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Comment by mikedilger | Hacker News Reader

There is no three day approval process needed for me to install software on my desktop. By going this way, Google is taking Android further and further from a general purpose pocket computer. I expect this move will quiet some squeaky wheels, but it also further opens up the market place for general purpose pocket computers like the forthcoming librem 5.

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You can install software on your Android phone instantly as well. It just has to be from outside the Play Store.

Yeah. I'm significantly less sympathetic to these arguments on Android than on iOS.

You can't install iPhone apps from outside the App Store on an iPhone (unless it's rooted, which most people prefer not to do for reasons of complexity and security).

I'd say the Android app store is a nice balance.

Also, if you want to install some other, less-well maintained app store on your Android, that's also possible (on non-rooted phones, too). Indeed, I've got F-Droid enabled on my Android.

That said, if Google ever pulls the ability to sideload apps on non-rooted phones, I'll not be happy at all.

I'm surprised Google didn't pull the ability to download an APK and install it from Android Q. They modified the permissions slightly so now you have to click "allow" again every time an app wants to install an APK it has downloaded. Up until Q, once you used an app to e.g. update itself, it maintained the ability to download and install updates forever.

When Fortnite was distributed outside the Play store I thought that would be the catalyst for removing side-loading permissions, only retaining them over ADB so developers would not be totally screwed. Maybe the news of that arrived too late in the Q cycle for it to be implemented. I'm sure that one day on-the-fly side-loading is going away. Maybe not in Android Q, but in R or S definitely. It's too consumer-friendly and useful! Removing it will "help user's security" while at the same time removing the ability to install 3rd party VPN-faking ad-removers or games like Fortnite that don't have to pay Google 30%.

Is fortnite still sideloaded? I thought they did it mainly because there were some issues in distribution, not because of the 30% cut.

Yes, it is not available on Google Play. The issue in distribution was totally down to Google's cut :-)

With this 3 day wait, you bet your bottom I'm going to have a release channel outside the play store. I can't do hot fixes of issues anymore. All bugs will take 3 additional days to be fixed now.

> There is no three day approval process needed for me to install software on my desktop.

There's no three day wait to install an APK, either.

There's a three day wait to get your app in Google's store, which isn't the only possible distribution method for Android apps.

If you're talking about installing software on your own device, you can still do so with an apk, can't you?

Actually, there is a 7 day timeout package updates for stable Fedora releases need to pass, unless they get testing feedback from the community. And even if they get feedback, It usually takes a couple days from the update being submitted and hitting the stable repositories.

So far this has not caused any signifficant issues - rather gave enough time for testing & caught a lot of breakage before it broke someones Fedora installation.

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