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How’s that compare to android though? For the most part apple’s walled garden IS safer and more privacy preserving than android.

dtech 3y ago
What kind of take is this? The main channel for apps is extremely similar to iOS's App store. I highly doubt if there is a difference, it's due to non-Google App stores or sideloading.
- sroussey 3y ago
  Isn’t that the point?
- GeekyBear 3y ago
  > I highly doubt if there is a difference, it's due to non-Google App stores or sideloading. Tech journalists have literally warned Android users that they need to be wary of apps from inside Google's walled garden. > With malicious apps infiltrating Play on a regular, often weekly, basis, there’s currently little indication the malicious Android app scourge will be abated. That means it’s up to individual end users to steer clear of apps like Joker. The best advice is to be extremely conservative in the apps that get installed in the first place. A good guiding principle is to choose apps that serve a true purpose and, when possible, choose developers who are known entities. Installed apps that haven’t been used in the past month should be removed unless there’s a good reason to keep them around. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/joker-the-malware-that-signs-you-up-for-pricey-services-floods-android-markets/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/joker...
  - willsmith72 3y ago
    Once you've submitted apps for review enough times, you get to know how arbitrary the review process is. Many, many people game the system in terms of in-app payments, e.g. showing a link to subscribe on their website but hiding the link for the review. If they can't catch that, why do you they can catch anything?
  - LtWorf 3y ago
    I disable autoupdate for apps on android, since all it does is bring in more ads normally. I manually update webview every once in a while and that's it. Also, most of my apps come from fdroid anyway.
geysersam 3y ago
If Apples system is better they should be able to compete successfully in a free market. The don't seem willing to attempt that.
- IMTDb 3y ago
  You are free to choose an android phone or an Apple one; that part of the market is absolutely free. Apple is the top seller of smartphones, I believe this qualifies as "competing successfully".
  - Workaccount2 3y ago
    At least in the US, imessage gives apple an effective monopoly. Their are strong social repercussions for not having imessage. If you want to be included you pretty much must have an iPhone. Apple is well aware of this and plays into it hard.
    - imbnwa 3y ago
      Oh stop it, Apple isn’t responsible for people’s choice of friends, they do need to provide a UI affordance that someone may not be getting messages displayed corrected
      - Qwertious 3y ago
        > Oh stop it, Apple isn’t responsible for people’s choice of friends, they do need to provide a UI affordance that someone may not be getting messages displayed corrected Apple has been repeatedly requested to change the colour to a less ugly shade, or to give users the choice to disable the feature or to give Android apps an API of some sort so they can comply with whatever Apple's requirements and get the blue text boxes. Apple hasn't taken action because they like the current state of affairs, they want the social ostracism of non-Apple users.
    - FalconSensei 3y ago
      > At least in the US, imessage gives apple an effective monopoly. Their are strong social repercussions for not having imessage. If you want to be included you pretty much must have an iPhone. That's because people are idiots. There's nothing that iMessage does that whatsapp, telegram, kakao, line can't do. In fact, US/Canada are the only ones that actually use SMS or iMessage, as far as I know, and the rest of the world use other messaging apps. I have been living in Canada for 5 years already, and in no instance I had any issue whatsoever. I now use iPhone, but nobody talks to me via iMessage, it's all either Messenger or Whatsapp, or Instagram If Apple is able to hold such a stronghold over Americans because of something so easily bypassed, then you deserve to be controlled, really.
pxoe 3y ago
android just checks every app for safety (play protect) and isolates every app at system level. solutions for sideloading are actually very simple. so, is it "safer"? what's "safer" about it? or is it really just a meme apple has successfully perpetuated about it's limitations?
- MokaAkashiya 3y ago
  This week I removed adware from Android, which is installed according to the following scheme: a person sees a fake advertising notification about an infection, then even trying to close it opens Google Play or another store with some kind of antivirus with a generic name like xcleaner, to make it harder to find it among others, and installs it. Then this application starts working in the background and every 2-3 minutes creates full-screen advertising banners with vibration, also about infections with links to other garbage. It does not exist in the list of applications and in the activity list as soon as the banner is closed. While it is there, instead of its name it shows a webview, and you need to guess to go from the list of processes to the application in order to see its real name and delete it. A year ago, I also saw a fake advertisement for a squid game. These fake advertisements have already become a meme, but they also offer to download from Google Play a slightly similar game, where after quickly clicking on the screen, the smartphone will suddenly prompt you to buy an expensive subscription and then you will not be able to cancel it, because Google does not provide for them refund. This idea comes from SMS scams since j2me platform, and judging by the comments on this game, people are still losing money, especially if they leave their phones to children. I don't use ios and won't say whether manual moderation there helps prevent the same crap, but let's not ignore that if you're not tech-savvy, this Android security alternative is pretty easy to get around.
  - pxoe 3y ago
    literally the same "scam ad - scam app" pipeline exists on ios. ads exist, bad scammy ads exist, garbage apps exist, stuff slips through app moderation filters, or just stays around and gets by because it's juuust enough for it to not be outright malware. bad ads and apps are unfortunately not a platform specific problem, nor are they really "solved" by either of platforms. funnily enough, some bits of it might be worse because ios and app store are promoted as 'being secure' period, almost unequivocally - so it ends up being a thing like 'well, ios is secure and this app is on the store, so it's all good, right?", which doesn't always happen to be the case.
seec 3y ago
Maybe but the vast majority of people have zero issues with malware and don't really care about the perceived advantage of privacy (just Apple marketing because they can't sell ads, if they could they wouldn't give a shit). I take care of Android devices used by elderly people, and they have just zero issues. Not anymore than they would have with iOS. All this is nonsense talk trying to help the indefensible position of Apple. Most people also use Windows computers with no monopolistic app store and even though sometimes they are problems they almost always come from user errors. Most of the time it's poor choices, generally from greedy behavior (trying to get stuff for free without knowing much). If a user doesn't know what it's doing, it can ask someone for help or stick with Apple's App Store if that suits him. Allowing other possibilities for more competent people doesn't change this fact one bit.
- LtWorf 3y ago
  my mother has thousands of notifications from the browser, from all the websites that request permission to show them. Her phones become really slow because of this.
  - seec 3y ago
    Late reply, but that is definitely "user error"; and the iPhone will exhibit the same problem if you allow any random app notifications access. There are plenty of bad actors, even on iOS. For example, even Uber Eats will target you with ads if you dare allow all permissions for notifications just to get orders tracking... In fact, their notification system makes it complicated to just allow specific behavior and not something else. It's not better than the notification settings in typical web apps. As a day one user of iOS, I find it funny that you complain about notification out of all things, because if there is one place where iOS is just as fucked as every other platform it's notifications... Nowadays I have resorted to basically denying notification for everything but the few stuff where they are actually relevant... Also, you should correctly set things up for your mother and refuse notification prompt for every website and just whitelist the few that might be usefull..

dtech 3y ago

What kind of take is this? The main channel for apps is extremely similar to iOS's App store. I highly doubt if there is a difference, it's due to non-Google App stores or sideloading.

sroussey 3y ago
Isn’t that the point?
GeekyBear 3y ago
> I highly doubt if there is a difference, it's due to non-Google App stores or sideloading. Tech journalists have literally warned Android users that they need to be wary of apps from inside Google's walled garden. > With malicious apps infiltrating Play on a regular, often weekly, basis, there’s currently little indication the malicious Android app scourge will be abated. That means it’s up to individual end users to steer clear of apps like Joker. The best advice is to be extremely conservative in the apps that get installed in the first place. A good guiding principle is to choose apps that serve a true purpose and, when possible, choose developers who are known entities. Installed apps that haven’t been used in the past month should be removed unless there’s a good reason to keep them around. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/joker-the-malware-that-signs-you-up-for-pricey-services-floods-android-markets/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/09/joker...
- willsmith72 3y ago
  Once you've submitted apps for review enough times, you get to know how arbitrary the review process is. Many, many people game the system in terms of in-app payments, e.g. showing a link to subscribe on their website but hiding the link for the review. If they can't catch that, why do you they can catch anything?
- LtWorf 3y ago
  I disable autoupdate for apps on android, since all it does is bring in more ads normally. I manually update webview every once in a while and that's it. Also, most of my apps come from fdroid anyway.

geysersam 3y ago

If Apples system is better they should be able to compete successfully in a free market. The don't seem willing to attempt that.

IMTDb 3y ago
You are free to choose an android phone or an Apple one; that part of the market is absolutely free. Apple is the top seller of smartphones, I believe this qualifies as "competing successfully".
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  At least in the US, imessage gives apple an effective monopoly. Their are strong social repercussions for not having imessage. If you want to be included you pretty much must have an iPhone. Apple is well aware of this and plays into it hard.
  - imbnwa 3y ago
    Oh stop it, Apple isn’t responsible for people’s choice of friends, they do need to provide a UI affordance that someone may not be getting messages displayed corrected
    - Qwertious 3y ago
      > Oh stop it, Apple isn’t responsible for people’s choice of friends, they do need to provide a UI affordance that someone may not be getting messages displayed corrected Apple has been repeatedly requested to change the colour to a less ugly shade, or to give users the choice to disable the feature or to give Android apps an API of some sort so they can comply with whatever Apple's requirements and get the blue text boxes. Apple hasn't taken action because they like the current state of affairs, they want the social ostracism of non-Apple users.
  - FalconSensei 3y ago
    > At least in the US, imessage gives apple an effective monopoly. Their are strong social repercussions for not having imessage. If you want to be included you pretty much must have an iPhone. That's because people are idiots. There's nothing that iMessage does that whatsapp, telegram, kakao, line can't do. In fact, US/Canada are the only ones that actually use SMS or iMessage, as far as I know, and the rest of the world use other messaging apps. I have been living in Canada for 5 years already, and in no instance I had any issue whatsoever. I now use iPhone, but nobody talks to me via iMessage, it's all either Messenger or Whatsapp, or Instagram If Apple is able to hold such a stronghold over Americans because of something so easily bypassed, then you deserve to be controlled, really.

pxoe 3y ago

android just checks every app for safety (play protect) and isolates every app at system level. solutions for sideloading are actually very simple. so, is it "safer"? what's "safer" about it? or is it really just a meme apple has successfully perpetuated about it's limitations?

MokaAkashiya 3y ago
This week I removed adware from Android, which is installed according to the following scheme: a person sees a fake advertising notification about an infection, then even trying to close it opens Google Play or another store with some kind of antivirus with a generic name like xcleaner, to make it harder to find it among others, and installs it. Then this application starts working in the background and every 2-3 minutes creates full-screen advertising banners with vibration, also about infections with links to other garbage. It does not exist in the list of applications and in the activity list as soon as the banner is closed. While it is there, instead of its name it shows a webview, and you need to guess to go from the list of processes to the application in order to see its real name and delete it. A year ago, I also saw a fake advertisement for a squid game. These fake advertisements have already become a meme, but they also offer to download from Google Play a slightly similar game, where after quickly clicking on the screen, the smartphone will suddenly prompt you to buy an expensive subscription and then you will not be able to cancel it, because Google does not provide for them refund. This idea comes from SMS scams since j2me platform, and judging by the comments on this game, people are still losing money, especially if they leave their phones to children. I don't use ios and won't say whether manual moderation there helps prevent the same crap, but let's not ignore that if you're not tech-savvy, this Android security alternative is pretty easy to get around.
- pxoe 3y ago
  literally the same "scam ad - scam app" pipeline exists on ios. ads exist, bad scammy ads exist, garbage apps exist, stuff slips through app moderation filters, or just stays around and gets by because it's juuust enough for it to not be outright malware. bad ads and apps are unfortunately not a platform specific problem, nor are they really "solved" by either of platforms. funnily enough, some bits of it might be worse because ios and app store are promoted as 'being secure' period, almost unequivocally - so it ends up being a thing like 'well, ios is secure and this app is on the store, so it's all good, right?", which doesn't always happen to be the case.

seec 3y ago

Maybe but the vast majority of people have zero issues with malware and don't really care about the perceived advantage of privacy (just Apple marketing because they can't sell ads, if they could they wouldn't give a shit). I take care of Android devices used by elderly people, and they have just zero issues. Not anymore than they would have with iOS. All this is nonsense talk trying to help the indefensible position of Apple. Most people also use Windows computers with no monopolistic app store and even though sometimes they are problems they almost always come from user errors. Most of the time it's poor choices, generally from greedy behavior (trying to get stuff for free without knowing much). If a user doesn't know what it's doing, it can ask someone for help or stick with Apple's App Store if that suits him. Allowing other possibilities for more competent people doesn't change this fact one bit.

LtWorf 3y ago
my mother has thousands of notifications from the browser, from all the websites that request permission to show them. Her phones become really slow because of this.
- seec 3y ago
  Late reply, but that is definitely "user error"; and the iPhone will exhibit the same problem if you allow any random app notifications access. There are plenty of bad actors, even on iOS. For example, even Uber Eats will target you with ads if you dare allow all permissions for notifications just to get orders tracking... In fact, their notification system makes it complicated to just allow specific behavior and not something else. It's not better than the notification settings in typical web apps. As a day one user of iOS, I find it funny that you complain about notification out of all things, because if there is one place where iOS is just as fucked as every other platform it's notifications... Nowadays I have resorted to basically denying notification for everything but the few stuff where they are actually relevant... Also, you should correctly set things up for your mother and refuse notification prompt for every website and just whitelist the few that might be usefull..