RIM Nuking PlayBook App Side-loading Over Piracy Concerns; Calls Android Market

[twelch82]

To companies looking to protect me from myself - "No thanks."

I am not going to buy a product that treats me like a small child who might harm himself if left to his own devices.

 

[phraun]

[citation][nom]wildkitten[/nom]Well, if the permission list is self generating from the manifest for both Amazon and Google Play, then something is wrong. I routinely check the permissions listed on Amazon for their FAOD against the same app on Google Play and everytime there is more permissions listed under Google Play.[/citation]

It is and always will be down to the user to exercise due discrimination with regard to downloading and installing applications, whether on the phone or their PC or anything else. Apple's app review system is far from perfect, and Android's is effectively non-existent. It's true however that permissions must be included inside the manifest of the application, at least in Android, and those permissions are shown when you attempt to install the app (and in more detail when you get them from Google Play). You can't simply have a "ninja" permission. It's no doubt possible to gain certain permissions through one or more exploits, but that's a tangential point and true of all software in any case. Check here for more info:
http/www.androidcentral.com/android-permissions-privacy-security

Also, I suppose the irony of calling out another company on their app store is lost on RIM? I mean, if you don't want any apps at all, RIM's store is pretty exceptional. Otherwise...

 

[rcmaniac25]

I'm setting myself up for trouble, but what makes sideloading so important? To get apps that were rejected? To get the ones that people don't want to put on the market? Is it to get pirated apps? Development? Or something else?

If it's development, they have stated) that they view sideloading as there for developers.

Before the PlayBook even came out, people asked if sideloading would be there. They said "no." Most, if not all, of the current sideloading done on the PlayBook is done through the developer mode that exists on the device.

I agree the initial tweet could have used some further clarification, if there is any agreement I have with the "cesspool" comment it's that many devs who have an already existing app and port it over so it looks exactly like the original platform's UI often aren't as good as a native version of the app.

So what exactly do people look at it so highly for? An App World account is free. App submission is free. Signing keys are free. Is an app so exclusive that it cannot be published through current channels, especially if it's free? The only times I have heard of someone's app getting rejected were when the app didn't work on the device (often later discovered that the person only tested on the simulator).

 

[Guest]

RIM is willing to bleed themselves white then go ahead. Buying an app? I am as happy to get one with an ad banner on top of it or trials. I don't mean crack the binary (bytecode in Android) but legit ad-supported app. Things are already very bad with RIM to people, RIM needs to fix their business model, not patchwork fixes on their product. We knew what happened to Netscape Communications.

$5 extra on data plan (fee for going through extra RIM server), delayed OS rewrite, those are bad enough; Fusion (admittance of their inferiority) and this knocks it right off.

The cesspool comment is very much an insult, calling markets cesspool is just like calling Internet itself a cesspool, we already knew it is, we aren't toddlers that understood nothing. Having someone like that comment so is just adding bad rap onto RIM.

A friend of mine chatted along that topic with me, Google Play does have permissions lists out, and a program simply cannot get through the OS without it, gray markets might not be as clean on the presentation but the framework is in place where it should: on the hardware. So what's left is to ignore games and utilities that should have nothing to do with SMS Permission but calls for it for dubious reason and not to rooting a phone without concrete reasoning (mine is Barnacle Wi-Fi Sharing).