this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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Technology

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175
New Japanese law may force Apple to allow sideloading in iOS (www.ghacks.net)
submitted 10 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] AnneBonny@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 10 months ago (3 children)

How did sideloading get its name?

[–] MayonnaiseArch@beehaw.org 47 points 10 months ago (3 children)

That's always my trigger, fucking 'sideloading'. Jesus christ it's installing shit. Installing. There was never a need for such a pissy horrible concept in the firstplace, a bootlicking special if there ever was one

[–] xep@kbin.social 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Probably because "installing unsigned code from an unknown source" is a mouthful. Installing implicitly means "from within the walled garden" on these devices.

[–] TheEntity@kbin.social 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ah yes, let me sideload a 3rd party web browser onto my PC.

[–] wolfshadowheart@slrpnk.net 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Gonna sideload a browser while I mainload my game

[–] rgb3x3@beehaw.org 5 points 10 months ago

Gonna sideload cocaine while I mainline heroin.

[–] DarkThoughts@kbin.social 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's like "jaywalking". It purely exists to bully and discriminate against pedestrians and declare the streets belong to the cars. That's what you get when you have big ass corporations do the lobbying.

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Sideloading isn’t a ticket-able offense. It’s just a name for a thing we are all within our rights to do. That’s not really comparable.

Now “jailbreaking” is a term I definitely take issue with as the language straight up makes people question the legality.

[–] TheEntity@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Originally jaywalking also wasn't a ticketable offense. Do you know the origin of this term? That's the parent poster's point.

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Does sideloading incur a fine?

Can you be arrested for it?

If the answers are “no” and “no” then there’s no parallel with jaywalking and there’s nothing to debate.

[–] TheEntity@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The answer is "currently no", and that might change. Just like with jaywalking.

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That applies to literally everything. Anything can be made illegal. It is not illegal to sideload. This is such a stretch, you can’t possibly believe this argument.

You cannot compare sideloading to ticket-able offenses or actual crime. It is 100% legal. Nothing can stop you.

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Wfegnwfnwfnwf

[–] MayonnaiseArch@beehaw.org 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Dude you don't get to decide what I'm angry about. The term is extremely inaccurate, you don't sideload shit on your computer, right? It's yours. I don't sideload shelves, I put them on my wall. So I'd say the offensive part is that somebody who gets my money gets to decide if I own something.

[–] Pepsi@kbin.social 4 points 10 months ago

You seem… hinged…

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Noted

[–] ryan@the.coolest.zone 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So this is actually an interesting term. Looking it up from Wikipedia...

The term "sideload" was coined in the late 1990s by online storage service i-drive as an alternative means of transferring and storing computer files virtually instead of physically. In 2000, i-drive applied for a trademark on the term. Rather than initiating a traditional file "download" from a website or FTP site to their computer, a user could perform a "sideload" and have the file transferred directly into their personal storage area on the service.

The advent of portable MP3 players in the late 1990s brought sideloading to the masses, even if the term was not widely adopted. Users would download content to their PCs and sideload it to their players.

So as applied to phones it originally meant a particular type of download and install - rather than installing directly to your phone from an app store, you have somehow obtained the file on your PC, transferred the file to your phone, and then installed it. In that context, downloading an APK directly to your phone and installing it would not be sideloading.

However, semantics have shifted somewhat and now it's used generally to refer to any install that isn't directly from an app store of some kind, and requires downloading an actual package file and then installing it.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 1 points 10 months ago

So it does kind of fit in with the other definitions: download is from the wider internet down to your local device, upload is from your local device up to the wider internet, so sideload is just moving something from somewhere local to somewhere else local. I imagine sideload wasn't generally used before because we'd just say "copy/install a file" or similar, and its usage now comes from it being a shorthand for the slightly convoluted process required on mobile devices.

[–] kick_out_the_jams@kbin.social 2 points 10 months ago

It's from the earlier days of computing/portable devices where almost nothing had the sort of inter-connectivity we take for granted.

You'd download apps or music onto your PC and then 'sideload' them onto your PDA or MP3 players.
Sometimes this required both proprietary cables and software. (This is why some of us still get excited by simple USB ports)