Madis

I don’t disagree, it’s more of a matter of least evil.

But Chrome is already just Chromium with some binary blobs. Chromium itself even has sync and Google services at this point.

Besides, what would that change in regards to who develops it?

Of those companies, Apple seems like the best option due to their business goals (privacy). Though I am not fully sure why they’d want to as they already have a browser with a relative market share dominance and ecosystem.

Realistically, it would make sense to see Microsoft try again, it would instantly get 70% of the world to use “Edge”, so their goals are met. Chrome already has the modern web standards, so it might just mean slower progression of the web in the future.

Well, it was about compatibility years ago, too. But when they did the Fenix project, I remember initially only about 5 extensions were available to install, even if they could’ve allowed more with the APIs available back then. Then it took years again to get access to the full store of extensions.

Edit: also, where did themes go? It isn’t that hard to overlay a horizontal image on the toolbar like before.

And yet they introduced nonsense restrictions on them after overhauling the interface few years ago.

It is still possible to make 90% of that screen harder and keep only the crease as the weak point.

So how do you find actually private services?

They used to be? When?

Sure, if it is already private. But if it is not, then it gets copied to different instances and so if the original post gets removed, it is up to each instance to follow and when.

Frankly, decentralized networks make it even harder to take content down.

Play Store already does a weird thing to some niche apps where you have to have to click twice on an app to even see full details like screenshots. For example, look up the app “SecondScreen”.

Widget stacks and per-screen customization as well.

Another article blurring the lines of a skin and a launcher. I don’t care what your default launcher does, not gonna use it anyway. System-wide features, on the other hand…

What I don’t understand is do any of the OEMs giving this feature also combine it with passthrough power? So besides not charging the phone at 80%, it would keep it working using the wire instead of the battery.

Perhaps you could report it to Google Play for that?

But sideloading and OEM stores (Samsung, Huawei) have been available for years?

I don’t understand the second one “Distribute third-party app stores as apps, so users can switch app stores by downloading a new one from Google Play, in just the same way as they’d install any app”.

In real life you don’t see big supermarkets spread their flyers in competitors’ stores, how does that make sense digitally?

I’ve noticed that XDA still has the main threads and download links, even if more frequent communication happens elsewhere.

Having used custom ROMs for years, it can get tiring to fight with SafetyNet, find root backup apps that still work, dealing with bugs the developer may not be able to reproduce and, of course, even finding decent phones that have decent ROMs. I refuse to buy a Pixel until they have a decent SoC and price.

So for my next phone I’m currently considering an OEM that supports phones for long and has decent customization by default - Samsung. As I’ve never owned Samsung phones before, I don’t know whether I’ll like their OS, but so far it looks good enough.

So it took 4 major releases to make the quick settings reasonable again… I’m actually glad most other OEMs did not follow when Google did the change in 12.