7 ms·

Even after Google puts this crap in place, you can still uplodad your own apps to your own Android devices, using ADB. Doing the same for iOS, using Xcode, cost

by fainpul 5mo ago

Even after Google puts this crap in place, you can still uplodad your own apps to your own Android devices, using ADB. Doing the same for iOS, using Xcode, costs you USD 100 or more (depending on country) per year. I'm in no way defending Google here, just pointing out you're going from bad to worse and think it's a good thing.

brandonhorst 5mo ago
This is not true, running your code on your phone with Xcode has always been free.
- quantumleaper 5mo ago
  With a free account, it needs to be reinstalled every 7 days because the signature expires. It's hardly convenient for personal use.
  - dylan604 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - therein 5mo ago
      It happens. Sometimes you're done making updates to a personal app you use that you wrote.
    - AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
      Every 7 days, forever? At some point you have the thing working to your satisfaction and just want to continue using it.
      - deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
      - Terr_ 5mo ago
        Hell, maybe you just want it to not break during a long vacation. Or maybe everything is normal, but, oops, you forgot the last renewal and it stops working exactly the moment you needed it most.
      - Terr_ 5mo ago
        Heck, even "tinkerers" might want it to keep working during a long vacation. Or maybe it's a normal day, and, oops, you forgot the last manual renewal, and now it's busted at exactly the moment you needed it most.
    - hbn 5mo ago
      Going on vacation and want to continue dogfooding?
  - manmal 5mo ago
    Most apps can be a PWA nowadays. A Hetzner VPS costs roughly the same as the Apple dev membership. Saying this as a native iOS dev since iOS 4. For your average pretty json printer you don’t need to go native.
    - cbsks 5mo ago
      Offline PWA sites are very limited on iOS. If you force close Safari, look at your phone funny, or don’t visit the site regularly, the cache is cleared and you are stuck at a loading screen until you have internet again. That’s what forced me to finally bite the bullet and pay Apple yearly so I could develop an app for my friends and I to use. Would have much rather kept it as a PWA.
      - manmal 5mo ago
        Yeah they can’t make it too easy to bypass the App Store :( I don’t think that’s a super strong argument though. Native apps have downsides as well.
  - pzo 5mo ago
    even worse - if you need to build some app with entitlements or some features likes push notifications etc then you need non-free account
    - roysting 5mo ago
      I would like to mention that although I’m aware of the limitations, I think it is worth designing and advocating for web app standards that could even at some point become a viable competitor to native apps, especially for apps that really don’t need to be native/wrapped apps in the first place since most are CRUDs anyways. Maybe this will be a catalyst towards further evolution of the web app as Android devs want to carve out some freedom from the world domination corporate shadow government walled gardens.
      - regularfry 5mo ago
        You're not wrong, but it will always be the case that the web platform lags native. There will always be stuff you can't do without a native client. The proportion of apps that it's viable to run as a PWA will probably increase over time, but the platforms have both the ability and incentive to stay out ahead.
- encom 5mo ago
  >free You forgot to factor in the cost of a Mac.
  - cromka 5mo ago
    You don't need a computer to develop Android apps?
    - autoexec 5mo ago
      You aren't even limited to android apps. You can install termux and write and compile your own code to run from there or to copy and run anywhere else.
    - Gander5739 5mo ago
      All you need is a phone: https://github.com/atamshkai/Android-Studio-On-Android-Phone https://github.com/atamshkai/Android-Studio-On-Android-Phone
      - Imustaskforhelp 5mo ago
        I remember running kali linux once on my phone with (termux+vnc) and a vnc viewer app watching some random youtube videos a few years back So I feel like, Something like this was/is possible but its immensely hard for something like this being used especially when a desktop os on a phone is so bad ergonomically speaking unless you have a keyboard mouse connected A better option iirc is to use something like kivy[0] directly with termux, not sure if java might have direct options too or not. [0]: https://github.com/kivy/python-for-android https://github.com/kivy/python-for-android
    - dartharva 5mo ago
      You can use _any_ computer to make Android apps. For iOS you strictly need a Mac.
- giancarlostoro 5mo ago
  Even free-er with Expo and React Native. Course then you have to touch JavaScript ;)
- solarkraft 5mo ago
  What an insane song and dance to run software.
- frizlab 5mo ago
  This is not true either. At some point you had to pay. But it’s been a long time since they made it free (with caveats).
rybosworld 5mo ago
While not equivalent to a true iOS app, PWA is a decent option that allows you to circumvent the app store restrictions. If you are trying to build apps primarily for yourself, it's a decent option.
- latexr 5mo ago
  Doesn’t that require you to host it and have it available on the open web, though? Is there a host that allows you to, for free, not only HTML/CSS/JS but also access to arbitrary tools and bespoke scripts on the backend?
  - rybosworld 5mo ago
    Yeah it stands for Progressive Web App - but there are lots of hosting solutions with generous free tiers.
  - herzigma 5mo ago
    As a lark, I built a set of personal productivity apps that are delivered as standalone local webpages. Works surprisingly well on Android, haven't tested on iOS.
  - noduerme 5mo ago
    For free? No, but if you built a native app that needed a backend, you'd still need to host the backend somewhere too. I host my own web apps from a cheap mini pc at home and access them over tailscale for personal use.
  - godwept 5mo ago
    I host a bunch of my own PWAs on Cloudflare using Pages and Workers. It's been free so far.
  - tnelsond4 5mo ago
    I host my app on GitHub pages for free. But yes, it's just static which is really all you need with how powerful wasm and JavaScript are.
ok123456 5mo ago
Isn't keeping ADB enabled (most people who do this don't enable it and then promptly disable it) a huge security problem? ADB enabled means an adversary can completely own your device and "back it up" by simply plugging it in. This is much worse than nagging about "untrusted sources".
- dvdkon 5mo ago
  No, there's a trust-on-first-use procedure where you have to accept the computer's key on your phone.
  - manmal 5mo ago
    Apple has the same thing, but for some reason added Developer Mode which you must enter on the iPhone first. It’s quite involved, with a restart and 3 confirmation dialogs. That had me wondering why they are suddenly so cautious around this.
  - fc417fc802 5mo ago
    Not only is it TOFU but that comment is doubly wrong because you can't really back up much other than the bulk storage directory without adb root (which requires a custom build, which obviates the issue to begin with).
- sigmar 5mo ago
  >ADB enabled means an adversary can completely own your device and "back it up" by simply plugging it in. each adb host has to be individually white-listed by an unlocked device. also the current behavior is that it auto forgets any white listed host that hasn't connected within 7 days.
- wolvoleo 5mo ago
  No it's not. Your computer creates a unique ID and you have to accept that on the unlocked phone the first time (or every time if you choose to). So even when adb is on an attacker can't just plug into your phone and use it. Besides, I just switch it off when I don't use it
bayindirh 5mo ago
Sorry, even as a developer, "but, you can use ADB" is a big big copout. What's the next step when ADB requires some hoops to enable? Will we say that but the eMMC has an unencrypted EXT4 partition, we can just desolder and write into it?
- jraph 5mo ago
  As a dev, i'd say having to use adb is a minor inconvenience. Still unacceptable, a better option would be to use something like lineage or some other aosp distro without the google services (hoping that nothing makes you dependent on them). This still doesn't address the vast majority of people though (and that's what I'm concerned about the most). What we need now is: - short term, work on pushing apps not to depend on the google services so phones preinstalled with something like /e/ become a viable option for most people. Push our public services to stop mandating Google and Apple OSes for random stuff. - longer term, work on making alternatives to Android and iOS viable options for most people (stability, usability and availability of services people use). The best candidate for that today is Linux mobile. Breaking network effect around proprietary services is one of the strategies towards this. Another one is reducing our reliance on computers (of any shape) altogether, maybe.
- gmueckl 5mo ago
  There are ways to wrap adb in a friendly interface. I can totally see a desktop based manager and marketplace for phone apps as a workaround.
- Dylan16807 5mo ago
  It's not a copout, it's a comparison to iOS. You're seeing an argument they didn't make.
plombe 5mo ago
Not. You don’t need to pay $100 to upload your app to an iPhone, even with XCode for iOS 26
- seviu 5mo ago
  Technically not but the devil is in the details. Having to reinstall the app every 7 days and a limit of one app doesn’t even pass the bare minimum. Jolla has a prelaunch campaign, decent phones for 200€. I might just as well grab one. Sick of having a phone which is more expensive than my laptop but I can barely use.
  - MYEUHD 5mo ago
    The limit is 3 apps AFAIK
    - antiframe 5mo ago
      Imagine Windows limited you to three apps. How is this acceptable?
      - rimliu 5mo ago
        Imagine Windows was free.
        lostlogin 5mo ago
        Imagine if you paid for Windows and didn’t get adverts.
        antiframe 5mo ago
        Wait, I can download and run iOS on my own hardware? Not that I have tried, but I always thought Apples whole schtick was you were only allowed to run their software on their latest X revisions of their hardware?
aucisson_masque 5mo ago
Yeah but where you were losing a lot, you're now losing only a little bit. And on the other side, the benefits of using iOS over Android spyware outweighs the cons now.
- hellojesus 5mo ago
  I haven't seen new data from celbrite in awhile, but I believe that grapheneos was the only truly secure phone from it for both bfu and afu as of a couple years ago. Apple lost my confidence after they removed Advanced Device Encryption for British users (plus implemented age verification for them). https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/14344-cellebrite-premium-july-2024-documentation https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/14344-cellebrite-premium-ju...
  - virgildotcodes 5mo ago
    I think it's been said that nobody has yet cracked Apple's Lockdown Mode, but that's likely not truly comparable?
    - soco 5mo ago
      How is then law enforcement getting what they need from people's iphones? Because I understand they do, in some way. And I'm not asking about forcing people to hand over pin or fingerprints, but just by themselves.
      - fsflover 5mo ago
        Here is one example how: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716490
      - strcat 5mo ago
        Lockdown Mode is focused on reducing the attack surface from Safari including the WebView and Apple services including iMessage/FaceTime. It does nearly nothing to protect against non-browser/non-messaging attack vectors in the OS or other apps. It's up to app developers to implement similar restricted modes and also baseline exploit protections. App developers need to explicitly opt-in to using the standard exploit protections used in many parts of the OS and Apple discourages doing it: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Xcode/enabling-enhanced-security-for-your-app https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Xcode/enabling-enh...
frizlab 5mo ago
No. You can upload your apps on your iPhone for free. You just need an Apple ID.

by fainpul 5mo ago

brandonhorst 5mo ago

This is not true, running your code on your phone with Xcode has always been free.

quantumleaper 5mo ago
With a free account, it needs to be reinstalled every 7 days because the signature expires. It's hardly convenient for personal use.
- dylan604 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - therein 5mo ago
    It happens. Sometimes you're done making updates to a personal app you use that you wrote.
  - AnthonyMouse 5mo ago
    Every 7 days, forever? At some point you have the thing working to your satisfaction and just want to continue using it.
    - deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    - Terr_ 5mo ago
      Hell, maybe you just want it to not break during a long vacation. Or maybe everything is normal, but, oops, you forgot the last renewal and it stops working exactly the moment you needed it most.
    - Terr_ 5mo ago
      Heck, even "tinkerers" might want it to keep working during a long vacation. Or maybe it's a normal day, and, oops, you forgot the last manual renewal, and now it's busted at exactly the moment you needed it most.
  - hbn 5mo ago
    Going on vacation and want to continue dogfooding?
- manmal 5mo ago
  Most apps can be a PWA nowadays. A Hetzner VPS costs roughly the same as the Apple dev membership. Saying this as a native iOS dev since iOS 4. For your average pretty json printer you don’t need to go native.
  - cbsks 5mo ago
    Offline PWA sites are very limited on iOS. If you force close Safari, look at your phone funny, or don’t visit the site regularly, the cache is cleared and you are stuck at a loading screen until you have internet again. That’s what forced me to finally bite the bullet and pay Apple yearly so I could develop an app for my friends and I to use. Would have much rather kept it as a PWA.
    - manmal 5mo ago
      Yeah they can’t make it too easy to bypass the App Store :( I don’t think that’s a super strong argument though. Native apps have downsides as well.
- pzo 5mo ago
  even worse - if you need to build some app with entitlements or some features likes push notifications etc then you need non-free account
  - roysting 5mo ago
    I would like to mention that although I’m aware of the limitations, I think it is worth designing and advocating for web app standards that could even at some point become a viable competitor to native apps, especially for apps that really don’t need to be native/wrapped apps in the first place since most are CRUDs anyways. Maybe this will be a catalyst towards further evolution of the web app as Android devs want to carve out some freedom from the world domination corporate shadow government walled gardens.
    - regularfry 5mo ago
      You're not wrong, but it will always be the case that the web platform lags native. There will always be stuff you can't do without a native client. The proportion of apps that it's viable to run as a PWA will probably increase over time, but the platforms have both the ability and incentive to stay out ahead.
encom 5mo ago
>free You forgot to factor in the cost of a Mac.
- cromka 5mo ago
  You don't need a computer to develop Android apps?
  - autoexec 5mo ago
    You aren't even limited to android apps. You can install termux and write and compile your own code to run from there or to copy and run anywhere else.
  - Gander5739 5mo ago
    All you need is a phone: https://github.com/atamshkai/Android-Studio-On-Android-Phone https://github.com/atamshkai/Android-Studio-On-Android-Phone
    - Imustaskforhelp 5mo ago
      I remember running kali linux once on my phone with (termux+vnc) and a vnc viewer app watching some random youtube videos a few years back So I feel like, Something like this was/is possible but its immensely hard for something like this being used especially when a desktop os on a phone is so bad ergonomically speaking unless you have a keyboard mouse connected A better option iirc is to use something like kivy[0] directly with termux, not sure if java might have direct options too or not. [0]: https://github.com/kivy/python-for-android https://github.com/kivy/python-for-android
  - dartharva 5mo ago
    You can use _any_ computer to make Android apps. For iOS you strictly need a Mac.
giancarlostoro 5mo ago
Even free-er with Expo and React Native. Course then you have to touch JavaScript ;)
solarkraft 5mo ago
What an insane song and dance to run software.
frizlab 5mo ago
This is not true either. At some point you had to pay. But it’s been a long time since they made it free (with caveats).

rybosworld 5mo ago

While not equivalent to a true iOS app, PWA is a decent option that allows you to circumvent the app store restrictions. If you are trying to build apps primarily for yourself, it's a decent option.

latexr 5mo ago
Doesn’t that require you to host it and have it available on the open web, though? Is there a host that allows you to, for free, not only HTML/CSS/JS but also access to arbitrary tools and bespoke scripts on the backend?
- rybosworld 5mo ago
  Yeah it stands for Progressive Web App - but there are lots of hosting solutions with generous free tiers.
- herzigma 5mo ago
  As a lark, I built a set of personal productivity apps that are delivered as standalone local webpages. Works surprisingly well on Android, haven't tested on iOS.
- noduerme 5mo ago
  For free? No, but if you built a native app that needed a backend, you'd still need to host the backend somewhere too. I host my own web apps from a cheap mini pc at home and access them over tailscale for personal use.
- godwept 5mo ago
  I host a bunch of my own PWAs on Cloudflare using Pages and Workers. It's been free so far.
- tnelsond4 5mo ago
  I host my app on GitHub pages for free. But yes, it's just static which is really all you need with how powerful wasm and JavaScript are.

ok123456 5mo ago

Isn't keeping ADB enabled (most people who do this don't enable it and then promptly disable it) a huge security problem? ADB enabled means an adversary can completely own your device and "back it up" by simply plugging it in. This is much worse than nagging about "untrusted sources".

dvdkon 5mo ago
No, there's a trust-on-first-use procedure where you have to accept the computer's key on your phone.
- manmal 5mo ago
  Apple has the same thing, but for some reason added Developer Mode which you must enter on the iPhone first. It’s quite involved, with a restart and 3 confirmation dialogs. That had me wondering why they are suddenly so cautious around this.
- fc417fc802 5mo ago
  Not only is it TOFU but that comment is doubly wrong because you can't really back up much other than the bulk storage directory without adb root (which requires a custom build, which obviates the issue to begin with).
sigmar 5mo ago
>ADB enabled means an adversary can completely own your device and "back it up" by simply plugging it in. each adb host has to be individually white-listed by an unlocked device. also the current behavior is that it auto forgets any white listed host that hasn't connected within 7 days.
wolvoleo 5mo ago
No it's not. Your computer creates a unique ID and you have to accept that on the unlocked phone the first time (or every time if you choose to). So even when adb is on an attacker can't just plug into your phone and use it. Besides, I just switch it off when I don't use it

bayindirh 5mo ago

Sorry, even as a developer, "but, you can use ADB" is a big big copout. What's the next step when ADB requires some hoops to enable? Will we say that but the eMMC has an unencrypted EXT4 partition, we can just desolder and write into it?

jraph 5mo ago
As a dev, i'd say having to use adb is a minor inconvenience. Still unacceptable, a better option would be to use something like lineage or some other aosp distro without the google services (hoping that nothing makes you dependent on them). This still doesn't address the vast majority of people though (and that's what I'm concerned about the most). What we need now is: - short term, work on pushing apps not to depend on the google services so phones preinstalled with something like /e/ become a viable option for most people. Push our public services to stop mandating Google and Apple OSes for random stuff. - longer term, work on making alternatives to Android and iOS viable options for most people (stability, usability and availability of services people use). The best candidate for that today is Linux mobile. Breaking network effect around proprietary services is one of the strategies towards this. Another one is reducing our reliance on computers (of any shape) altogether, maybe.
gmueckl 5mo ago
There are ways to wrap adb in a friendly interface. I can totally see a desktop based manager and marketplace for phone apps as a workaround.
Dylan16807 5mo ago
It's not a copout, it's a comparison to iOS. You're seeing an argument they didn't make.

plombe 5mo ago

Not. You don’t need to pay $100 to upload your app to an iPhone, even with XCode for iOS 26

seviu 5mo ago
Technically not but the devil is in the details. Having to reinstall the app every 7 days and a limit of one app doesn’t even pass the bare minimum. Jolla has a prelaunch campaign, decent phones for 200€. I might just as well grab one. Sick of having a phone which is more expensive than my laptop but I can barely use.
- MYEUHD 5mo ago
  The limit is 3 apps AFAIK
  - antiframe 5mo ago
    Imagine Windows limited you to three apps. How is this acceptable?
    - rimliu 5mo ago
      Imagine Windows was free.
      - lostlogin 5mo ago
        Imagine if you paid for Windows and didn’t get adverts.
      - antiframe 5mo ago
        Wait, I can download and run iOS on my own hardware? Not that I have tried, but I always thought Apples whole schtick was you were only allowed to run their software on their latest X revisions of their hardware?

aucisson_masque 5mo ago

Yeah but where you were losing a lot, you're now losing only a little bit. And on the other side, the benefits of using iOS over Android spyware outweighs the cons now.

hellojesus 5mo ago
I haven't seen new data from celbrite in awhile, but I believe that grapheneos was the only truly secure phone from it for both bfu and afu as of a couple years ago. Apple lost my confidence after they removed Advanced Device Encryption for British users (plus implemented age verification for them). https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/14344-cellebrite-premium-july-2024-documentation https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/14344-cellebrite-premium-ju...
- virgildotcodes 5mo ago
  I think it's been said that nobody has yet cracked Apple's Lockdown Mode, but that's likely not truly comparable?
  - soco 5mo ago
    How is then law enforcement getting what they need from people's iphones? Because I understand they do, in some way. And I'm not asking about forcing people to hand over pin or fingerprints, but just by themselves.
    - fsflover 5mo ago
      Here is one example how: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716490
    - strcat 5mo ago
      Lockdown Mode is focused on reducing the attack surface from Safari including the WebView and Apple services including iMessage/FaceTime. It does nearly nothing to protect against non-browser/non-messaging attack vectors in the OS or other apps. It's up to app developers to implement similar restricted modes and also baseline exploit protections. App developers need to explicitly opt-in to using the standard exploit protections used in many parts of the OS and Apple discourages doing it: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Xcode/enabling-enhanced-security-for-your-app https://developer.apple.com/documentation/Xcode/enabling-enh...

frizlab 5mo ago

No. You can upload your apps on your iPhone for free. You just need an Apple ID.