this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Lemmy
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I did use older Android, and I agree that the new permission model is absolutely much better for the use case of running apps that you do not trust or even like. I can scan a coupon with the camera today without having to worry that the store's app is going to be taking pictures of me tomorrow.
But that's hardly any of what I use my phone for. So I pay a lot of the costs of more hoops to jump through to allow stuff I actually want, while not really getting much of the benefit of being able to use malicious applications relatively safely.
And the one time I had a real permission problem, it was Snapchat trying to bully me into giving it access to all my files so it could "detect screenshots" before it would let me talk to my friends. And Android permissions were no help there, because the app can still tell if I reject its requests and won't get booted from the store for refusing to work until I grant access to everything, even though I do not want to.
The whole system seems to me to be designed to make people feel like their privacy is being protected, by popping up all the time to say that unused permissions have been removed and hey look at all these privacy options you have. It does indeed stop people from spying on your location and camera all the time without you noticing. But while the little permanent green dot is flashing every five minutes when your location is sent to Home Assistant like you explicitly asked, and you are trying to decide if you want to let Zoom use Bluetooth headsets just right now or on an ongoing basis, Google is hoping you don't notice that the OS and most of the apps are designed to extract value from you rather than to serve your interests.
It's now safer to run the evil apps, but they're still there trying to do evil.
I, uh, think your point is getting away from you here though, yeah? You can argue about the real intent (and we can pick and choose whatever OS you want), but the fact of the matter is OSes update for legitimate reasons and allowing older apps to run is expensive and/or insecure. App development does not and should never stop. Even Linux is patching vulnerabilities constantly. And new features do occur. Buying an app once is outdated in the connected age.
I understand that keeping backward compatibility forever isn't worth it. But I think it should be kept for longer than it is now.
That's expensive. Increases the attack surface. Degrades performance by requiring more overhead. Bloats the size of the OS. Sure, you can care about backwards compatibility over all of that. But apps will likely continually get developed regardless of backwards compatibility. So there's still cost.
Again. I'm afraid you lost your point somewhere. Development rarely is ever completed. If it's truly "completed" then it's an extremely simple app with no real value and probably not worth anything. If it has value and isn't simple, then it can always be improved. So hosting isn't the only reason for ongoing payment. Continued development is extremely legitimate. Is it possible someone might abuse it? Sure. But software development never stops. It will always go into sustainment after release and when sustainment is over, the app is retired.