Their biggest selling point is regulated app stores…

sound of jail bars crashing shut as Android cuts all the indie developers out of the market

It’s shit the government should be doing

The joke of it all is that government does do stuff. But it's mostly to cement the existing duopoly.

Government contractors dump hundreds of billions of dollars into licensing for the dominant OS. Government regulators are fully captured by industry lobbyists, building their rules around policies the businesses have decided on internally. Policing agencies focus almost entirely on small fish, foreign developers, and whistleblowers. Courts use a one-size-fits-all financial punishment guidance, which can easily bankrupt a small business but is barely more than a speedbump for mega-corporations.

Nobody seriously talks about Breaking Up The Tech Companies via Antitrust Laws. Nobody talks about making Open-Source Code more regulatory friendly or investing more public dollars in Open-Source development / deployments. We can't even seriously talk about insourcing chip production or building out competitors to Intel and TSMC.

The Big Lie of modern left/right political discourse is that American political institutions are doing Too Much or Not Enough. The bitter truth is that if you're any kind of threat to the domestic business cartels... well... just ask TikTok what happens next.

They're really astroturfing youtube ads right now (I know, ick, youtube, and I should use plugins; I normally don't use it at all but lately I've had a couple songs I've been listening too on repeat. I should just download them).

Like, almost every fucking ad is "some apps are traps, can you spot the trap" with these stupid cartoony characters representing apps and suddenly one (at random, with no rhyme or reason) blows up and the narrator says "google play can."

Like fuck off, google play says whatever they want to say is a trap is a trap. Meanwhile they allow all these predatory BS apps on their store. They'll let you fall for the traps they approve of. And they won't even show you what country an app developer is based in until after you download it.

But they're trying to give people this false sense of security like "oh, I can trust anything on the play store" while also making them suspicious/hesitant to use any alternative app repos. It's clearly an attempt to manufacture consent for their ecosystem lockdown, and unfortunately it will probably work. They're targeting easily-influenced young people with these supposedly "cute" (yet honestly kinda gross) characters.

Software repositories are already perfect!

All the regulation they do such as age verification is mandated by governments.

There's a program called universal android debloater which let's you delete pretty much anything you want. I've used it and it's like a miracle.

Still once you get to that stage it's so much more tempting to skip that and get busy on trying to get postmarketOS going or something.

Crazy how they even let other manufacturers modify base Android. Even the settings menus are all over the place. Searching for specific settings is basically impossible if you're not on a Pixel or something.

Don't even get me started on the dev side of things. Makes Windows habit of stacking 30 years of shit look like paradise.

This isn't the case on their flagships in the EU (not sure which is the reason).
I have never had Facebook or other crap preinstalled since my Samsung Note 10.
That said, samsung best be avoided anyway.

Companies are the new de facto legislators

Excellent quote. Ill be using that in the future.

Its 'interesting' what can happen when people are forced to do a thing a certain way only because an engineer wrote it that way and a company mandated it.

The Fairphone 6 and 6+ is something to keep an eye on, specifically with TheMightyCat's build of postmarketOS. It's almost fully functional with a close-to-mainline kernel, unlike Jolla phones and UBPorts, which both rely on Android kernels which will eventually stop being supported.

I have been daily driving linux phones as my only phone for over two years. Typing to you now from a phone I ported myself, which has been in my pocket for 3 months now.

Linux phones are where Linux desktops were 10 years ago. A few of us who are lucky can get away with using them because we don't require proprietary software on our personal devices, but many people will struggle without their Facebook app or their Garage Door Opening app or their Ford Connect app or whatever else. That said, SailfishOS has a decent compatibility layer, but it in itself is proprietary.

Jolla phone is pretty good.

Not sure what happened to the PinePhone

I have a FLX1s

It's OK. Its fairly buggy, but the basics do work. I wouldn't give it to a "normie", without expecting a lot of complaints, but if you don't mind tinkering, it's not terrible.

They do actually have a pretty decent file manager. Unsurprisingly you can’t access system files, at least as far as I know. It’s not nearly as robust as what you can do on android, but it is easy to use.

I get unbelievably angry using an iPad now. They've completely fucked up the file system and its impossible to know where anything is. By design. I hate modern computing so much.

Folders? What's that normie tech illiterate win95 nonsense? My device has directories, tyvm.

They've had a file and download manager for a while now, not a bad experience

hard drive

Are you talking about pre-2013 Macs now?

You're quite the madlad aren't ya?

They've had for a couple years

Yeah, let’s just ignore facts and pretend iOS doesn’t already have this.

Shortcuts UI/UX with the power of Tasker is my dream

Some interesting ways to shuffle music and make playlists too, tho I prefer using marvis app for smart playlists (they really should make that a regular music app festure and not just on itunes or wherever ppl do that without the app)

Now you can make shortcuts with the onboard AI by just describing them! Haven’t tried it out, but I made a few safari shortcuts and they seem to work pretty well for what I need.

Sorry, having unlocked bootloaders is unsafe for the children or whatever. Best we can do is mandatory OS and age verification every 45 seconds. Please do not resist.