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Comment by Nullabillity | Hacker News Reader

> If your kids are carrying a cell phone, it should probably be a secure phone, with strictly enforced app store policies, and with a secure OS that is not provided by a company with every incentive to gather and monetize personal and private information.

Pest or cholera. At least it allows you to tinker with it, as opposed to iOS.

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And who of the God knows how many users of Android will 'tinker' with it? Ignorance of the user base, technical or otherwise, IS a valid argument against this sorta thing. We made it so.

No, disallowing learning is how you get ignorance.

> At least it allows you to tinker with it, as opposed to iOS.

Sadly, that's not true anymore.

On iOS, if you jailbreak, you can still use Apple Pay, and all apps.

On Android, if you root, or modify anything, Android Pay stops working, Snapchat stops working, Pokemon Go stops working, most banking apps stop working, most games stop working.

I've been a supporter of Android since the start, but by now it's just as proprietary as iOS, with more spying and tracking and analytics, and less possibilities to tinker.

I can install a non-Google-approved app on my phone via the normal phone UI, without having to exploit any kind of bug in the system (I do have to set a checkbox in the settings). That's a very concrete difference.

Is that so much better? You can do the same on iOS now, if you have a mac, by sideloading from the mac.

Android has been losing openness, iOS has been gaining it, they've finally met in the middle with the Android 7 release.

>by sideloading from the mac

So not the same, then.

Used to work for a company bug testing their app. We used a service called installr which worked on both devices. On iOS you installed a certificate/profile and on android, it downloaded an apk which then got installed manually. 100% of the time it was easier and quicker on iOS. And this was downloaded from the internet, not a mac.

You are suffering from a common misconception, that you can't tinker with your iOS devices. I tinker with my iOS devices all the time. As do many people, with their own devices. With help, encouragement, and software tools provided for that purpose by Apple. I just can't tinker with your iOS device.

Can you install a non-webkit web rendering/JS engine with that process?

You can. It won't pass cert for the app store, but you can.

Don't you need a mac+xcode to do that though?

Sure. But that's part and parcel to doing anything on there. It's not really a big deal when you can get a Mac that can do it for $300 used--it's probably going to be cheaper than the phone was.

Okay, you can install stuff for a limited time on "your own" device.

You can't use it for a non-trivial amount of time without constantly reinstall it. You can't share it with your friends. You can't make it integrate with anything else on the device.

You can tinker with it in the same sense that you have freedom of speech in a solitary confinement cell.

Oh, and only if you also paid thousands for a glorified license dongle.

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