The point is that today the term only serves to delegitimize what should be accepted practice (installing whatever software you want on the machine you paid for) by making it sound like some secondary/shady behavior. Thus allowing phone manufacturers to maintain their walled gardens and control over consumers.
Comment on oh and it's also a crime
Saapas@piefed.zip 1 day ago
Sideloading is an old and well established term for it when it comes to phones though. Sideloading is installing stuff outside of app stores
hesh@quokk.au 1 day ago
Saapas@piefed.zip 1 day ago
Tbf these days it is secondary behaviour. Most people aren’t installing stuff outside of app stores on their phones.
It would just feel weird changing the words we use because companies started using the same terms too. We had it first!
Hazel@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Before phones that was the only way to install apps though.
Maybe we should have a term for the inverse, like ‘wallgardening’, or ‘bootlocking’, or ‘corputing’, or ‘inshilling’? 🤔
Saapas@piefed.zip 1 day ago
But the discussion is specifically about phones..? I’ve never heard anyone use sideloading in a different context
grandma@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Phones are just computers except they fit in your pocket and have a cellular connection. Distinction without a difference
Saapas@piefed.zip 1 day ago
Phones are a specific type of computer. I wonder if some madlad hates the term “smart phone” so much that they’re out there calling them computers and confusing everyone.
Hazel@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Yeah, it’s about phones because they changed established practice, but then why use a new word for what was established practice and not the ’new’, phone-specific, practice of limiting app availability?
Saapas@piefed.zip 1 day ago
Sideloading is a more specific term than just “installing”, it’s more about where you got the software, the process of installing it. So people started using a more specific term to distinguish it from other types of installing.
Why people choose to adopt one word or another, I dunno. We just started calling it sideloading and that’s been the term for as long as I remember (though very early on I didn’t read or write much in English)
ITGuyLevi@programming.dev 1 day ago
What about before app stores were a thing?