The mobile landscape presents a very difficult choice.
Choose Android, get actual access to your device and install what you want but have your privacy completely trampled upon by Google
Choose Apple, get marginally better privacy but no ownership of your phone and no possibility to install what you want.
I wish we had a reasonable alternative, it's so frustrating to have to choose between two bad alternatives and the behavior of those companies that completely disrespect and tramples their customer right makes my blood boil.
I just want both the right to use my phone fully and the right to my privacy.
Re: Android, I tried to log out of YouTube on my phone yesterday. It said "Sure, as long as you don't mind logging out of GMail too." I was taken aback by this -- I didn't realise this was a hostage situation.
Yes, Google is using Gmail specifically for this purpose. Once you use Gmail on an Android device, it installs a Google account with all its consequences like getting the list of all your contacts, tracking you in Google apps and so on. For that reason I tried several alternative apps that don't involve adding a Google account to my device, but they were less comfortable to use - specifically, the search function was subpar.
If you use 3rd part clients for Google services - YT, Gmail, Calendar, etc. and run non-Chrome browser (Firefox is very good on Android, and supports many extensions) you can largely avoid Google. However, Play and Location sharing are much harder to block.
I love FF on Android (it's my primary browser there), but there is a serious limitation on what extensions can be installed now. I think you're limited to only a certain curated list of like 12 extensions. Thankfully, uBlock is one of them, but I miss some of my others.
You can install firefox beta or nightly and use developer tools access to add extension collection from your choice which will replace these recommended extensions.
Note : you must create this collection on firefox addon or find existing one as you will need the collection ID.
Does anyone know what the benifit is to Firefox to create such a roundabout workaround? Why Google makes things difficult and obscure is clear, but why does Firefox care what add-ons you install on your phone?
Majority of any browser users are not tech people so making these workaround easier would confuse those users as most of the plugins are not written with mobile aspects into consideration (Even their mobile API is not complete yet).
afaik a lot of extensions aren't fully supported yet. I tried about a dozen different tab managers on FF Nightly, none of them worked. I'm guessing the Tab API or something isn't fully ported yet
addons are usually hyper tunnel visioned around desktop users and almost none of their ui's work on mobile the way the developers of those extensions originally intended.
ublock and the other featured apps essentially had to adapt to the mobile firefox way of doing stuff and opening settings in a separate mobile ff tab etc.
If you want an alternative to the Play Store client, Aurora Store is quite excellent. It can be acquired on F-Droid.
I know you are most likely referring to Play services, but still worth noting for folks who may not know it exists as an option. I suppose for the latter, microG may offer a useful option.
You could try using Island or similar to create a "work profile", and only log into Google and install Gmail (or Drive or whatnot) in the work profile. This way, apps running in the regular profile don't see your Google account.
I am very happy with my current setup after flashing my new One Plus 9 Pro with LineageOS for microG (https://lineage.microg.org/). It's LineageOS with application spoofing and comes pre-baked with microG.
I'm able to use all the standard apps (Uber, games, etc) without a Google account. I use Aurora instead of the Google Play Store, local maps as my GPS back-end, and my phone only contains the apps I actually used instead of pre-baked vendor bullshit. It's all super smooth and completely stable. I really can't say enough nice things about it.
If you're looking for the third option, I would really give aftermarket android roms a try.
Pretty sure that's a non-starter for anyone who needs to use their phone for work, which is more people than you would think now that so many office workers are remote.
Great, if a work phone is required by a company, let the company provide it and leave that one alone. Do you have to supply your own work computers or other equipment "required" to do the job as well, outside of contract work?
Unfortunately that assumes the employer will provide the phone rather than going "this guy can't do his job because his phone is rooted?" and hiring someone else. Or that the employer knows what rooting even is.
Most companies ask you to install work profiles and such only after your sign on. It would be exceedingly petty of them to fire you for something like that, especially at a tech company that will definitely have the money to provide ~$300 work phones
I run GrapheneOS on my Pixel 4a, unrooted, bootloader locked. However this avenue prevents the use of Google Play Services (which partially or completely eliminates functionality from many proprietary apps on the Play Store) or MicroG. This isn't a problem for me personally.
If you're a tinkerer it's pretty easy to bypass - the main method of rooting currently is Magisk, which also includes a very powerful self-hiding mechanism, able to bypass SafetyNet and most other root detection methods.
I’ve tried that path before but SafetyNet makes it hard. I can’t use my banking app for example, and for better or for worse, I wouldn’t be able to access my work email either.
I haven't looked in a while, but last time I checked, Magisk had a SafetyNet bypass. It's a cat and mouse game of course, but when I was using it, Magisk stayed ahead of Google 90%+ of the time.
I remember being able to do mobile banking on a website on my BlackBerry. It must have been 2010 or '11, before banks began rolling out native apps.
I don't understand why that's not possible now. Responsive websites are basically 1:1 in functionality w/ desktop, there is no need to have separate, gimped "m.bank.com" sites anymore.
End result of this is that I stopped doing banking on my phone, and 90% of my use cases are now served by F-Droid or by apps not on the Play store.
We had a third option but developers very publicly refused to support it and Google worked tirelessly to hamstring it in every way they could.
Now we're all crying for a third platform because Apple is too restrictive and Google, surprise (to no one least of all WP users), turned out to be evil and I feel absolutely no sympathy for the tech community, particularly developers who decry the current paradigm. We chose this.
For anyone that remember the 90s it is utterly bizarre to hear Microsoft talked about as some type of potential savior that was unfairly muscled out of the market.
I don't disagree that having a third player in the space would improve things, but it is just weird how the perception of some companies change.
It's funny, I grew up them and remember quite clearly how Microsoft was(likely still actually is), I haven't had windows installed on any of my computers since 2009, yet, I'd still be willing to give a Microsoft phone a try at this point just for some kind of alternative.
Yeah. Their contribution to Linux over the last few years always has me either giggling or suspicious. I realize that they have concrete reasons to support it considering how dominant Linux instances are on Azure, but considering the "open source is cancer" or "Linux users are communist thieves" comments from the late 90's or early 00's, it's hard to believe.
My beef with them is more recent. Specifically, with their recent "We Love Linux" push, they are trying to kill it entirely on the desktop via the use of WSL, and now via threatening to make boot restrictions mandatory.
Half of the magic of Linux is being able to run it on bare metal. Microsoft is acting against that.
WSL is just good old competition at work. I run both Windows and Linux boxes but I just prefer Windows despite the various shortcomings. I've been using Linux since within a week or two of Linus' first release, and for a long time my primary machine was running Redhat, Gnome and Enlightenment - my current preference is not for lack of experience or interest.
I agree with your bare metal magic point, but I also like using a GUI. As well as being middle aged I also grew up in a technological backwater. So the first arcade game I encountered was Pong and when I was old enough to start working with computers it was with dumb terminals to mainframes and punch-tape print spoolers; that experience of working with technology that was already obsolete is kinda like extra lifespan. Loving the command line is one thing, but i love GUIs precisely because I didn't have access to them early on, and being able to see things on a screen is still magical for me.
I know GUI development is a lot more work, but I've been very disappointed by the snail's pace of advancement on Linux, and how little experimentation or efforts at standardization there are. GNOME these days feels like a clunky kid's toy. My most recent desktop annoyance was installing PyCharm on a a laptop running Ubuntu, and then finding that there was no obvious way to either add it to my start menu or the dock (it's built in Java and launches from a shell script, and though it shows up in the dock when it's running, there's no option to pin it there). It's not that hard (see below) but the fact that I had to go and look for a solution just speaks to how crap and broken the Linux desktop experience is by default.
I take your point that WSL creates a new problem for Linux lovers by invalidating a default use case. And I agree that Microsoft is doing so for its own selfish reasons so it can continue to rake in billions from enterprise and OEM licensing, while the plucky Linux underdogs rely mostly on the generosity of sponsors and community spirit. But there's more to a GUI than a compositing window manager that lets you play with tiling and transparency (the last really innovative and cool thing in Linux Land, and where the idea is still implemented best).
But my counter to that is that desktops matter, and Linux users are just not really trying these days. There re too many options and most of them are just not very good or even interesting. Look up one of those 'Best Linux desktops in 2021' and all you see is a bunch of OK launchers with some beautiful wallpaper, maybe a widget or two. The wallpaper is usually much cooler than the user interface it is decorating. When the packaging is more interesting than the product, the product is failing. the only distro I've seen really trying to innovate in this area is Deepin, a Chinese distro where they have really worked on the front end and is developing its own distinct visual identity.
I just don't get how Linux people go into ecstasies about new way to do graphics in the terminal but then shrug their shoulders at the craptastic state of the Linux desktop. As you correctly point out, Microsoft is now making moves to draw Linux users back to their commercial platform and with their resources, experience, and tenacity may well succeed.
To Linux folk who view that prospect with horror, my advice is make an environment that people like to use. The terminal is not that. The terminal is for nerds, developers, autists, and control freaks, who make up only a small portion of computer users. I match all those categories to varying degrees but even I don't want to spend my whole life in the terminal. And by 'environment people like to use' I do not mean 'imitate Windows' (although you should shamelessly pinch ideas from there). Experiment. Play. You know a great source of user interface ideas that people absolutely like to use and where you can try out wacky ideas? Videogames.
People love games. They are full of eye candy. Videogames use eye candy to rapidly convey information in very intuitive ways. People can rapidly learn to perform very complex tasks when supported by a rich interface. If you don't want desktop Linux to die for lack of attention and you don't want to see Linux-on-your-own-hardware itself die for lack of users (because everything they need is available on Apple, Windows, or in the cloud), make desktop tools that look fun, futuristic, and don't keep forcing people back to the terminal.
It’s funny that we software developers have been so coddled into thinking that we don’t need unions because we get paid enough for our work. Yet we all know and see these oversteps by companies, taking away our very ability to work our trade as we see fit, piece by piece, inch by inch.
I support the EFF, but that’s basically all I know how to do. Imagine if Google’s software developers went on strike every time they tried to pull another AMP on the open web?
I don't understand how unions would help here. Closed platforms are in the interest of developers. Devs make a good amount of money on closed platforms like iOS.
Closed platforms are not in the interest of users.
Unions can help implement democratic processes for deciding how to work and what to work on.
For example, Kickstarter unionized in 2020. One of things that initiated unionization was this lack of democratic decision making at Kickstarter[1]:
> One of the changes that most angered employees was the decision to end Drip, announced in late 2018. Drip was a tool that had been developed to let creators of projects on the site start subscriptions, similar to Patreon, allowing them to build sustainable revenue streams. Eliminating the tool “came out of the blue,” Zhang says, with “no consultation” with employees who were affected. “It seemed to be at the whim of one person to just make a blanket decision,” she adds.
If employees are working on projects that go against their users' interests, democratic decision making can give them a voice that they otherwise wouldn't have.
A consumer union is an interesting idea but not what people think of when you say "union." It is actually a really good idea if you think about it... if labor unions can counterbalance labor monopsonies maybe consumer unions can counterbalance monopolies.
I think the problem is that the overwhelming majority of consumers don't care at all about, or even are aware of (because they don't care), anything being discussed here.
Tell a non-tech person that their data is being harvested by Google and Facebook, and see what they reaction is.
Then Apple decides that my app isn’t acceptable, Google decides I have to implement their special code to show up in search results, and this gave me power how exactly?
Unions in top level SWE will literally never happen, at least within our lifetimes. There's simply too large of a worldwide talent pool that would drop everything to come work in the US for even 50% of what current salary/benefits are.
SWE's sold their soul/morals/values for money & built evils that there's no way back from. Just have to deal with the consequences of their actions now.
WebOS was great on the phone I had.. forget the name. I really wish it had gotten more traction. Easy for webdevs to build apps for, and still would allow lower level access for games and such.. by now it would of been really dialed in and the modern hardware would of offset performance issues.
There is no reason for anyone to hope that users would have more freedom and independence if windows phone had survived. Microsoft didn't even care to persuade vendors to publish specifications or allowed the system to be downloaded by their small number of users after it was abandoned.
The tables turn if you consider ownership of your app settings and internal data
On Android it is locked down in an inaccessible /data partition, unless rooted. (Ignoring /sdcard and the iOS equivalent Files app)
On iOS you can access almost the entire filesystem via extracting iTunes backups. You can freely dig into app internal database, files, message history, etc. You can even edit these backups and restore them, allowing full write access
You know... since 2017 when I started getting wary of Apple due to Qualcomm, IMG and Services Strategy. I sometimes wish Microsoft are still in the Mobile race. Trying find some synergy between Desktop PC gaming, Xbox and Mobile. Surface Phone. Porting some of their work from Xbox.
But unlike Microsoft and Google. Apple has no inherent weakness in their business and strategy. They also have an extremely strong cult following both online and offline.
So unless government managed to do something about it ( which I seriously doubt ), the future will be as frustrating as it is now.
The original Zune windows app is still head and shoulders above spotify.
They had:
- great song management
- better than YouTube song discovery (looking into playlists with the same song)
- incredible ui (skins)
- small memory footprint
I wonder who worked on that team and what they are up to today.
And/or if Microsoft could open source it.
I disagree with the word “marginally” here. Compared to Android, it’s far better and keeps staying ahead (while Android may try to catch up for certain features and controls).
Almost all iOS apps are sending telemetry to data brokers like Facebook and the platform makes open source stuff extremely hard. It really is marginal when you look closer.
Yes, but only if you're foolish enough to install the apps. With Android, an individual app may or may not be a worse actor than it would be on an iOS device. But, it hardly matters since Google is primarily doing all the invasive tracking on an Android device, and you have zero control over this.
It's hard to even find a good feature phone these days.
At least I'm looking for one now because my Nokia E5-03 died yesterday so now I have to figure out what to get.
I want something small, that I can stick in my pocket and not worry about the screen, with days of standby battery life, and where I don't have to read and "agree" to pages of legalese.
In the heyday of feature phones, I could pick one up for $20. Nowadays, those phones are designed for old people, and are more expensive than a cheap smart phone.
If you're someone who's able to figure out how to block such things on Android, then you'd be happy to know that this is possible on iOS by using apps like Lockdown that work completely on-device. [1]
The problem with iOS is that it's built on the assumption that you can't not trust Apple and their services. An iPhone literally trusts Apple more than it trusts you. It won't let you past the initial setup unless it gets an okay from the mothership. On Android you could at least disable all the Google stuff.
kind of, if you go through 15 different obscure menus and hope you haven't missed any, and some stuff like push notifications you can't not go through google anyway. Google also forced manufacturers to make the location toggle more obscure.
On my Android phone I have no google account and I've disabled anything related to google. Yes I worry I've missed something somewhere, but on the whole, at least I can.
I was given an iOS tablet as a gift, tried setting it up and it absoltely requires setting up an account with an apple and giving them a phone number. Haven't found a workaround. So the tablet sits in a box unusable, because I'm not giving apple a phone.
Point being, the ability is still there if you want it. There's microG which is an open-source reimplementation of Google services minus the nasty parts. And even if you do use Google services, you can still sideload apps pretty easily without any Google involvement whatsoever — something that iOS lacks entirely.
Privacy is actually behind on Apple, as long as they 1) don’t allow proper adblocking and 2) actively boicot webapps in favour of installed apps that can spy much more efectively
They allow VPN and DNS-based blockers, request interceptors in Safari (so-called Content Blockers) and are adding support for WebExtensions to Safari in next iOS release. Plus there are 3rd-party browsers with build-in content blockers, like Brave and Firefox Focus. Safari itself is doing clever stuff with Tracking Protection (https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention/).
All apps I run use SafariViewController for in-app web browsing, so the same ad blocking systems kick in, too, and the app itself has very limited capabilities to track our web activity. Facebook is sole notable exception.
They also added "App Tracking" prompt recently. I doesn't do much for technical standpoint (like DNT header in browsers), but Apple _can_ enforce it via app publishing restrictions - only if they choose to do so.
I'd say they are very close to Android or desktop macOS.
> They allow VPN and DNS-based blockers, request interceptors in Safari (so-called Content Blockers)
Yeah, DNS based blockers misses a LOT of ads and webannoyances. And if you think that the content blockers are good enough you probably havent been using youtube lately on safari as they are now able bypass all current content blockers that I tested (adguard[1], 1blocker, wipr).
> ... and are adding support for WebExtensions to Safari in next iOS release.
Yeah, but I'm not holding my breathe that they will allow extensions similar to uBlock and noscript (hope to be wrong).
> I'd say they are very close to Android or desktop macOS.
Anyone with experience using uBlock/NoScript/uMatrix can attest that content blockers on iOS is not close at all, it's just a skeleton of uBlock Origin capabilities.
[1]adguard created a shortcut extension to bypass the content blocker restriction but its utterly annoying to do it everytime some random video.
Request interceptors are simply subpar. I understand the motivation, which is prevent adblockers themselves from spying on you, but in practice I would prefer to be able to install uBlock origin which is excellent on desktop and Android.
The Safari WebView restriction means there is no browser choice.
I cannot put any trust in iOS supporting WebExtensions in a meaningful way, given their track record of undermining web technology - but hopefully I will be proven wrong.
The problem is, that some important (e.g. banking) apps are missing and cannot be installed/run with the Android emulator. Another problem is, that Sailfish is available only in very few countries, e.g. not in the US.
With Sailfish you also have to give up all the security advancements in Android/iOS, in both good and bad. You can do what you want more freely, but also each app has equal access to all your data. Unless they've implemented some access control in the later versions, but I haven't heard about it.
I really wish there was a large enough player to get non-Android (Linux) drivers for the flagship mobile phone processors.
The fastest of the open source phones right now has the same processor as the Pixel 2. IIRC it might even be another libhybris implementation (glibc/mesa/gbm userspace on an Android kernel and driver stack).
>I wish we had a reasonable alternative, it's so frustrating to have to choose between two bad alternatives
It's highly likely that even if there's an commercial alternative which gains significant market share to compete with duopoly in the future, they will have to do so by either compromising privacy or ownership of the device.
Solution right now is to make difficult lifestyle choice by using passion or idealistic projects. LineageOS + Fdroid can get things done for those who use their smartphone as an tool and ready to sacrifice a bit of social conformity(which can be a privilege at current times).
There are more extreme alternatives like Linux phones which I hope becomes less extreme in years to come.
There really needs to be a third way … how are Linux smart phones looking? No hope of getting WhatsApp etc presumably but at the very least a fairly solid browser should be possible …
Work on PinePhones and Librem 5 is going well. There are still issues of course but I’ve been blown away by the community efforts to iron out the issues. You can get Linux Signal and you’d still need to have it connected to an android or iOS device too, but that would at least give you messaging.
The other caveat being that there are still many apps that are not designed for mobile form factor, and while there is strong work on libhandy and many apps use it for responsive GTK apps, there are many great apps were work hasn’t yet started for mobile sizing/touch input/virtual keyboard
Well, contributing apps that do stuff you want a Linux phone to do, working on the existing apps you want to bring to the mobile form factor.
Also submitting issues and spreading the word help. Mastodon is where many of the developers in open source world hang out so follow @linmob@fosstodon and Librem folks and you’ll find the community.
Testing, sponsoring, buying the hardware all great options too.
If you are talking about the marketplace, yes, but if you as an individual want google out of your life, there are multiple android distributions without Google included by default.
>the behavior of those companies that completely disrespect and tramples their customer right
Here is a "radical" idea: what if we had an Apple users union? What if Apple had to justify their app censorship to that union? What if the union could vote that censorship out?
Our current capitalistic model assumes that competition is the solution for the consumer, but the Apple/Google stranglehold is essentially indisruptable.
Of course, the only way we could really get this union model would be to have it forced by the same government which has repeatedly and increasingly failed to protect the consumer from these bloated monopolistic corporations. I guess we'll have to settle for some optimistic SciFi porn. Paging Cory Doctorow: https://pluralistic.net/
I love it but the main power a union wields is the collective action of the members to strike.
When the union says "Ok, Apple isn't cooperating, so everyone... " ...actually, what would you have the members do? Turn off icloud? Stop buying new airpods? You will never get all the "users union" members to give up one atom of convenience.
If the union members are willing to strike, i.e. go without pay for an arbitrarily long period of time, why wouldn't users be temporarily willing to go without anything, when they know there is a good self-interested reason for doing so?
Saying "people won't do that" is just a self-fulfilling prophecy. Convince them that it's in their interest and they will.
The problem with consumer protection agencies is that they're subject to regulatory capture. Politicians take Apple's money, or are subject to threats to remove thousands of jobs from their jurisdiction.
What you really want is a third party app store which is operated as a co-op, supports multiple platforms (making it easier for users to switch and keep their apps), and has enough users to have bargaining power.
The only thing I wasn't able to do without so far is SMS 2nd factor. Dumbphone is enough for that.
I don't mind if banks/govs require use of some protocol. But forcing use of specific apps goes against past achievements to make public institutions use open formats and protocols, so I reject that where possible, or complain.
It should not be acceptable. I still remember times when people had to pirate MS office to be able to open some .doc from their gov, or use MS windows to run some proprietary form filling software. That's mostly a thing of the past, thankfully. "My-app or highway" attitude feels like a setback in that regard.
My banks no longer allow SMS 2fa. The only 2fa available are those through their mobile app. So without android or iOS banking will quickly become impossible.
And I wish I could just switch banks but in some situation it's not possible and in the country I currently live in, it seems that now no banks support 2fa SMS for any transaction above a tiny amount anyway.
In additional to those comments on banking and 2FA, these banking apps also requires certain version of Android and IOS ( rightly so because of security concern ). Which means you are now, in some way forced to upgrade your phone every x years if your phone no longer gets any software update.
Most of these apps are just dipping mustards around HOTP/TOTP, so it's a standard protocol. There's an ecosystem of standard applications around it; Twilio, Microsoft, and Google all make pretty popular ones.
In Europe, SMS 2fa is getting deprecated in favor of apps, you can still get a device generating tokens sent by post in most banks but who knows for how long they will keep that running.
Yes. One of the thing not mentioned or posted on HN. In China where there are flooding going on, a whole city with no power, and mobile network. Since their whole infrastructure was setup with Digital payment ( WeChat Pay or AliPay ) and dont use any cash, they could not use it without Mobile Network. Authentication and other Government usage also requires an App and unusable.
Most people act as if Mobile Phone and Apps doesn't matter. It does and increasingly so. I think the argument would have some ground in 2015 or 2018. But in 2020 and forward looking into 2025 and 2030 there is no denying, phone is acting like an infrastructure, whether we like it or not.
I've encountered a few apps where the QR codes are only valid for a few minutes and rotate. For your vaccine status it's probably not an issue but using QR codes to auth yourself for payments or access will probably be a no-go eventually.
Valid question, but having a phone and a phone number is increasingly becoming a basic necessity to participate in society and to interact with the governments.
My ISP still provides (very low quality) landline service for a fraction of my monthly phone bill. The UI on that phone is awesome: just a speaker and dialpad, no display at all.
> Choose Android, get actual access to your device
lol, not sure which android you are talking about... probably the one where you need to find an exploit to be able to root it (I guess even HN forgot that you are supposed to be administrator on your own computer)
Eh Apple users you can still download this app and it will stay on their phones after it is removed from the app store
This post seems to mischaracterize what is going on and seems to be pre-prepared sentiment that has nothing to do with what actually is happening or going to happen
Apple users can still file share dos games, if they download that app now. Not clear what level of device control you are reacting to, without agreeing or disagreeing with your sentiment.
It will stay on the phone, but won’t be available for downloading again since it’s being removed by Apple. Once the phone dies and the user buys a new phone, there won’t be a way to get this app unless the user copied the app package through a third party application on a Mac (Apple removed the ability to sync/backup app packages to a Mac since iTunes 12.7).
It so happened once that iPhone removed an app that I didn't use for some time to save space on the phone, leaving behind just an icon shortcut. When I tried to use it, it tried to download it back, but couldn't, because the app had been removed from the store.
So by default you can't count on your apps staying on the phone.
> Once the phone dies and the user buys a new phone, there won’t be a way to get this app unless the user copied the app package through a third party application on a Mac (Apple removed the ability to sync/backup app packages to a Mac since iTunes 12.7).
yeah. thats where the experience diverges from other platforms.
the current device, with the current OS, won't have any problems. asking for more is mostly a different standard than other platforms, sad to hear they killed making your own app package copies.
A future OS update can break app compatibility if the app is not updated, apps not on the store won't be updated
Restoring a device from cloud backup will download all your apps, except apps no longer on the store
The device right now, with the OS right now, with the app right now will still be able to use this app and its file sharing feature in perpetuity which is an aspect that isn't different or worse than other kinds of devices or computers. Only the system restore embellishments being different or better or worse. People on other systems that pay for apps can still run into scenarios where their updated operating system is not compatible with an app they paid for. I'm not trying to be an apologist for things Apple or the mobile landscape could do better, only pointing out the standard people seem to be asking for without realizing it.
My understanding is that if the developer certificate is revoked, then the app would fail to run. But otherwise, apps on the device should run even if they’re removed from the App Store (by Apple or by the developer).
Choose Android, get actual access to your device and install what you want but have your privacy completely trampled upon by Google
Choose Apple, get marginally better privacy but no ownership of your phone and no possibility to install what you want.
I wish we had a reasonable alternative, it's so frustrating to have to choose between two bad alternatives and the behavior of those companies that completely disrespect and tramples their customer right makes my blood boil.
I just want both the right to use my phone fully and the right to my privacy.