This isn't an iOS vs Android contest. It doesn't matter who has the better implementation.
In a thread about how Facebook invades users’ privacy because of lax security controls on Android, it does matter that one method of allowing third party keyboards is “secure” and the other isn’t.
Innovation != profit. Otherwise, Open Source communities would be a lot richer. This is like saying, "well if newspapers have such good reporting, why aren't they making money?" Because the app market as a whole on both iOS and Android is a race to the bottom. It just so happens that Android's bottom is slightly lower than Apple's is.
One of the posts in this thread was talking about “entrepreneurship” a
Nd business opportunities that can’t exist because of Apple’s policy. If that were true, you should see a blossoming of business opportunities that exist on Android.
Go back even farther and you had 3rd-party tethering apps.
Tethering restrictions was the one thing that Apple did to cowtow to phone providers. Why would Apple care about third party tethering otherwise?
One big thing for me personally is that I use a file manager on Android to handle syncing -- I basically treat my phone like a USB drive. A really nice part of that is it's all web-based. I don't have anything installed on my computer, I can boot up essentially a local server from my phone and drag videos/music into or out of any app's data storage from any computer with a web browser. Even from other phones :
There are plenty of apps that do that with the iPhone. But, all of the cloud storage apps have web interfaces that you can copy files to and from.
The high-end Pixel phones sell.
Barely....
Estimates are that Google sells about 4 million phones in a year - the same number Apple sells in a week.
> There are plenty of apps that do that with the iPhone.
...no. iOS doesn't have a user-accessible file browser. On Android, I can use my browser to access system files from any other application. Apps in iOS are sandboxed from the file system. I'm confused -- isn't that one of the things you like about iOS?
Maybe that's changed since the last time I used an iPhone? Did Apple break and add a system-wide file access permission recently? I don't see any iOS apps advertising that feature, but maybe I'm missing something.
The point I'm getting at is not whether or not iOS is more secure than Android. It's that the open app approach, while flawed for many reasons, allows developers to pursue innovative applications like weird keyboards that let you swipe instead of tap, and background apps that let you turn parts of your phone on and off when you walk into your house, and custom stylus-oriented devices that let you scrawl notes on your home screen while your phone's locked, and firewalls that let you monitor system-wide network requests and block ads, and homescreen widgets, and, yes, even network-level privileges that allowed 3rd-party OEMs and developers to add tethering regardless of what service providers wanted.
Some of these ended up being bad ideas, and some of them ended up being good ideas. And since then, some of the good ideas have gotten copied to iOS, with tweaks.
This is good for everyone. It's especially good for Apple users.
The point I'm getting at is you can't only focus on one part of this equation. Android is less secure than Apple because it's open. But it also, objectively, has a wider array of low and high-end devices and applications than iOS does. The same is true of Windows. Windows is insecure. But they also have Surface Books, which are cool. It's a trade-off.
When you talk about going wholesale down the "we control everything" approach, you are treating a multidimensional issue like it has exactly one right answer. It is in everyone's best interest to have multiple different systems trying out multiple different approaches.
> One of the posts in this thread was talking about “entrepreneurship”
As far as file access, no app should ever need access to the entire file system - just the users’ files. Even then, a photo/video app should only need access to the photo library a music app should only need access to your music library etc.
As far as generic files again the user chooses which files the app has access to outside of the sandbox via a standard file picker.
Besides the built in iCloud, if you install Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc. you can choose any of those as destinations when you want to save or load a file from the standard file picker. They all just “storage providers”.
But if you want a local file storage solution that is accessible by all apps, you can install a storage provider for that too.
> With iOS 8, your iPhone or iPad can now have a local file system like the one Android users have.
The evolution of file access on iOS is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. A rough feature that came out of Android's laissez faire permission model that was later tweaked and adopted by iOS after it proved useful and was demanded by users.
And I feel like this is still happening - to me the new Files app in iOS 11 is a pretty clear step towards unifying disparate storage solutions in a single interface, and opening up the Files app to third party integrations is another cautious shift towards Android's more permissive model. I would not honestly be surprised if at some point in the future Apple introduces a way to access some system files -- every desktop OS supports it, and the iPad is slowly positioning itself as a desktop replacement. But I dunno, it'll be interesting to see.
When you say, "oh, there's nothing innovative about this", you're glossing over that it took a heck of a long time to get file access at all in iOS, and that Apple is still evolving how file access works on its devices. Android served as a testing ground for that feature while Apple stood back and watched and thought about how they wanted to approach it. Which (again) is a process that's good for users on both platforms.
And I feel like this is still happening - to me the new Files app in iOS 11 is a pretty clear step towards unifying disparate storage solutions in a single interface, and opening up the Files app to third party integrations is another cautious shift towards Android's more permissive model
That’s kind of the point, the way that Apple allowed third party storage providers were done in a method that is still not “permissive”. Apps don’t have access to users files except for the files that the user chooses. If an app wants full access to their Dropbox or Google Drive storage, they still have to have a custom integration like VLC.
Apple introduces a way to access some system files -- every desktop OS supports it, and the iPad is slowly positioning itself as a desktop replacement. But I dunno, it'll be interesting to see.
And every desktop OS has the potential for viruses and ransomware because of third party apps having access to system files and to what benefit?
In a thread about how Facebook invades users’ privacy because of lax security controls on Android, it does matter that one method of allowing third party keyboards is “secure” and the other isn’t.
Innovation != profit. Otherwise, Open Source communities would be a lot richer. This is like saying, "well if newspapers have such good reporting, why aren't they making money?" Because the app market as a whole on both iOS and Android is a race to the bottom. It just so happens that Android's bottom is slightly lower than Apple's is.
One of the posts in this thread was talking about “entrepreneurship” a Nd business opportunities that can’t exist because of Apple’s policy. If that were true, you should see a blossoming of business opportunities that exist on Android.
Go back even farther and you had 3rd-party tethering apps.
Tethering restrictions was the one thing that Apple did to cowtow to phone providers. Why would Apple care about third party tethering otherwise?
One big thing for me personally is that I use a file manager on Android to handle syncing -- I basically treat my phone like a USB drive. A really nice part of that is it's all web-based. I don't have anything installed on my computer, I can boot up essentially a local server from my phone and drag videos/music into or out of any app's data storage from any computer with a web browser. Even from other phones :
There are plenty of apps that do that with the iPhone. But, all of the cloud storage apps have web interfaces that you can copy files to and from.
The high-end Pixel phones sell.
Barely....
Estimates are that Google sells about 4 million phones in a year - the same number Apple sells in a week.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/17007104/google-pixel-tot...
And if Andy Rubin can’t convince people to buy high end Android phones - the Essentisl phone - who can?