157
Android 15 sideloading restrictions are a raw deal for users
(www.androidpolice.com)
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this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2024
157 points (94.4% liked)
Android
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It appears that you think that I'm holding contradictory opinions. It's possible.
The "ICT aware" population is not what I'm concerned about and whilst that likely excludes both of us, it's the retired widow who needs a phone to track her diary and call an ambulance, it's the pig farmer who uses 123456789 as their email password and uses internet banking to pay his employees, it's the impatient mother of three who is running between venues to get her kids to drama, soccer and music lessons.
I have made house calls to these actual people and hundreds more who do not, will not, cannot, read warnings. They simply don't have the context to understand their severity. They don't understand why a camera has no requirement to read your address book or connect to the internet. They don't understand what a calculator needs to keep your screen on, or not. They "don't have anything to hide" and have no understanding how their address book and diary can be used to defraud them of their life savings.
I've spent a lifetime educating people like this. It's a drop in the ocean and all that happens is I'm pissing in the wind getting wet.
Is locking down Android helpful for you and I, perhaps not. But if I don't get a phonecall in the middle of the night because one of my clients just lost their life savings because their phone got "hacked", I'm a happy little vegimite.
Linux isn't ready for prime time because novice users have no chance to just do simple stuff like plug in a phone, download a video and tweak it, let alone open a spreadsheet or make a Christmas card and print it out.
You and I can do this, my partner cannot.
Another way to look at this is a 30 year academic with Mac and Windows experience who cannot figure out how to migrate to Linux.
Usually as an IT professional people assume I lost touch with the average people abilities with technology. I'm used to that by now.
I understand very well most people want a phone to be simple and easy to use.
This is not a justification to remove this advanced options for power users. None of the user you mention in your post will ever activate sideloading. This is just an option for that minority of people.
Android is not much more complicated to use than IOS if you stick to basic use; social networks, taking pics, picking up calls. That's it.
You can do all of that without ever knowing about sideloading or advanced permissions and so on.
So thank you but I'm with well aware I shouldn't use my perception of Android as the norm. But I'll definitely say that the average user literally doesn't ever go in those advanced settings so whether they exist or not doesn't matter to them. But out of openness I think it's important the power users can still have this OPTION available.
Also if you really want a simple phone and super easy to use. Get them an IPhone and call it a day it's simple as that. Obviously if you can't afford one then Android should still be fine anyway.
Somehow I doubt any less technology enthusiastic person would favor an Android phone over an Apple one to then complain that there is too many options available in the settings.
I don't think anyone is advocating turning off the side loading features, unless I missed something, but the complaints here appear that you have to do extra work to bypass security, which is not something I understand.
The assumption I think is that Google ask for more and more work to use that feature. So you can either shrug it off or prepare for Google to remove this ability entirely.
I guess we will see.