Smartphones: the New Home of Crapware

Barence writes "Smartphones are replacing PCs as the new breeding ground for pre-installed crapware, argues Mike Jennings. The Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro, for example, comes pre-loaded with McAfee security software and other associated apps, four different app stores, and a selection of games and other media management tools. 'And it's not like you can just get rid of this software, either — most of it's there to stay, with hard-coded blocks in place to ensure you don't uninstall any of the tat you don't want,' he adds."

Comments

Not news

[petteyg359]

Even my regular old clamshell has pre-installed non-removable games and applications.

Re:Not news

[Darkness404]

Sure, but how much of it was slowing down your phone? How much of it was running in the background?

With an old clamshell, chances are those applications really aren't doing much to slow down your phone. With smartphones though, they are because they all run in the background even if you don't use them.

Re:Not news

[bonch]

It is news. The news is that this only affects Android. Android has become the new Windows, home of viruses, malware, and pre-installed junk you can't remove. It's even worse than PCs due to fragmentation--the article mentions that the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro (what a name) has four different app stores. When Linux fans cheer about some perceived victory through Android, they're really cheering the fact that carriers throw Android onto their cheap, flimsy phones and load it with a bunch of branded crap. That's not the victory we wanted.

2 Words

[clarkn0va]

Cyanogenmod.

Solution: go Apple

[Space cowboy]

Whether computer, tablet, or phone, Apple don't do this. It's *one* of the reasons I like them.

Simon.

(haters in 3,... 2,... 1,...)

Re:Apple

[Nova Express]

Ditto. Complain all you want about Apple's "Walled Garden," but I bet 95% of consumers would prefer not having that shovelware foisted upon them (especially the crap they can't remove) over the ability to play Ogg Vorbis or install a different operating system on their phone.

Don't Trust Any App You Didn't Write

[curmudgeon99]

I have never understood the appeal of mindless games like Angry Birds. The common app phone is such a wasted instrument. How much more it could really be. I will only use apps on my Android phone that I myself wrote.

Re:Don't Trust Any App You Didn't Write

[clarkn0va]

That's cool if you're into microcode trojans. Personally I can't stomach the thought, which is why I do all my own rare earth mining and built a clean room into the basement.

Wrong on Twitter, two ways

[SuperKendall]

iOS 5 is bundling a Twitter app with it

Totally wrong. They are NOT bundling a twitter app.

What they are doing is in fact the opposite of bad. They are adding twitter posting as a system library, that applications can bundle in but do not have to use.

The reason why it's the opposite of bad is that Twitter is requiring the odious OAuth authentication protocol, which requires a number of stages to authenticate. Since iOS includes Twitter access as part of the core, it does all the Oauth stuff behind the scenes and all you have to do is enter a username and password.

That means that any apps that also post to twitter (which is quite a lot of apps these days) will have much simpler sign-in processes for the user to make use of twitter, basically none if you've logged in once anywhere else already (and before you get freaked out about background tweets going out know that the user has to confirm a tweet should go out before it is posted).

On the Mac side, there's iLife which gets bundled with new Macs whether you want it or not.

Which you can also simply drag to the trash?

It's not crapware I'd say if it's actually useful though!

I'd rather be a "hater" than a blind fanboi suckered by Apple's marketing into overpaying for crap hardware.

Funny, I'd rather spend my time using a computer than configuring it, paying about the same for the privileged. But whatever floats your boat.

It's also rather funny you call Apple users "blind" when it's you who apparently can't see with clarity what that are doing.

Re:Really?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Actually, it's still worth complaining about, because there's a definite network effect here. While there are things Apple won't let me do with the iPhone that I want to do, the fact is, the more people use iOS, the more software development jobs are for iOS, and the more apps are for iOS -- and the more likely it is for a larger portion of these to be iOS-exclusive, and for at least one of them to be something I need...

This is exactly what happens with Windows. The more people use other platforms like cell phones or even Macs, the more companies are forced to migrate to something at least semi-portable, like the Web -- and the more I get to use stuff I want, like Android or outright Linux on the desktop. Or, failing that, at least we get the stuff that needs to be native on Android, too.

Except this would be worse than Windows. Apple is already going this direction on the desktop, and it really seems like too many people are moving in the direction of making iOS-like machines the norm... meaning the days when I can expect to buy a typical desktop computer and hack together some software to share with my friends may be numbered. The days a child can take the computer they have for other purposes and just use it to pick up software development may also be numbered.

So, complaining loudly about it, if it convinces anyone to avoid iOS and adopt anything moderately open, is still valid.