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CyanogenMod Installer Removed From Google Play Store
sfcrazy writes "[Wednesday] Google asked the CM team to voluntarily remove the [CyanogenMod installer] app from the store or they would be forced to remove it administratively. CM team chose to remove the app voluntarily. According to the CyanogenMod team, Google initially said that the app was in violation of Google's Play's developer terms. When the CM team reached out to the Play team, they found that 'though application itself is harmless, and not actually in violation of their Terms of Service, since it 'encourages users to void their warranty', it would not be allowed to remain in the store.'" You can still install manually, though.
If this were Apple removing an app, everyone would be complaining about the walled garden!
This doesn't' seem all that voluntary to me. My reaction was yeah sure you go ahead and remove it, why should we do you any favors?
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Note from the article "Removed reference to Google stating the app was not in violation of TOS – this was a mischaracterization of Google’s statement."
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
They didn't "reach out to Google", they contacted Google. Using "reached out to" in this context makes it sound like they are trying to make an emotional appeal to an elderly stroke patient. The perfectly usable verb "contact" is also one word instead of three.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Just unplug the router, fashion a tinfoil hat and wear it while crying yourself to sleep in a corner. Google is the internet, get used to it.
...
There are plenty of alternatives to the official Google App Store.
I'm not sure if it's a good thing they removed it from the official store or not. If it was up to me I'd probably allow it with big red letters saying "THIS WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY AND MIGHT BRICK YOUR PHONE". OTOH people installing stuff from official Google App Store don't expect these things to happen, so maybe it's a good thing for the masses that this app was removed... And tech-savy people will find ways to get Cyanogen installed anyway.
--Coder
Oh do fuck off. Warranties are limited in nature. It's got nothing to do with stopping you from doing what you want with your own property and everything to do with the fact that if you fuck up your own phone, it's not the manufacturer's problem to solve.
Google deciding not to distribute an application is not akin to making you into their slave. Pointing out that a warranty might be voided if you do certain things is not akin to making you into their slave. All your analogies to "walking off the plantation" do is highlight that you have absolutely no sense of perspective on this matter.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Like it or not, mobile software is tightly-coupled to the hardware, and the warranty. I expect the manufacturers consider this more akin to wiping the firmware on your TV, microwave, or car.
Last post!
The peripheral legal implications aside, and at the risk of sounding like a Google apologist, I really can't say I have any problem with this.
The sort of people who want to install CM will still have absolutely no problem going to the website and doing it manually. This presents no barrier to them exercising their choice of how to use their hardware.
On the flip side of that, having it in the Play store presents something of an outright danger to people who don't know any better (aka "the vast majority")... "Oh, a new version of Android? Hey, I have an Android, I should grab this!". Ten minutes later, their battery dies, or they get sick of watching the installer screen and interrupt it. Oops! Partial brick-time, and now Google (via Samsung/HTC/etc, via Verizon/Sprint/etc) gets to deal with thousands of self-inflicted warranty issues.
Again, at the risk of sounding like an apologist, Google has made compromises that let power-users do whatever the hell they want, while providing 99% of the "walled garden" experience most users want.
If by 'encourage(s) users to void their warranty'" you mean "use the thing you paid for however you see fit in concordance with a thousand year history of English, Formal and natural law, then yeah, I guess you could say it voids your warranty.
That's something of an overstatement. Can you show us a thousand year history of products coming with warranties and a body of law that deals with it?
Companies that SELL stuff normally take a position that if you modify it in such a way that it no longer performs the purpose for which they designed it to be used, that's your responsiblity and has nothing to do with their warranty whether written or implied.
It's just amazing seeing, first Apple, and now Google, transform themselves into the modern IBM with their ever encroaching and desperate "lock in" policies.
Apple has always been playing the lock in game. Try running any software written for your Apple computer -- any generation -- on a non-Apple machine. Doesn't fucking work, does it? And they've got proprietary file formats too.
I guess it shouldn't be surprising. Seeing as the user is the product being sold, Google can't have their products (users vis a vie control of the user experience) just walking off the plantation, now can they?
CM isn't walking off Google's plantation. Cyanogenmod is very very much stock Android, with a few added bells and whistles. And it's not walking off your mobile provider's plantation either, because it leaves your phone locked to your carrier without further modification. But it does let you uninstall the crapware that most phones come with from your carrier.
I think their objection is that they want to avoid this situation:
1. Joe User installs CM Installer from the Market.
2. Joe User installs CyanogenMod on his phone.
3. The CM version he manages to install is either wrong for his phone or in some other way doesn't work to his satisfaction.
4. He lacks the expertise to reinstall his phone's stock firmware.
5. According to Joe User, his phone is "broken."
6. Joe takes his phone to the store or warranty service center of his carrier.
7. Carrier or manufacturer absorbs the cost of either replacing or restoring Joe's phone to stock or
8. They tell Joe to pound sand because he voided his warranty, permanently souring Joe on their service.
9. Carrier or manufacturer sues Google over encouraging Joe and millions of other Joes like him to fuck up their phones, which is costing THEM money.
This of course is a little modified in the case where Google is the manufacturer. In that case, it's a direct cost to Google of phones being returned to them for repair or replacement. They want no part of that.
How realistic is it that CM will fuck up your phone? In my experience, plenty. My phone won't run any CM correctly past 10.1.2. 10.1.3 and subsequent versions break the battery charging and USB connectivity. I thought it was a hardware problem until I downgraded.
Several problems with your statement there...
1. Google didn't just "point out" that this application may void your warranty. It was already pointed out in large red, bold letters on the play store for the application so no further action on Google's part would be "pointing it out".
2. "Certain conditions" (whatever that means) ignores that in other conditions the application works just fine and has worked fine for thousands, even millions of users. If "certain conditions" was the deciding factor, then literally ALL the applications on the store could void your warranty in "certain conditions". Yet they aren't shutting down the store because of that fact.
3. Although the master / slave imagery is a bit strong you are still sacrificing the freedom to do what you want with the device that you own at Google's will. Google has made itself the gatekeeper by implementing that store and by seeing itself as the total arbiter of what is the best interest of their users.
4. Voiding of the warranty is only an issue where the warranty is in effect in the first place. Google is unilaterally deciding that ALL users, not just those covered by a warranty, should not be allowed access to this application. Although they own the store and have the right to do this, that doesn't make the decision correct.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Not even close.
Look, I'm not sure why it needs repeating, but let's repeat it again. Just because iDevices are locked to the iTunes store does NOT mean Android devices are locked to the Google Play store.
Calling Google the "gatekeeper" implies that it has absolute control over what you install on your unhacked device.
That's, quite simply, bullshit. Google has no such control. Android is not tied to any one app store. Google's sole advantage is in having a default app store on most Android devices. It has no monopoly, and you are not required to use it.
You can download APKs and install them directly. You can install the Amazon App Store and install apps through there. There are many other independent app stores you can install on your device.
The slavery comparison isn't merely offensive and over the top, it's a point blank lie. Knock it off.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Even if it is irrelevant, stock Android provides only two choices: only APKs signed by the phone maker's preferred curator, or every APK from every source. There's no way to add a third party as a curator the way one can with, say, any Linux distribution using APT. If you turn on "Unknown sources" for Amazon Appstore or F-Droid, for instance, you add the ability for apps to pose as Amazon or F-Droid and present an "update" that's actually a trojan.
Are there examples of software that are available for Android but not for iOS.
I can think of a few things Apple forbids under its guidelines:
Actually, that rule changed a few weeks ago: ...
From the article:
- They are also retroactively reinstating the warranties of people who already asked for an unlock code and had their warranty voided as a result.
- They are posting "return to factory images". (Nice pun, that. They let you flash your phone back to the factory image, which you'll want to do before returning it to the factory for service.)
I guess losing a touch more than a third of a billion dollars ($342 million) in one year CAN sometimes get executives to look at customer complaints and try to address them. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This is why I support removing CM installer from the play store.
Not because rooting/unlocking voids warranties, but because installing from within the OS is a terrible idea and much more likely to (soft) brick the phone
It's like trying to install a desktop OS without having a bootable cd/usb to fall back on.
Timothy doesn't bother me. Kdawson was awful though; that guy couldn't wipe his ass without hatching a conspiracy theory, and I did stop visiting slashdot for a while because of it. If I really wanted that, I would be a regular visitor at prisonplanet and listener of Alex Jones.
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