Proposed EU rule may mean you can finally delete some apps from your phone

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/draft-eu-data-rules-target-apple-google-facebook-amazon/

by thg • 6 years ago

176 60 6 years ago

Hermel2• 6 years ago

Why can't this just be reached by market pressure? In a free and open market, producers offering unpopular products should not be able to survive for long.

fiblye• 6 years ago

It’s been decades and computers still come with bloatware. Phones will likely have garbage for decades as well. If there’s a few pennies to make off doing it, companies will just do it and not leave many options.

tsimionescu• 6 years ago

What could be achieved by some theoretical model of an open market is largely irrelevant. The more relevant point is what HAS been achieved by the actual market. If the market, given enough time, is still doing things that are hurting consumers, at some point the government must intervene.

black_puppydog• 6 years ago

Two locked-down ecosystems, controlled by two large corporations that act largely without competition between their respective market segments and who keep the barriers to entry high enough that no other competition can enter is exactly not a free market.

And, surprise, it is hurting customers.

This is exactly an attempt to make an entrenched duopoly face some actual competition.

Hermel2• 6 years ago

What if the locked-down ecosystem is the result of overly restrictive copyright laws? Wouldn’t it be better to tackle the root cause and adjust that?

tenebrisalietum• 6 years ago

Sometimes the market chooses the best of various bad options, if the only options available are those bad options, or information to avoid the bad options is not readily available (e.g. you should be able to know which apps are undeletable before buying the phone).

So the best product, that violates the ideas of ownership in this case (if I own a device I should decide what apps run on it) might win in a free and open markets. But it's still OK to, for example, enforce normal expectations of device ownership, or enforce disclosure of information to ensure the consumer choice is genuine.

nixass• 6 years ago

Average consumer is uneducated and doesn't care, and does not punish producers for their wrong doings

dmitriid7• 6 years ago

What makes you think that current situation isn't the direct result of a free and open market?

zepto7• 6 years ago

It is.

What makes you thing there is a problem that the free and open market won’t correct?

sasaf5• 6 years ago

Also people should be free to decide what code runs in their property.

Someone• 6 years ago

One could argue they also are free to decide to buy some property that makes that so hard to be effectively impossible.

People do that all the time with game consoles, cars, fridges, smart light bulbs, etc.

So, does anything differentiate smartphones from those? If not, arguing all of those should be opened up, I guess, wouldn’t make it through the justice system (¿yet?)

If it’s “if the seller allows installing some apps, they have to open up for all apps”, game consoles would be affected, too, and one could argue that the likes of Fortnite would be, too (that isn’t hardware, but neither is iOS, and it’s iOS that people want to install apps on. If Apple opened the iPhone, but not iOS, I doubt people would be happy)

If it isn’t that, what is it that differentiates smart phones?

josefx2• 6 years ago

Hilariously anti competitive licensing agreements that companies like Google require for example. All the large phone manufacturers are required to preinstall Googles software on any Android they sell and give it preferential treatment, selling an Android phone without would be a Play Store license violation in the U.S. . Market pressure against Google Play would have to be gigantic to get them to completely abandon their existing product lines.

In a free and open market,

Could you tell me were to find one? Even Amazon had issues getting its kindle product line produced and it doesn't exactly lack the money to get that done.

nradov2• 6 years ago

It is possible and legal to build and sell an Android phone using the free AOSP with no Google Play store or other Google services. However very few customers would buy it because it would be missing many of the features they expect.

https://source.android.com/

TazeTSchnitzel• 6 years ago

The current status quo is the result of a free market. There is no magical law of nature that prevents monopolies, it is in fact a very common outcome of a free market.

jokethrowaway• 6 years ago

Because it's a non issue and not enough customers care.

I don't buy Apple precisely because of their golden walls and not being able to install custom apps.

I consider Android to be good enough though, and I use most of the pre-installed apps from Google.

Another law from the EU which will make it even harder for a competitor to come up.

doublesCs• 6 years ago

Can you spell how exactly this law makes it harder for a competitor to come up?

Because if you don't, you'll sound like you're just parroting the generic (and generically false) old "regulations are bad for business".

cratermoon• 6 years ago

It's time we stopped believing in the Free Market Fairy: https://bitworking.org/news/2008/01/the-free-market-fairy/

comex• 6 years ago

Buried lede:

Apple is also highly likely to object to a provision that would effectively prohibit gatekeeper firms from blocking side-loading or alternative app stores or payment methods—the entire heart of the current dispute between Epic and Apple.

nomad543• 6 years ago

It's very telling that a rule needs to be created to allow users to perform an otherwise obvious action. It shows that big tech don't have even the minimal amount of ethics.

oxinabox• 6 years ago

I can't tell you how much I dislike the non-removable apps.

It basically killed my first android phone, which was very low end but fine for my needs when I got it. But it came with a ton of non-removable apps which were fine at first, but then they slowly grew to take up more and more of the storage as they updated, til nothing left. I could downgrade them again, I think, but they would soon update again and use up the storage. I guess I could have disabled update, but I wanted that for other things. Ended up jailbreaking my phone so I could remove them. But then other apps like the one for online banking refuse to run because "security reasons"

squarefoot• 6 years ago

Adb allows to uninstall non removable apps also in non rootable devices. It helped me to remove all junk, including most Google crap, from an old tablet making it useable gain.

https://www.xda-developers.com/uninstall-carrier-oem-bloatwa...

bibelo• 6 years ago

Thank you! In my bookmarks

danlugo92• 6 years ago

woah

baybal2• 6 years ago

It will still not let you uninstall "system" apps

gruez• 6 years ago

but then they slowly grew to take up more and more of the storage as they updated, til nothing left. I could downgrade them again, I think, but they would soon update again and use up the storage.

can't you disable updates?

ffpip• 6 years ago

I guess I could have disabled update, but I wanted that for other things.

marcosdumay• 6 years ago

On newer versions of Android you can remove the updates and disable the applications. That will stop them from updating too.

m00x2• 6 years ago

It's extremely annoying to me that Apple devices don't allow you to delete their apps. I have youtube music on my laptop and every time I search for "Music" in spotlight or Alfred, it picks Apple Music instead of Youtube Music app, so I often have to wait until it starts up to close it.

I want to delete Apple Music, TV, Podcast, etc. I never use them, why do they force me to have them on my device that I paid $3000 for?

snailmailman• 6 years ago

I can't speak for Mac, but at least on iPhone, I think all of the default apps can be deleted. At the very least, they hide from search, although I don't know if they are actually gone from storage.

I know for a while i had music deleted, although Siri would complain about needing music to be installed for certain functionality. (i think that has since been changed? all my defaults are installed so idk)

DevoidSimo• 6 years ago

One poster mentioned ADB, but another quicker way is to disable the app. It still uses storage, but can't start. If you do this early on, or after downgrading, then the phone can remain like new. Did this a lot on a phone I had 5+ years ago, shame it needs to be done though.

akerro• 6 years ago

The rule says the app must be removable or the data collected by the app must be shared with smaller competitors, this will probably evolve to also share data with governments at later stage.

As part of its new Digital Services Act, the EU is planning to force the likes of Apple, Amazon, and Google to hand over customer data to smaller rivals in an effort to loosen the grip of big tech on consumers. A draft of the legislation stated that tech companies "shall not use data collected on the platform... for [their] own commercial activities... unless they [make it] accessible to business users active in the same commercial activities."

dane-pgp• 6 years ago

It would be nice if the EU also looked at which APIs these platforms allow third-party apps to use. For example, Android 4.2.2 removed the API for putting the phone into / out of Airplane Mode, requiring phones to be rooted to run apps like this:

https://apkpure.com/scheduled-airplane-mode-root/com.galaxy....

Not giving users full control over when they broadcast their effective location to the mobile phone network seems like it should also be a GDPR violation.

alanpearce• 6 years ago

As a previous Android user, this feels right. I think the tipping point was the replacement of the e-mail app with Gmail. After that, I got frustrated with the stock app situation and switched to LineageOS to avoid it.

As a current Apple user, this feels wrong. I bought iDevices because I don't want my data shared, and want reasonable stock apps—I don't want to spend days comparing every single calendar app because the choice is "necessary". Apple promote third-party apps in the App Store anyway, even when they do the same as their stock apps.

m00x2• 6 years ago

You can still use the stock apps, which come bundled up. The only difference is that people who don't want it can delete them.

sschueller• 6 years ago

Can we also get alternative app stores please?

Tiereven• 6 years ago

How is this not going to end up as: 1. Manufacturers installing their own apps... and some junk app by someone else whose name I don't even know well enough to trust. 2. Main vendors sharing data with even more entities who have no business having it, and even less incentive to protect it?

actuator• 6 years ago

I would love if this can be extended to laptops. I have no need for apps like Safari, Apple TV, Podcasts and Music. Apple doesn't give an option in Launchpad for this. I would prefer to rather not force delete application contents from terminal.

With each OS update, I keep finding new annoying apps like Apple TV which seem to pop up at screen without me launching them.

adultSwim• 6 years ago

iOS needs a real version of Firefox

Proposed EU rule may mean you can finally delete some apps from your phone

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