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Comment by grawprog | Hacker News Reader

Just the way the functionality's in there now shows it's treated as a second class feature. It's buried down in the special access settings labelled as 'install unknown apps and granted or removed on a per app basis. Notably, the google play store is not on this list.

The whole setup makes installing apps from other sources obtuse and 'scary' to the average user.

I'm not sure how say an app from f-droid is more 'unknown' than an app from the play store myself. Then of course, just to install f-droid, I have to download it, allow installing apps from my file manager, which comes with some scary popups, then I have to again enable the setting for f-droid, again after some scary popups.

The goal really does seem to be do make the idea of installing software one acquires outside the 'official garden of known apps' to be something terrible and scary nobody should ever want to do.

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So on every single thread about apple's walled garden when someone suggests that Apple should allow installation of 3rd party apps, everyone immediately goes "oh no, now my mother/father/grandma will install some dodgy app and it will steal their data".

To which I say....have you seen how complex the process is on android?? I can't imagine that that is going to be a problem. They will be just sent a dodgy website link that will steal their bank details, not some app that most people won't figure out how to install.

> Then of course, just to install f-droid, I have to download it, allow installing apps from my file manager, which comes with some scary popups, then I have to again enable the setting for f-droid, again after some scary popups.

Not only that, but every now and then when trying to update an F-Droid installed app, Android pops up an unexpected dialog asking if I want to enable "Play Protect". Its unpredictable, breaks the flow of the update process, and seems to have no way of disabling it.

This really bothered me too, so much so that I downloaded some unofficial LineageOS source code for the latest version, patched it for signature spoofing to be able to use microG and flashed it to my device. That play protect popup was the last straw. It reminded me that google is indeed watching every step on my android phone.

> The whole setup makes installing apps from other sources obtuse and 'scary' to the average user.

...yes? It's not a bug, it's a feature. For the average Android user, it SHOULD be obtuse and scary to install apps from a third party source. Power users can still use a third party app store.

yeah, I want to believe in the fundamental competence of humanity, but then I think back to all the browser toolbars I used to see on random people's computers..

How is it any more 'scary' installing an app from a website than the play store? There's plenty of malware on the play store. I'd actually be willing to bet you're more likely to install some malware from the play store than from an apk you get off a website or alternative store.

It's a tradeoff for freedom vs a false sense of security. On android at least, the walled garden approach hasn't seemed to stop malware, the majority of which, comes from the play store. All it's done is teach users to blindly trust apps just because they come from a supposedly trustworthy source. If anything it's taught people to think less about security and the kinds of apps they install. It's on the play store right? Must be ok.

Scary to me as a technie? Not really, I worry more about the developer's signing keys.

Scary in terms of telling my mom to do it - absolutely. At least the Play Store has some (imperfect) curation, and SafetyNet.

Do you not remember the old days? I had a nightmare of a time lk dealing with adware and spyware infested pcs. Almost every person I knew had an infested pc. Browser hijacks, toolbars etc.

For the layman, the walled Garden is a feature.

I remember. I killed my computer once with adware to the point where I needed to reformat my drive and reinstall everything. It sucked, but it taught me to always pay attention to installers and not to just randomly install anything and everything.

I've also helped other people deal with these problems before. I found that aftwr taking the time to show them how they end up inatalling that crap, the kinds of things to avoid and setting them up with some removal tools they tended not to make the same mistakes.

Epic doesn't seem to quite agree with you.

Jesting aside, it's not a bug in the sense that Google also gains nothing and actively loses money from making it easier. At this point it's just to avoid PR nightmares that they are keeping it in.

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