Our smartphones, operating systems and apps are dominated by Google & Apple. "[...] these two Silicon Valley profit-driven companies decide which apps are or aren't allowed, and moderate what our mobile software looks like." says @danlammerhirt from @waag working on the Mobifree project (together with a.o. @efoundation@fdroid@NGIZero@murena@microg@delta
None of this is true for android. You can and always have been able to sideload whatever apps you want so long as it’s compiled to work with your version of android.
Apple has always been the walled garden and they are nowhere near in the same league.
If you want to be taken seriously, don’t mention apple and android in the same sentence like this. Apple makes phones, android is an operating system and a Foss one at that. Wording like the above shows a major lack of understanding when it comes to tech.
You can still install a ROM ungoogled. It’s like github.com/iv-org/invidious/issues/3872, Google trying to shut down Invidious, but they can’t. Don’t let big tech fool you, there is freedom, you just need to be educated to those tools.
and if you want to be taken seriously you should rethink your sentences. similar arguments can be made about Apple, that they for example are one of the only players out there (along with Mozilla) to provide an alternate rendering engine. google’s control of the internet is hugely impacted by chrome and android is one of the pillars of that foundation.
Point is, they both have issues but to some (myself included) I do believe that my privacy and security is better served by Apple, despite the walled garden.
Just admit your part of a cult and you will have the first step to recovery.
And I did pick my position damn near 20 years ago at this point. I had a couple of old school ipods but my first “smart phone” was a blackberry, my second was also a blackberry and then I moved to android with a phone sized tablet that only had wifi and they nexus after that. I’ve flashed more roms, backed up and restored more data, etc than you have had friends.
You have a nice day now and I will add you to the block list as well.
Android is open source and this post is full of shit. Apple is a company that makes phones and the os that runs on them. Android is used by Google for the pixel line and the nexus line before it but anyone can fork android and make it their own, make it run on any device that supports it, etc.
AOSP is dying as Google has replaced all the core apps with proprietary versions. On top of that the Android SDK has proprietary software included and a EULA
It’s not that easy, Google heavily dictates the development goals of Android. It’s basically developed behind closed doors, and then the source is dumped to the public after each release. Still better than iOS, but nothing like regular Linux distros
And yet it’s been sliced and diced, features added and removed, distributions created for many devices since its inception by countless developers of varying skill level. It’s a lot more like regular Linux distros than not.
You don’t get to choose the direction Debian takes on what init or sound daemon they ship. The Debian organization does. You might be able to observe their deliberations, but your input is unlikely to be a part of it. In the end the result ends up in the repos. You can take that and change it, just like people have done with Android for many years.
@rdyoung@breadsmasher "Android is open source"
Well... AOSP is open source.
Google Android is not open source. And the Play Services, Play Store etc. are key services.
It’s clear that no one here actually understands how this stuff works so I’m done. But I will say this. Google only controls so much. Another large player or enough smaller developers working together could change the direction. And no, you don’t really need play services, play store, etc. There are alts like f-Droid and see my earlier sentence.
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