4 ms·
A big part (I feel) of that for both iPhones and xbox is their ecosystems finally arriving at a point that's "good enough"; the store offers enough games with e
by samplatt 1y ago
A big part (I feel) of that for both iPhones and xbox is their ecosystems finally arriving at a point that's "good enough"; the store offers enough games with enough security with low barriers to "fun" that few people WANT to hack it.
Same with Android - from 2008 to ~2018 I was rooting and putting custom ROMs on my phone before I'd even got it home. These days I rarely bother because the functionality that I required is finally provided out-of-the-box.
- gonzalohm 1y agoIn exchange for less control of your device though... The other day my phone updated without my permission and replaced Google assistant with Gemini, also without my permission. It's no longer my phone If I can't decide what gets installed and what shouldn't
- maxloh 1y agoBoth Gemini and Google Assistant are parts of the Google App. They were introduced or deprecated with app updates. It is possible to reject the update. Just disable automatic updates of the Google App in the Play Store. You could even return to Google Assistant by reverting Google App to an older version.
- rep_lodsb 1y agoJust disable automatic updates, so you can then instead yell at them about how they're compromising security? What is really needed is being able to choose what updates to install, and more generally, being able to get rid of all the crapware that uploads everything you do on your device to your corporate overlords. Not just particular "apps", but the operating system itself. The fact that most people in 2025 simply accept carrying around 24/7 a device with GPS, microphone, camera and wireless network connection, which they cannot control or even know what it does at all, is dystopian. Imagine if this was the norm with PCs back in the 1990s. Linux would never have existed, since there would have been no way to replace the pre-installed Microsoft OS with something else.
- gonzalohm 1y agoThat's the problem. My automatic updates are disabled and yet somehow that happened
- john01dav 1y agoThe features that you use may be there, but I don't want all of my everything getting hoovered up to Google. On Apple some functionality (termux and ad blockers in native apps come to mind) isn't even available in the closed ecosystem.
- Kudos 1y agoI was the same. This year I found new motivation and switched my Pixel to GrapheneOS to take back control of my device.