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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

Ok, so on the one hand I love the amount of features and innovations Microsoft keeps bringing to Windows and the likes of Bing Search, but on the other hand Windows and Edge are now just adware.

Just look at the screenshot picture in the article. One third of Edge's windows is just ads for games.

Remember the days of IE 6-7 when you'd get them infested with toolbars and adware as every Windows app you'd install would try to sneak those in during the installation process if you weren't careful to untick the right boxes? I guess someone at Microsoft though "hey, what if now we were the ones pushing the adware to our customers and monetizing their data?".

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That is literally the "Games" pane you can turn on in the settings. It's just the store for their games. It's not the default Edge experience. You only see that when you purposefully turn it on.

Nailed it. Microsoft forced me to Google through bugs. Google forced me to Apple through advertising and privacy violations. Microsoft and Google are now doing very well at keeping me in Apple's ecosystem.

I periodically use an android device or sample windows just to see if it got any better and, no, it's a veritable shit show. They had good, mature products and screwed them up by selling out as adware companies.

Android at least used to be a relatively open platform where you could own the system but of course Google screwed it up by adding remote attestation. Now it's either iPhone or postmarketOS.

Don't iPhones also employ remote attestation?

They do. What I meant to say was now that Android is locked down there is no point in accepting its shoddiness anymore. If I must be in a walled garden, I'm choosing the best kept garden.

Ah, I understand now. For me, iPhone doesn't have table-stakes until I can install apps off GitHub. Maybe come October with the regulation and a new USB-C iPhone, my mind will change.

I really didn't want to switch. I don't know how to live without Termux anymore. Google's screwing up even that, now vital system calls like execve are no longer usable by apps so Termux won't even be able to spawn programs anymore. They worked around that by moving to F-Droid but who knows what Google is gonna screw up in the future. What's the point?

My plan is to buy an iPhone soon and then try to port postmarketOS to my current phone.

> What's the point?

Knowing that when things go to shit, you can at least have a cell phone?

I get your fatalist approach here, I really do. But if you think authoritarian companies are going to eventually ruin everything, I don't see why you'd go all-in on Apple. If you feel shorted by the Play Store's removal process, you won't like the App Store any better. If you're mad about first-world features like hardware attestation existing and being used, that's less Android's fault and more the modern development culture moving forwards.

Do whatever makes you happy in the end. Long-term though, I cannot imagine myself switching back to iOS. Apple has nothing like the AOSP, which love-it-or-lump-it is the best thing Android has going for it today.

>Apple has nothing like the AOSP, which love-it-or-lump-it is the best thing Android has going for it today.

ELI5, what's AOSP? Is it like, base android without hardware drivers? Does this make it easier to maintain 3rd party android roms?

> Is it like, base android without hardware drivers? Does this make it easier to maintain 3rd party android roms?

More or less. The AOSP is the free portion of the Android codebase (licensed in Apache) and actually accounts for the vast majority of Android code you run. Google then adds their services to the OS and preinstalls it on most phones. Most people derive custom roms from a combination of AOSP code and official (albeit proprietary) drivers.

I can still own my system just fine by choosing a phone with good community support and installing LineageOS (or some other variant of Android) + rooting it. If you don't want Gapps but still need to run apps which rely on it either microG or GrapheneOS with its sandbox are potential options. SafetyNet can also be bypassed if needed.

Now sure, that requires some extra effort and time from the user but it's just the situation we are in currently. Not like you have any other current options for an open mobile system outside of being an early adopter of GNU/Linux phones and their ecosystems.

> I can still own my system just fine

> SafetyNet can also be bypassed if needed

Nope. Android phones now have hardware attestation, good luck faking that. If you install any of the stuff you mentioned, you've "tampered" with your phone. Hardware remote attestation will now fail and apps will no longer run.

My bank app complains about developer mode for god's sake. If WhatsApp starts requiring attestation, I will have the "choice" to either give up my freedom or enjoy my $600 paperweight.

Had no idea that was a thing. Thankfully my current phone appears to be old enough to not make use of it. That sucks, can't wait for the mobile GNU/Linux ecosystem to mature.

It was a shock to me when someone here told me about it. Android is finished. My plan is to buy an iPhone and try to port postmarketOS to my current phone instead of insisting on Android.

Sorry you are denied a workflow, but I hope I never need to install a banking app on my phone. Smartphone is now such a liability for the power it has over my life. Unreasonably nervous about what happens if it breaks/lost/stolen.

I don't get it. Two advertisers are keeping you in the ecosystem of.. a third advertiser?

I could see a Linux or a BSD, but Apple is also just another advertiser spying on you here.

I don't get ads on iOS, macOS or iPadOS. Literally none.

The only revenue stream they have in that space is in-app ads (I don't have any of those apps) and the app store, which is basically an advertising portal to find tools so I expect it there.

Google and Microsoft shovel it down you and bug you constantly about upsells and third party trash.

Every time I search on my wife's iPhone for some specific application in the App Store the first result is an add for a competitor's app. How is that 'expected'?

How is that not expected, let alone “spying” in anything like the way FB or Google do?

I don’t like ads in general, but “you searched for a competing product, please consider mine” is so old school and understandable.

I use my desktop and perform searches every day. I am constantly nagged with targeted ads and bulk promotions when doing so on Windows and when using Google.

I search for apps in the App Store once every few months. Perhaps others do it once or twice a week if they like exploring and trying new apps.

Does that not seem qualitatively different to you? Even if Apple makes some revenue as a result of advertising inside their fully segregated marketplaces, it's hard to think that those ads are a big part of one's experience with Apple.

Yeah I don't get any either. I also don't think they're selling your data (or if they are, they're very bad at it) because my targeted ads don't reflect my activity on their OS...

Unlike my android phone. My youtube ads change noticeably in response to whatever I've recently googled, it's very unsettling how dialed in they are.

My daily driver is Linux though. I do agree that's what you should be using if you want to be free of these dystopian shenanigans.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-...

"Let’s begin with the current state of play: Apple’s advertising efforts today consist of display ads inside of its News and Stocks apps, as well as inside the App Store, across the iPhone, iPad and Mac. The App Store also has Google-like search ads. And more recently, Apple put advertising inside of TV+ for its “Friday Night Baseball” deal with Major League Baseball."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddoty/2023/02/08/apple-the-... has more on the near term changes you can expect. Addendum: https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/12/22/23513061/apple-iphone-...

These are the adverts I want: discovery in scope of what I am doing i.e music, entertainment and apps. Literally Apple deliver those cleanly.

What I don't want is scams, noise, garbage and malware which is what the alternative ecosystems are full of.

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