6 ms·
I've grown increasingly hateful towards both my Android and iOS devices over the last decade. The platforms themselves are increasingly user-hostile, and their
by rkagerer 1y ago
I've grown increasingly hateful towards both my Android and iOS devices over the last decade. The platforms themselves are increasingly user-hostile, and their appstores are crammed full of shitty, privacy-invading, telemetry-hoovering, dopamine-triggering, ad-filled, lipstick-covered apps that are often garbage compared to the pioneering days of mobile. I miss the days of my old Palm Pilot.
Is anyone working on fixing this? We can do so much better.
- indrora 1y agoWindows 10 Mobile was good. The entire developer experience was fantastic and the thing that killed it was a lack of desire from the upper leadership when it felt like they couldn't compete with the duopoly.
- toast0 1y agoThe developer experience was trash. Did you have a wince app? Too bad, throw away all that and rebuild for wp7. Do you want do anything useful? Actually, you better wait for wp7.5. Oh look, we have a totally new thing with WP8. Upgrade to the newest framework so you can use the WP8 features... Oh, but you still need to build for the old framework for WP7. Hey, how about WP8.1, kind of the same deal. My personal favorite though was WM10; you now need to build a Universal app that only runs on the very small number of WM10 phones... If you want to run on WP7 and WP8 which still have more sales, a universal app doesn't run there. Also, even though we said WP8 phones would be able to upgrade, either we changed our mind, or the experience is so bad most people won't. And the cherry on top... Users who upgrade from 8 to 10 might need to delete and reinstall the app, otherwise it will just show the loading dots. Did we mention, we decided we didn't need engineers in Test in the run up to WM10? Couldn't possibly be why the release was terrible.
- xyzzy_plugh 1y agoIt's incredible that by the end of it, the WM rollercoaster made us actually miss WinCE. If you had have told us that initially none of us would have believed you. WM had so much potential and was just totally botched.
- miloignis 1y agoGrapheneOS + F-Droid is a joy to use, for me. I'm kinda shocked when I use anyone else's phone, now. If they start selling their own devices, I will buy one and (assuming it turns out how I hope it will) recommend it strongly.
- petralithic 1y agoHow do you access banking and other sensitive apps? If the answer is, you don't, well, you can see how that's a non starter for the vast majority of people.
- miloignis 1y agoMy banking app works fine on GrapheneOS. There is a crowd-sourced list here with current status for many of them: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/ https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
- kelnos 1y agoThis is a good start! I think we need something like a ProtonDB for this sort of thing, but that covers all apps, not just banking apps. I do see five banking apps I use listed there as working, which is great. But -- and maybe I'm being unnecessarily overly worried about this -- what about the future? What if I've been using Graphene for a year or two, and one of the ones that's critical for me changes how they operate, and Graphene no longer passes muster as a platform it will run on. I'm not afraid of this happening at all running Google's stock OS image, but once I do my own thing, I get to keep the pieces when it breaks.
- seanw444 1y agoA web browser in the worst case scenario. The same way you'd do it on a computer.
- debazel 1y agoThis is quickly disappearing as an option as well. I need my bank app to authenticate even when using a web browser on desktop. Luckily my banks app still works on GrapheneOS, but I suspect it's only a matter of time before they disable that because of "security" reasons.
- foobar47859 1y agoVollo from German is one https://volla.online/ https://volla.online/. They sell a nice set of devices that run either a custom Android or Ubuntu Touch. Their custom Android has a nice bunch of UI and privacy features. Fairphone from the Netherlands is another https://www.fairphone.com/ https://www.fairphone.com/
- foobar47859 1y agoThe Linux Experiment podcast has a nice review of the Vollo phone https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-rIxrGXFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh-rIxrGXFU
- margalabargala 1y agoFor once Fairphone never updating their phones will work in our favor! If Google roll sthis out in early 2026, anyone with a Fairphone can rest easy that they won't receive that version of the operating system until mid-2028 at least.
- worldsayshi 1y ago> Fairphone never updating their phones I have a Fairphone and i get updates pretty frequently so not sure what you mean?
- margalabargala 1y agoWhat major version of Android are you on? Last I checked (a few months ago) all Fairphones were still on Android 13.
- worldsayshi 1y agoAh, you mean that. Yeah it's still 13.
- lucb1e 1y agoI have Android 15 on my work phone and 10 in private. I don't really see the difference besides that they've made it more annoying to turn wifi off (requires an extra tap now, first the general internet menu and then a small slider for wifi or mobile data). Genuinely not seeing any significant changes from a user point of view (I'm sure there's lots of new SDKs for the developers, but while I've made apps before, I'm not a mobile dev keeping up with the latest things) That Fairphone has 13 just tells me they don't waste employee time in their small business on useless upgrades just for the sake of it. Their point is fair wages and ethical mineral mining: better that they have a workable phone without even more fluff, it seems to be tricky enough already in this world :(
- Hilift 1y agoMobile in general is a second class ecosystem. You're paying to ride in a bus that most ride for free, and when you sit down it's squishy.
- lucb1e 1y agoIt's also super nice to take notes on the fly for OpenStreetMap with StreetComplete, for holding the device up to the sky and it tells you what planet is so bright in the sky, for navigation... These things don't work on a laptop. Even if you want to carry a full-sized system in place of a smartphone, or use Ubuntu Touch, I'm not aware of software to do these things in the convenient way that Android apps let you Of course, that's a software support issue and not a constraint imposed by the OS. Someone could make Stellarium desktop work with an orientation sensor. It's just that nobody has done that particular thing, as well as a million other things that work super well on mobile So is it second-class, or is it just a way that is optimised for output rather than input? You get the turn instructions presented to you, you can watch videos and listen to music, note-taking is optimised to work with a few taps and is reduced to the essentials you need. You can work them out later on computer if you have time at home over of course, but at least you can contribute that way with ease
- cryptoegorophy 1y agoYou can enjoy “good old days” from what you remember of iOS and android. I also say enjoy the LLM good new days while they last.
- steve_taylor 1y agoI'm right there with you. These platforms are cancer. There's a small but growing movement away from smart phones. It'll probably never go mainstream, though.
- fzeindl 1y agoI think before we can fix all that we need to revert the renting of software via subscriptions and go back to one-time-payment. But people are too greedy for that.
- BirAdam 1y agoI too miss Palm. I had a Pilot, then a Treo, and finally a Pixie. When HP bought Palm, I switched to iPhone. It was a sad day.
- wahnfrieden 1y agoI cut my teeth on commercial b2c & b2b app dev/sales on Palm OS from the age of 14. It was sad but now I'm a full-time bootstrapped iOS dev thanks to that experience.
- tootie 1y agoI make a point of never installing an app when there's a usable mobile site. Even if they prompt me to install every ten seconds.
- yuprock 1y agoplease don't take it out on us mobile devs
- tootie 1y agoHeh, I've always done this. Maybe if every mobile dev made sure I could find text like I can in a browser I'd be less strident. But really, I need a very good reason to install stuff.
- platevoltage 1y agoEvery time Reddit asks me if I want to open it up in their app, I want to do that even less.
- klabb3 1y agoThe crazy thing is this is all under the pretense of preventing malware. And I constantly hear this argument that the app stores protect people, even from developers. I truly don't get it. Are these people from 2009? Have they seen the apps on the current app stores? If you're lucky your highest rated flashlight app will only have a few Fullscreen ads and a subscription less than $10/mo. The recipe sites from content farms are less bloated and way less scammy. It's certainly not about preventing scams. It's about preventing competition in the scamming business.
- m463 1y agofrom the techcrunch article: > According to its own survey, Google says that more than 50 times more malware came through internet-sideloaded sources compared with Google Play, where it has required developer verification since 2023. 50:1 is not preventing. It is just "well, we are better than nothing" I'm pretty sure there can be other curated stores that can serve the customer¹ [1] customer: owner of phone, not advertisers, data merchants, etc
- klabb3 1y agoI regard Google highly in many domains, but this needs independent research. There is just waay too much opportunity to misuse data to paint a picture of themselves as the protectors. Especially curious about their definition of malware, because to me the app stores seem worse than browser toolbars from the 2000s.
- dlcarrier 1y agoIt also shows how bad Google is at preventing malware in the Play store. There are far more than 50x more installs from the Play store than from side loading, which means that most malware is installed through the Play store, despite the much lower barrier to entry for side loading.
- ricudis 1y agoI happen to know the situation in some of the countries mentioned in the article. There are millions of $ stolen via side-loaded malware. It's good they decided to do something about it.
- ActorNightly 1y agoI mean, just get a rootable phone and roll your own RoM. If you can type stuff in a terminal, its not that hard to do. You can pretty much disable all google services. Just a fair warning though, the experience is quite degraded.
- pabs3 1y agoStart complaining to your government about every shitty thing the apps and OSes do, and tell your friends to do it too, eventually we may get some action on it.
- qwerpy 1y agoWe are all mildly annoyed and therefore mildly motivated to fix the problem. Apple and Google are extremely highly motivated to retain the status quo. I still try to vote with my wallet but it's going to be hard to counter their well-funded lobbyists.
- strix_varius 1y agoI tried to screenshot some app on my android the other day and got an error toast reading some bullshit like "this action has been blocked by the admin." Uh I'm the admin and this is my hardware... The sketchy app was trying to prevent screenshots.
- ekianjo 1y agoSome Linux phones exist. And there is sailfishOS too.