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Comment by asdff | Hacker News Reader

At the same time, why not just release at least one phone that is developer friendly? People can handle it. All these issues are present on computers that are able to run unsigned code, have sensitive personal info stored on them, etc. Yet the sky is not falling with all this going on with everyone's computer on earth, like how people fear the sky will fall if we opened up the mobile phone.

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>Yet the sky is not falling with all this going on with everyone's computer on earth, like how people fear the sky will fall if we opened up the mobile phone.

This is because everything was moved to the web and users were beaten over the head with a hammer to never install anything on their computers. The sky was falling and subsequently the desktop software platform hardly exists today.

I expect Microsoft's built-in antivirus helped a lot too, but yeah, the Windows XP era (c. 2001-2010 probably) was an absolute disaster of malware.

How exactly was the sky falling?

http://static.spiceworks.com/images/how_to_steps/0000/3886/t...

This is funny, but in practice there would be maybe one or two of these bars. Many didn’t work together. These toolbars didn’t stop people from being able to work, eat, or pay their bills. I know. I lived through this era.

On most (if not all) Android phones, you can tap the version 8 times to put it into developer mode and then install whatever you want.

All

Not all, some have this option locked out.

Depends what you mean by “sky falling on heads” They’re definitely aren’t concerted efforts in companies to not just open any email attachments

No data breaches occur to insecure passwords

Phishing, let alone spear phishing isn’t a thing

No popular app has ever found to be doing naughty things

We’ll not to the oss crowd anyway, if it does happen, it’s coz they aren’t using open source and checking every line of code

>why not just release at least one phone that is developer friendly?

Google and Apple want to control their users, they don't want to give you an open phone. Instead have a look at Librem 5 and Pinephone, which run GNU/Linux.

In a way, but not for your reasons, they want to create mass market devices that if you give one to your grandma, little nephew can twist their arm for the root password to install this totally harmless fun app

Apple realised that far more than google imho

So include a button that rolls back the OS to yesterday? You are inventing a dire issue that does not exist or has a clear, proven solution.

It's easy to install unsigned apps on Android, but not being on the Play Store severely limits your reach, since many people only check there for apps instead of searching on the open web.

FDroid

They keep making them but they keep failing, because people want phones that work without needing a computer science degree to understand what is safe and what isn’t.

And myself being an apple guy with a dev account, i can install pretty much what i want

The initial barrier of getting grandma on an iphone is over and the need to dumb down devices to the lowest iq to gain marketshare should be over. It is time to raise the collect iq and at least offer a way to drop the training wheels

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