5 ms·

android allows is but its hidden away behind a setting and discouraged. in practice it is almost the same system, very few people have a big enough product that

android allows is but its hidden away behind a setting and discouraged. in practice it is almost the same system, very few people have a big enough product that they can make money sideloading it. fortnite may be the only example

cookieswumchorr 6y ago
as an expat you need this all the time, to have specific apps for two locations, including government apps, commute apps, even retail bonus apps, they all have those idiotic geographical limitations, and are often not to be found on common APK sites. So you need a friend with the "right" location setting to extract and send you the APK. Troublesome, but at least with Android its possible to do so.
- commoner 6y ago
  Aurora Store is a FOSS Google Play app store client that can spoof the device model, language, and location. It does not a require Google Play Services or a Google account, and it might work for your use case. https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/
  - cookieswumchorr 6y ago
    great tool, thank you!
realusername 6y ago
Even Fortnite gave up on distributing it independently and came back to the Play Store. That shows you how unfair those practices are, even the most well-known game in the world could not make it. I'm sure the failure of distributing Fortnite independently will be a strong example against Google when the anti-trust lawsuit will inevitably come.
- GeekyBear 6y ago
  Epic's statement at the time: >“After 18 months of operating Fortnite on Android outside of the Google Play Store, we’ve come to a basic realization,” reads Epic’s statement. “Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.” https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/21/21229943/epic-games-fortnite-google-play-store-available-third-party-software https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/21/21229943/epic-games-fortn...
ClikeX 6y ago
Getting another store installed, or installing third party APK's isn't the hard part. The hard part is the baked in dependency on Google Play services in most apps.

cookieswumchorr 6y ago

as an expat you need this all the time, to have specific apps for two locations, including government apps, commute apps, even retail bonus apps, they all have those idiotic geographical limitations, and are often not to be found on common APK sites. So you need a friend with the "right" location setting to extract and send you the APK. Troublesome, but at least with Android its possible to do so.

commoner 6y ago
Aurora Store is a FOSS Google Play app store client that can spoof the device model, language, and location. It does not a require Google Play Services or a Google account, and it might work for your use case. https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.aurora.store/
- cookieswumchorr 6y ago
  great tool, thank you!

realusername 6y ago

Even Fortnite gave up on distributing it independently and came back to the Play Store. That shows you how unfair those practices are, even the most well-known game in the world could not make it. I'm sure the failure of distributing Fortnite independently will be a strong example against Google when the anti-trust lawsuit will inevitably come.

GeekyBear 6y ago
Epic's statement at the time: >“After 18 months of operating Fortnite on Android outside of the Google Play Store, we’ve come to a basic realization,” reads Epic’s statement. “Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures such as scary, repetitive security pop-ups for downloaded and updated software, restrictive manufacturer and carrier agreements and dealings, Google public relations characterizing third party software sources as malware, and new efforts such as Google Play Protect to outright block software obtained outside the Google Play store.” https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/21/21229943/epic-games-fortnite-google-play-store-available-third-party-software https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/21/21229943/epic-games-fortn...

ClikeX 6y ago

Getting another store installed, or installing third party APK's isn't the hard part. The hard part is the baked in dependency on Google Play services in most apps.