Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is coming to Android

Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by ben_w on Sunday January 25, 2026 @05:45AM (#46752855)

> iOS apps tend to be more stable, better polished

It's been a while since I was last using Android, but first-party Apple apps no longer meet my standards for "polished".

e.g. type this sequence into the calculator:

  [2] [-] [4] [=] [x²] [=]

The answer should not be negative, but the app says "-4".

The desktop Contacts app has been putting invisible LTR and RTL codes around phone numbers for years now, breaking web forms when auto-entered. The mobile version refreshes specific contacts several times in a row to add no new content, preventing copy from working while it does so.

The MacOS Safari translation button appears on the left of the omni-bar, until you click it, at which point it instantly moves to the right and your click turns out to have been on the button that the left-side translation button had hidden. Deleting a selection of items from browsing history is limited to about 5 items per second, as it deletes one then rebuilds the entire list before deleting the next.

If I'm listening to a podcast on headpones and an alarm goes off, it doesn't play the alarm through my headphones, it plays on device speakers only.

Podcast app's "Up Next" is a magical mystery list that can't be disabled or guided.

The "Do Not Disturb" mode can be activated unexpectedly, leading to missed calls, and cannot be deleted.

Localisation is inconsistent at every level, including system share sheet and behaviour of decimal separators.

I could go on, but you get the point. Apple's quality control just isn't visible in the software at this point.

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by criddell on Sunday January 25, 2026 @07:30AM (#46753540)

> The answer should not be negative, but the app says "-4".

When I do those exact keypresses I get the correct answer.

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by ben_w on Sunday January 25, 2026 @07:46AM (#46753656)

Good for you? The fact this happens on my versions of both MacOS and iOS means they didn't have automated tests covering this from day one.

Famously, "it works for me" is not how high quality software happens.

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by akerl_ on Sunday January 25, 2026 @10:18AM (#46754773)

It seems basically impossible that math works differently on your calculator app than somebody else’s.

Can you post a recording of what you’re seeing?

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by ben_w on Sunday January 25, 2026 @01:41PM (#46756823)

https://vimeo.com/1158174682?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by akerl_ on Sunday January 25, 2026 @01:50PM (#46756901)

What iOS version is that? It seems odd that the UI does not match what I see.

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by criddell on Sunday January 25, 2026 @04:32PM (#46758511)

Whoa! What calculator is that?

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by akerl_ on Sunday January 25, 2026 @04:53PM (#46758750)

Some googling shows hits from iOS 18 betas, where folks reported this bug, that seem to have the same UI.

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by burnerthrow008 on Sunday January 25, 2026 @12:14PM (#46755889)

Good for me too? I get the correct answer when I type the keys, exactly as you specified. On both macOS and iOS

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by vbezhenar on Sunday January 25, 2026 @08:24AM (#46753891)

When I do those exact keypresses I also get "-4".

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by akerl_ on Sunday January 25, 2026 @10:11AM (#46754686)

https://vimeo.com/1158134310?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

Can you show what you’re seeing?

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by odo1242 on Sunday January 25, 2026 @10:50AM (#46755108)

I get the same, fwiw

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by criddell on Sunday January 25, 2026 @10:53AM (#46755143)

thats what I see too

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by vbezhenar on Monday January 26, 2026 @02:08AM (#46762689)

http://vimeo.com/1158294037

That's iOS 18.5, maybe they fixed it in later versions

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by akerl_ on Sunday January 25, 2026 @07:44AM (#46753646)

> e.g. type this sequence into the calculator

Works perfectly for me.

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by toxik on Sunday January 25, 2026 @09:02AM (#46754151)

-4 makes sense if you understand that the input -2 is a unary minus operation. So typing -2 then hitting square only squares 2, not (-2). This is the same in eg Python so I'm not sure it's very controversial. I agree it's unexpected, though.

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by AshamedCaptain on Sunday January 25, 2026 @10:21AM (#46754808)

At no point in the current expression you wrote "-", though. It may make sense that if you type [-] [2] [x^2] [=] then you get -(2²) = -4, but if your current answer is already -2, then tapping x² should result in (ans)^2 = (-2)^2 = 4. Splitting your current answer into a separate unary [-] as in - (2²) makes absolutely no sense.

Most calculators, even CAS ones, simply get this always right. But sadly this is not the first "desktop" calculator that I see getting this completely wrong. And it makes some results outright wrong!

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by well_ackshually on Sunday January 25, 2026 @09:30AM (#46754333)

"-4 makes sense if you consider that the calculator is so damn stupid it ignores every convention every single calculator has made in the past hundred years and instead copies behavior of a dumbass language" isn't exactly the praise you think it is.

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by ben_w on Sunday January 25, 2026 @10:34AM (#46754940)

I didn't enter -2, I calculated -2. The x² should have been taking x = (-2).

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by ndriscoll on Sunday January 25, 2026 @02:28PM (#46757321)

Python gets it right:

    >>> 2-4
    -2
    >>> _**2
    4

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by bigstrat2003 on Sunday January 25, 2026 @02:59PM (#46757590)

What? The person you're replying to isn't typing -2. He said explicitly what he is typing, and the result is unambiguously incorrect.

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Re:Google confirms 'high-friction' sideloading flow is comin... by quantum_magpie on Monday January 26, 2026 @07:37AM (#46764893)

Regarding the calculator, I get the same -4 in Android, just checked. So they all suck..

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