want to pull out C# and build an entire app to fix every issue I have.

Can also be done with Android app via Anbox: https://social.librem.one/@dos/105119691527269967

For example, the Dutch government is slowly pushing everyone to either use their authentication app (for DigiD, the national digital government authentication service), or just stop using digital government services all together and just digitally mandate friends or family to handle your digital affairs. This latter option is of course targetted at the infirm and elderly. People who are able, literate, and have computers with modern OSes on them at the ready, but not one of the two smartphone OSes are considered to be such a minority that they can be safely ignored until they fold and get a cheap Android device.

I don't have a smartphone with Android or IOS, and I get nudged constantly when using DigiD (on a laptop or desktop computer) to get the app for authentication. My bank also nudges me at every transaction (which I do on a desktop computer with a stand-alone card-reader they provide). I can't turn off the nudging or make the services remember my choice, and always have to perform an extra click to authenticate. The upcoming digital government law goes a step further and mandates a level of assurance that can currently only be met by the app for accessing your healthcare records. This is of course not required: you are also welcome to go to the healthcare provider in person and ask for you dossier on paper. And when you do so, you will be nudged at every step of the way to consider using their app.

If this is a pattern that occurs worldwide, then smartphones that do not offer these apps have a very limited audience, and will remain curiosities for tinkerers and privacy conscious folk willing to make the trade-off (or even have a separate Android phone for the stuff mentioned above, for each adult member of their household).

We somehow managed to get through the phase where Microsoft Windows was a hard requirement on your computer for compatibility reasons (remember how South Korea was stuck with ActiveX way beyond its sell-by-date?), but now we're stuck here.

Could not you use identity service from different EU country (based on eIDAS regulation)? Here in Czechia there is eIDAS-compatible identity provider that uses U2F tokens.

Unfortunately, while there is a migration going on from offering only DigiD to offering the whole eIDAS suite (in the Netherlands this is done via a government service called ToegangsVerleningsService, so vendors only have to implement a SAML connection to that which will eventually support eIDAS), it is by no means sure that every government function will allow eIDAS instead of just DigiD. It's honestly a very opaque process.

Great to hear that the Czech Republic chose U2F (now part of WebAuthn) though!

The argument that App stores must be regarded as public utilities because banks don’t support the web makes no sense. Banks can easily support the web.

This almost made me spill my drink ))

Is it so much better in the Netherlands, or do you just not get to interact with government bureaucracy much? Trying to e.g. get a building permit over here without using MS Office and Windows is something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy...

On the other hand, I would not call the App Selection shitty, see https://LINMOBapps.frama.io.

It clearly isn’t going to do so overnight or in a year or two.

But it easily could over the 5-10 year timeline. A distributed App Store plus an experience that is more attuned to the needs of users than iOS or Android can accomplish that.

To solve the ‘bank’ problem all it needs to do is provide a really solid PWA story.

What it shouldn’t do is provide Android compatibility.

Why would this project be more effective at doing this than iOS or Android?

I don’t see why people other than ideological technologists would want to use this phone.

To be clear, I think it’d be great if they did, but I think you’re massively understating the difficulty of challenging iOS and Android. Many companies have tried before - Microsoft, Amazon, Canonical, and failed.

This is an excellent question. The basic answer is that the incentive structures are different. Apple’s platforms are primarily designed to efficiently deliver commercial software. The app-store, the apis and everything else about their OS ecosystem is designed around the idea that packaged Apps, immutable to the user and remotely maintained by a commercial developer, are the answer to solving end-user problems using computers. They implement this model better than anyone else, but it’s not the only model.

Two other models are GNU Linux and it’s open source ecosystem, and the Smalltalk model as exemplified by pharo. In both of these models, the user isn’t just a consumer of Apps or the system, but is an active participant in creating it.

I’m not suggesting that either of these are the solution as they stand. I’m just pointing out that the iOS / Apple model is not the only possibility. You are right that just competing with it directly would fail. Even Android is failing at that.

> I don’t see why people other than ideological technologists would want to use this phone.

This is perjorative sounding, but a reasonable concern. If the answer was ‘people would use smalltalk instead of buying apps’, or ‘with Linux people can build whatever phone they like’, then I’d agree with you.

Of course we need something that end-users can plausibly use without being a technologist.

My argument is that we can actually build such a thing, and that it can be much better as a ‘bicycle for the mind’ than iOS.

> Many companies have tried before - Microsoft, Amazon, Canonical, and failed.

This is to be expected. A company trying to compete with Apple on their terms, even if they have the resources of Microsoft, is going to fail.

The answer will be a low-end disruption - something that is good enough, but also capable of things that iOS is not because of the commercial model. It won’t come from one company trying to take on Apple directly.

...What? Citation needed. Android by far accounts for the majority (85%) of smartphones not just worldwide but even in nearly all wealthy countries other than the US, Canada and Japan.

https://www.mobileapps.com/blog/android-vs-ios-market-share#...

The fact a lot of people download free apps is pretty much meaningless.

You may as well say a lot of people visit websites on Android.

By the same logic, you could argue that Linux is failing relative to both OS X and Windows in the server market because it's not making as much money.

It’s not the world’s most active software ecosystem. The web is.

> is failing because it doesn't extract as much capital

It is failing as a business.

> as a system set up as a premium product ecosystem targeted at the world's elites?

If you consider most American teenagers to be ‘the world’s elites’, then ok.

> By the same logic, you could argue that Linux is failing relative to both OS X and Windows in the server market because it's not making as much money.

Only if it were true, but it isn’t.

That’s a big “if” though. Curious if you think there are larger trends that would suggest that the current standard of the “walled garden”/closed software model will become less effective than the “active participant” model in meeting the computing needs of everyday people.

Actual computer literacy in the sense of being about to both read and write programs is only going to increase over time.

My sense is that Apple is underserving the needs of software creators in general, by shoehorning everything into Apps.

They could respond to this, and I have been expecting them to for years. My sense now is that they may be too are too blinded by the store model to realize what is happening.

This is one of the trends that I think Jobs would have understood, but that a post Jobs Apple may miss.

Another trend is the rise of crypto. I am not a Bitcoin bull or anything like that, but now that there is so much creativity in the crypto space, I think it’s entirely feasible that we could solve the problem of distributing trust, so that we can provide something for end users with the safety of the App Store but without the central gatekeeper.

This is not even close to being a solved problem yet, which is why I oppose the breakup of app stores.

However the basic tools seem to exist for us to solve it, as does the pressure.

AFAIK every single change in tech starts from such people.

Why would non-idealists use this phone when the alternative they already have in their pocket and know how to use can do everything the PinePhone can do?

1) avoid the privacy issues of Android & iOS 2) have the confidence that as long as their hardware work, they will have updates 3) buy from a brand that will allow you (or a third party) to fix your hardware (Pine64 sells you spare parts, and at reasonable prices!) 4) have an user-replaceable battery 5) have an affordable smartphone (I know, there are 30$ android phones but they tick none of the above points)

The points 2 to 4 will interest an increasing number of people this century, imo

edit: typos

Nobody expects them to.

People will use it when it does something the alternative they already have cannot do.

Using the term ‘idealists’ is perjorative but more importantly, it implies confusion about why people buy this phone.

The people who buy the phone today do so because it allows them to do things which the alternatives cannot. I.e. the purchase is pragmatic. This is the precise opposite of idealism.

The answer is to do things they cannot do, or will be too slow to do. This is unlikely to be possible for a company like Microsoft.

But banks see this is an expense that can be cut if everyone would just use the Android or IOS smartphone they already own (conveniently making the customer pay for the hardware), and when you have that support in place, you would want to be able to do the actual banking on your smartphone too — not just authenticating. So now banks have two apps and a PWA they must maintain, along with the infrastructure for the dedicated card-readers.

So at this point your bank is asking all the people still using card-readers to please consider using the app, so they can kill off that feature. Dutch bank ING tried this when their old authentication method needed replacing (they where one of the last banks still using SMS tokens). Their approach was to nudge/annoy/scare customers into using their app for a year, but in the end they folded and grudgingly had to provide stand-alone card-readers as well.

Some of the newer small digital only banks in the Netherlands are 100% app only though, and the bigger banks are quite jealous, but can't just drop support for their existing customer base.

https://github.com/nanu-c/axolotl

I'm sure that if it grew in popularity they might be inclined to support it further.

Also, there is in the EU a Digital Markets Act being worked on. That will mean some networks that play a big part in society will need to allow third-party clients. https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...

I have Telegram on my Pine Phone and it works great.

It also runs a proper version of Firefox (even if it does identify itself as running on Android.)