• dev_null@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      29
      ·
      edit-2
      8 hours ago

      Yeah, but installing from the Play Store is also installing, and “sideloading” is shorter than “installing from outside the Play store”, so I’m not sure this is a winnable fight.

      • Trilogy3452@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        2 hours ago

        “I installed from apt get, and then I sideloaded from flatpak, and sideloaded from a .deb file”? Or “installed from the windows store but sideloaded from an .exe file” (literally everything I ever installed was through .exe/.msi on windows)

        ?!?!?

        • dev_null@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          20 minutes ago

          I’d just call all of that “installing”, “sideloading” doesn’t really make sense here. Importantly you already specified how you installed in each case, so it’s perfectly understandable whatever verb you use.

      • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        38
        ·
        7 hours ago

        It’s installing regardless from where you get the app, by labeling it as sideloading these giant corpos want to label it as doing something outside the norm, something that is “unsafe” so they can have control over user behavior and market dominance

        • dev_null@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          5 hours ago

          Yes that’s what I’m saying, it’s “installing” regardless of where you get the app, so if an article wants to talk about something concerning installing apps from outside the Play Store, they can’t just say “installing”. That would be incorrect if the things they talk about don’t concern installing from the Play Store.

          So you need a different description than just “installing”.

          E.g. in this example the article title couldn’t be “installing changes are next”, it would need to be something else.

          “Installing” is not a drop-in replacement for “sideloading” without changing the meaning of what you say.

          • ITGuyLevi@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            5 hours ago

            I’ve had the play store install, remove, and modify installed applications without so much as a hint they were doing it, the “Play Store” does what would be considered “sideloading” applications (i. e. a third party app managing your applications from a location other than the package manager), feeding an apk to a package manager would just be “installing” an application like it always has been.

            By co-opting the term to be something bad, they are trying to make it seem like they are the only safe source for applications (even though the Google-managed stores have just as much malware as WinMX did 20+ years ago).

            • dev_null@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              22 minutes ago

              Correct, but what do you propose? In your terminology installing from the Play Store is “sideloading” and installing directly is “installing”. But surely you agree that if an article was titled “Google makes installing apps on Android harder, but sideloading will be as smooth as before”, everyone would understand the opposite of that.