10 mo. ago • 100%

New Japanese law may force Apple to allow sideloading in iOS

www.ghacks.net New Japanese law may force Apple to allow sideloading in iOS - gHacks Tech News

The Japanese government is working on a new antitrust law that will require Apple to allow sideloading apps in iOS.

44 comments

The fact that letting users choose what software they'd like to install wasn't seen as an fundamental part of a computer really highlights Apple's backwards philosophy towards user experience.

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- And the cult followers will foam from their mouths and defend that it's better if you have less choice for some myth of security.
  
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  I’d say the cult Apple haters are generally more toxic in their language and aggressive in gate-keeping.
  
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- Their argument for "safety" always bothered me, their app store is full of garbage and malware. They just want their 30% cut.
  
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  And even if the App Store was perfectly safe, keeping users safe via restricting basic functionality instead of increasing tech literacy is a backwards approach
  
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  I mean if they want their safety they can feel free to keep it. No need to limit others to the App Store.
  
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- "What's a Computer?"
  
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That's very cool, or maybe not it seems it could only allow other stores to install software and not 'whatever you want', but are they going to apply this rule to Nintendo or Sony, whose consoles aren't a very different case to apple iOS devices, as well? No mention in the article

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- ...are they going to apply this rule to Nintendo or Sony...
  
  They absolutely should. Closed ecosystems should be illegal. They are literally an intentional form of unethical, predatory trust.
  
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- In Japan, companies > people. Because the ruling LDP has won the election for 80 years almost 100% and people believe economy = stock market.
  
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How did sideloading get its name?

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- That's always my trigger, fucking 'sideloading'. Jesus christ it's installing shit. Installing. There was never a need for such a pissy horrible concept in the firstplace, a bootlicking special if there ever was one
  
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  It's like "jaywalking". It purely exists to bully and discriminate against pedestrians and declare the streets belong to the cars. That's what you get when you have big ass corporations do the lobbying.
  
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  Probably because "installing unsigned code from an unknown source" is a mouthful. Installing implicitly means "from within the walled garden" on these devices.
  
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  Wfegnwfnwfnwf
  
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- So this is actually an interesting term. Looking it up from Wikipedia...
  
  The term "sideload" was coined in the late 1990s by online storage service i-drive as an alternative means of transferring and storing computer files virtually instead of physically. In 2000, i-drive applied for a trademark on the term. Rather than initiating a traditional file "download" from a website or FTP site to their computer, a user could perform a "sideload" and have the file transferred directly into their personal storage area on the service.
  
  The advent of portable MP3 players in the late 1990s brought sideloading to the masses, even if the term was not widely adopted. Users would download content to their PCs and sideload it to their players.
  
  So as applied to phones it originally meant a particular type of download and install - rather than installing directly to your phone from an app store, you have somehow obtained the file on your PC, transferred the file to your phone, and then installed it. In that context, downloading an APK directly to your phone and installing it would not be sideloading.
  
  However, semantics have shifted somewhat and now it's used generally to refer to any install that isn't directly from an app store of some kind, and requires downloading an actual package file and then installing it.
  
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  So it does kind of fit in with the other definitions: download is from the wider internet down to your local device, upload is from your local device up to the wider internet, so sideload is just moving something from somewhere local to somewhere else local. I imagine sideload wasn't generally used before because we'd just say "copy/install a file" or similar, and its usage now comes from it being a shorthand for the slightly convoluted process required on mobile devices.
  
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- It's from the earlier days of computing/portable devices where almost nothing had the sort of inter-connectivity we take for granted.
  
  You'd download apps or music onto your PC and then 'sideload' them onto your PDA or MP3 players.
  Sometimes this required both proprietary cables and software. (This is why some of us still get excited by simple USB ports)
  
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Or to stop doing business in Japan entirely

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- Considering they're a huge market for Apple (~70%), I doubt they'll pull out. And if they do, then too bad.
  
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  They won't. Even back in the Steve days, they paid special attention to the Japanese market. The OG Macs were some of the first computers to have well-rendered fonts for CJK. Knowing Japanese culture, they will either do nothing with this new sideloading capability or they will run with it and an ecosystem will explode of alt app markets. I'm leaning toward the former.
  
  9
  
  What does that ~70% refer to? Japan is about 5% of Apple’s global revenue and iOS is installed on around 50% of Japanese phones.
  
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I still wouldn't switch. I know many here will, but I like my GrapheneOS phone too much

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Sweet!

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