"Installing" has the connotation of doing it directly from the Play Store. This is also known as "Downloading" (because the data is on a server, in the cloud, and you're fetching it "downstream" to a local device.)
"Sideloading" doesn't refer to the installation process, but to the file transfer process. You're sideloading when you transfer, e.g. APKs from your notebook to your Android. Or, from a USB stick into your phone or something.
In general, though, "sideloading" also refers to any "non-app-store" installation. It's a kind of colloquial shorthand. It's not really a technical term. But it's adequate for getting the point across.
If you just called it "installing" without qualifying it, how would anyone know that it's a different process, or that it's accomplished not by navigating to the app store? It seems that you would invite ambiguity here!
The point is that before walled-garden app stores, that was how pretty much every normal person installed software on their PC's. Using the term "sideloading" for that is a clever invention to try and retroactively rebrand what is actually super-normal as something scary.
"Sideloading" refers to data transfer between two local, peer devices. Really, that is it. It is not "something scary" or something forbidden. It is not even really installing. It's data transfer.
So "before walled-gardens" people would install software in many many ways. I originally typed it in from scratch, or from a magazine. I loaded it from tape. Or diskette. That's not really "sideloading" if you think about it, because it's just "loading" from peripheral storage.
Later, when people dialed up on a PC, they could "download" software and then install it or do whatever with other data or media. They could also upload it. They could transfer it among devices locally. This was not, at the time, called "sideloading" but just transfer, or "null modem", or "sneakernet", or "a station wagon full of backup tapes".
If we're going to use "sideloading" in the strictest sense, then we cannot actually refer to the process of downloading APK files separately and then installing them, because that's literally downloading. But that is the colloquial meaning now.
Hey, if you want to coin a new term or neologism for it, by all means do so. But it seems absurd to downplay "sideloading" as having "scary" or "negative" connotations, when it really doesn't. You've got to look past the hype and F.U.D.
Remember, there was a time when people considered FTP and torrenting to be dangerous or subversive. Perhaps they still do.
Given that you've agreed that "sideloading" is not an accurate descriptor of installing apps directly from the web browser, I'd think you could see how using "sideloading" incorrectly like this is a marketing gimmick designed to scare users (and politicians!) into backing the official platform app store monopolies...
Am I the only one who thinks that the Coinbase [1] picture has been AI generated, or at least heavily AI-altered?
The movie posters behind look like garbage, and what's wrong with that Return of the Jedi poster? Why is there a random blob and a broken face at the top instead of Darth Vader?
And why is there a random Google+ logo on the left?
And why does Fred Ehrsam have a huge thumb and silky smooth legs?
No, it's 100% generated. The background posters mke no sense at all, inclunding Google+ there. And also Fred's hands are wrong. I wonder if they didn't have a pic of both of them together and asked AI to generate it, though Gemini or even Grok would do a better job than that.
Well you'll get blocked some places but it's not too big of a deal. If you're running an above board operation, you can surprisingly often successfully just email the admin explaining what you're doing, and ask to be unblocked.
Damn, I can't stand open-source projects that host their "forums" on Discord. It's a nigthmare to use, it's heavy, slow, and it's completely unsearchable from the web.
First of all not everyone wants spectators and gawkers on all of their conversations. As for open solutions, IRC didn't provide chat history for the common folk (no, most users are not able to host their own Pi Zero bouncer, especially back in 2017), and Matrix development was too slow (Elements implemented message pinning in 2022), so the rest was history. There was just no alternative to Slack or Discord.
reply