It's sad that Tuta has fallen for Big Tech newspeak. Once upon a time, we installed stuff on our devices. Calling it side-something makes it seem frowned upon, which plays right into Google's hand.
Got any citations for that? The first time I personally ever encountered the term "sideload" was at a Microsoft developer demo for the upcoming Windows Phone around 2010, and another audience member raised his hand to ask what that term meant.
That is untrue. It's called "installing" or just "running". Sideloading makes no sense if you describe normal installing that way. The side load is the app store.
And also the phones people had in the early to mid 90's were analog bricks, with serious batteries. The smaller phones like nokias came 97 onward and were smaller.
I am not sure about that. Windows, Linux based devices were like that but for a lot of things like gaming consoles etc. you were locked into the ecosystem and 'side loading" was indeed something.
I do understand developer mindset but I would be pretty unhappy if my mother's phone could just install stuff. A lot of people get harmed and lose their life's saving over wrongly installed crap.
A good middle ground for the Big Tech is to let folks pay $$, a money that is high enough and has sufficient friction.
That isn't even true about gaming consoles. They were completely open in the 90s and before. The consoles even lost lawsuits keeping it open. For newer consoles, a modchip doesn't side load, it enables normal loading without the drm check.
Bypassing/disabling drm would not be called sideloading.
If anything, the app store would be the sideload because they are loading the installer via a middleman instead of downloading the installer and running it yourself like normal.
Sideloading is a type of installing defined by the source of the file(s) being installed. Google will still allow installing from the Play store. The distinction is valid.
You can acknowledge that different concepts exist and would be better served by having different words, rather than trying to force others (via downvoting) into not using a given word. Whether you support google's restrictions or not, they only apply to a subset of apps, so having a word to refer to the specific subset of apps is helpful.
Regardless of your position on whether Android should care whether an app came from the play store downloaded elsewhere, it's worth distinguishing them for the purposes of discussing what's happening.
I think your example is stilted in exactly the direction that the anti-sideloading-as-a-term crowd fears is increasingly becoming normalized.
In fact, I think it's actually a perfect demonstration of how incredibly subtle and pernicious even small changes in the language we use can be, especially over a period of years to decades. Those changes are capable of reframing public perceptions in ways that inhibit our ability to recognize what would otherwise be obvious attacks on our expectations of rights and individual agency (were they couched in the existing terminology instead).
I would propose a modified counter-example to illustrate my point:
"Google is banning installation of apps they don't approve!"
vs
"Google is banning sideloading!"
This makes it clear what's actually happening: ownership of a Google device is no longer truly ownership. You are only allowed to install apps Google deems acceptable, and are denied the agency to install apps that are not. The device is fundamentally Google's to control; you're merely a user.
>In fact, I think it's actually a perfect demonstration of how incredibly subtle and pernicious even small changes in the language we use can be, especially over a period of years to decades. Those changes are capable of reframing public perceptions in ways that inhibit our ability to recognize what would otherwise be obvious attacks on our expectations of rights and individual agency (were they couched in the existing terminology instead).
>I would propose a modified counter-example to illustrate my point: ...
Which just turns into endless fight over wording, where each side tries to get the maximally sympathetic wording they can get away with, and decry the other side's attempts at rewording as "doublespeak" or whatever. eg. are they "illegal immigrants" (implying they did something illegal) or merely "undocumented" (implying they lost their documents or whatever)?
> Which just turns into endless fight over wording
Sure. One side benefits the users and the other benefits a monopoly. I don't work for that monopoly but I do use a smartphone that is locked to the monopolist OS.
> You can acknowledge that different concepts exist and would be better served by having different words, rather than trying to force others (via downvoting)
Bold of you to assume that downvoting was accompanied by words.
On that note, the gain of creating doublespeak is usually in the favor of those who create it. Added unnecessary complexity will only serve to create fear, uncertainty and doubt, while the original meaning and intent was well established with words.
We have existing words and works of art to establish a link to the intents, purposes and end goals to what Google has done here.
