Our devices are not ours anymore

This post is a rant of something that i have to deal in the last hour. It doesnt have any form, it possible could be a short post in the stream but i want to give it a proper place.

My dad uses a Firestick and wanted to use the app of his TV provider. The problem? Amazon doesnt let you install apps from the google playstore. You have to get the APK from somewhere and install it manually. But the app isnt provided anywhere else than the google playstore.

You have a service that you are paying monthly and a device that can run the app without a problem. They share the same processor, the same operating system, heck even the app is made for Android TV so the same usecase. But as everything is katekeeped to their walled gardens you cant. It amazes me how much fooling you have to do to even be able to do this. And im not trying to do anything illegal, i just want to use what im paying. Download the apk from some dodgy mirror or even worse. Try to download it yourself. Good luck with that.

Lets use the web i hear you say? Well, lets say that the web is not a first class citizen in a lot of places. The browser available isnt the most up to date and the interface they made isnt the best for leanback. Neither the one from the tv provider.

You think you are safe because you are running an android system? Think twice as this might no be true in the future.

Are you running iOS? There is no such thing as sideloading apps that i know. But i dont even own any mac device besides the one that my employee gives me. And that isnt even mine.

It seems linux is the only place were things are still yours and fighting for you. But as i read last week in Unix philosophy is dead! Long live… something else? it seems that could be also changing in the future.

Whats the solution? I dont know, i just want to rant about how can everything be so hard and broken in the tech space.

I also loved this quote from the mentioned post as is something that i’ve been felling in the last years.

It feels like everything that remains of the innovative spirit is centralized within hyper-specific groups of burnt-out (mostly queer) hackers. The crowd of generalists has moved on.