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Comment by theonemind | Hacker News Reader

Sideloading seems like an exotic and vaguely illicit sounding way of saying "installing applications not from Apple's app store". This is kind of the mirror image of phrasing it like "install apps without paying Apple 30%"

Annoyingly, entrenched powers have the podium and often claim the prerogative of coining the terminology for the debate. Not that they don't have a somewhat defensible position in terms of security. But an effective Apple and Android smartphone duopoly hardly makes the decisions of one player some neutral "let the free market sort it out" kind of proposition.

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It's about choice. I'm a tech head and can easily root phones if I need to. But increasingly, the mobile phone is a key life tool and I'd rather that it works like a fully managed appliance. I'm willing to pay the Apple tax to blissfully live safely in their walled garden. Absolutely no need to wail and rant about Apple and their App Store practices constantly. Just use Android.

The ability to sideload apps has nothing to do with that though.

Do you work for Apple?

"Blissfully live safely in their walled garden"

I'm sorry to call you out, but this sounds ridiculous. It has nothing to do with safety. If you care about safety, you shouldn't be satisfied with a curated experience. You should demand it from the OS capabilities regardless of where the app comes from.

“ You should demand it from the OS capabilities regardless of where the app comes from.”

That sounds like a quote from Tim Cook. Seriously though, if the commenter is happy with Apple and how it fits their work patterns then why do you need to call them out? I’m consistently confused about the mental horsepower spent on this debate when the solution is really simple: if you don’t like a product, don’t buy it. I think Tesla’s look lame, so I don’t own one. I don’t like Twinkies, so I don’t buy them.

I guess my point is - wuu saa

I definitely lean more towards the libertarian side of things, but in instances like this I do think the monopoly/antitrust arguments carry some weight. Apple and Google both DOMINATE the mobile market; and it's not an insignificant market. Unseated Microsoft from decades of dominating how the vast majority of computing power was used almost overnight.

I think it's LONG past time for both Apple and Google to be forced to offer mechanisms that are far less onerous for third party app stores than the hoops and fear mongering Google makes you go through on Android.

If Apple and/or Google were actually successful on delivering a fraction of their promises about safety and security in their app stores that would be one thing - but they don't even appear to be trying, despite all their bluster to the contrary.

If you're a tech head, wouldn't you be just as safe on Android?

Except for all their talk to the contrary, Apple's walled garden is hardly safe. Scam apps continually dominate the top grossing apps sales charts.

OBVIOUS scam apps. They aren't even that cleverly hidden - and yet Apple is slow to deal with them - if ever.

I too once was pro-walled garden. If the promise is realized, it would indeed be nice to have at least one platform that was a safe haven - not having to think but being able to just trust and use.

Except Apple didn't deliver their promise. And with the obviously political motivation to remove Parlor - screw them. I'm now firmly in the camp of there needs to be alternative app stores, and they need to be easier to install with less bombastic warnings than Google puts when you try to enable side-loading with Android.

I've been "side loading" on macOS and Windows for decades and the world hasn't ended. No sure why I bought into their BS with iOS initially, but after a decade of them failing to deliver it's now patently obvious that it was (and always was) complete and utter bull shit.

The last anarchism of Steve Job's control fetish - time to blow it up. If Apple really is delivering the best overall app store experience then they shouldn't have a damn thing to worry about. Path of least resistance and all that.

But they aren't. And they haven't had to care, nor will they ever have to care, unless they are forced to compete. When I think of all the apps that could be but aren't because of Apple's downright hostile attitudes towards developers (at least sharecroppers were often acknowledged for bringing landowners some value), inconsistent applications of the rules, sudden reversals on previous stances - it's even more vexxing. It's soured me so much on iOS I no longer invest any new time in it as a platform.

I've used Mac's since 1986 - and while I often wanted Apple to be more successful, I also feared what would happen if they ever got too successful. And sadly my fears seem to be justified when I look at the state of iOS.

Thankfully they haven't tried to "iOSify" macOS, and even with the new Apple Silicon machines they are open enough that you still have complete control and can even load other OS's on them. They aren't going out of their way to foster it, but they aren't actively or even passive-aggressively blocking efforts either. So there is at least some hope. But right now, iOS and its direction is an utter disappointment and I hope something or someone can snap them out of the path they are on.

True, but it is also a word used in the Android ecosystem which refers more or less to installing applications not from the Google Play store.

I couldn't have Japanese TV service on my livingroom screen, without loading an .apk file directly from the provider onto the Android box.

Tim Cook's analogies with cars, air bags and seatbelts are what is disingenuous, not so much the sideloading word, which is a foregone given.

A better analogy is that the Apple car is one that refuses to take certain exits off the freeway, or shortcuts that are not charted in the guidance system.

Like politics, the two mobile choices seem to cover about 90% of American’s beliefs.

In other words: you’ll have to pry my iPhone out of my cold, dead, hands.

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