"User experience" should never be chosen at the expense of "user freedom".

cromwellian · on April 15, 2015

Spoken like Richard Stallman, which is why GNU/Linux desktop took over the world right?

If you're so interested in freedom, why aren't you picketing Apple Campus too?

The practical effect of your viewpoint is hundreds of millions of unpatchable Android ROMs, exposing vast quantities of devices to viruses, and HARMING actual people.

anon1385 · on April 15, 2015

>If you're so interested in freedom, why aren't you picketing Apple Campus too?

FSF activists do literally picket Apple events: http://cdn.arstechnica.net/01-27-2010/apple-ipad-protest.jpg

As far as I know they haven't done this at any Google events, but maybe I just missed it. Either way, the idea that Google is being specially singled out for criticism by the FSF is pretty laughable and you probably need to leave your filter bubble if you genuinely believe it to be the case.

ocdtrekkie · on April 15, 2015

Not much of a fan of Apple, but Apple doesn't have a chokehold on the tech industry.

So Google's doing a good job now? With over half their devices vulnerable to major vulnerabilities that every other OS patched but Google has publicly refused to develop a patch for?

fixermark · on April 15, 2015

That's an extreme position at one end of a spectrum. I'm sure you realize that it's an opinion held by some but not all.

Apple has built a really quite successful business around limiting user freedom for user experience. There is a market for it. There are a lot of people who find it to be a good thing.

In short, "choice paralysis" is real. ;)

ocdtrekkie · on April 15, 2015

And when that limited freedom controls 80% of the mobile industry?

TheDong · on April 16, 2015

Agreed, but android did not remove user freedom.

Picking sane defaults gives you good user experience; making them only defaults, not requirements, gives you freedom.

Android is open source. There are plenty of custom roms that let you pick and choose between each of google's default apps.

Android is (mostly) free software, and you can choose to remove almost all the proprietary bits (ugh kernel blobs, firmware blobs).

I love it when a company gives you both user freedom and user experience by simply picking good defaults and letting a poweruser fiddle with them.