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.

Comments

Re:Where's the outrage?!

[somersault]

The difference is that Apple only allows you to install apps from the official app store. To allow unofficial apps on an Android device, all you need to do is tick a box in the settings menu.

Re:Where's the outrage?!

[MrLint]

How about being outraged on the premise that installing of software is a warranty violation. I'd not be at all surprised that Verizon was involved.

Reached out

[Alioth]

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.

Re:Where's the outrage?!

[Vanderhoth]

Well, the CM team is free to distribute their app in other ways. Apple is a little more strict about only allowing apps from their store to be installed. I know jail breaking and all that, but if you're going to jail break your apple device you should already understand the risks and be technically savvy enough to do it.

Google shouldn't have to allowed a known "potentially" dangerous app in their store. Anyone with the expertise required to use this firmware can go and get it from the Cyanogen website. It doesn't need to be advertised in the app store for non-technical people to download. Without researching it I'm sure a laymen would think firmware is some kind of a game and could mess up their device without knowing it. Then who's going to take the blame. I suspect it would be Google for distributing it, a laymen will never take responsibility for using something they didn't understand.

Re: Where's the outrage?!

[Yoda222]

So you have basically the choice between a phone (or tablet) where you can install stuff that you don't want and one where you can't install what you want.

Re:Google. The new Apple/IBM.

[Bogtha]

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.

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.

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?

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.

Re: Where's the outrage?!

[Minwee]

Know how many people get viruses or malware on their iPhone (without jailbreaking) ... 0.

Looks like you don't know enough people. It has been done, without jailbreaking, and we only know because the developers publicized that fact themselves.. If you want to keep the same answer, perhaps you could rephrase the question as "How many times that Apple admit that they served up viruses or malware in their App Store?"

So you think its better to run extra software, waste more ram, cpu and storage space ... so that you don't get something that iOS users just aren't going to get in the first place?

But what if I don't _want_ a misplaced sense of security based on faulty assumptions?

You utterly fucking fail at understanding security. [...] The only known threats on iOS devices have come to jailbroken phones and the jailbreaks themselves.

It ain't just a river in Egypt.

And that's not even considering threats that come from Apple itself, without any need to install apps or change settings. Something magical happens and things just work.

Until then [I] just make it obvious [I'm] nothing more than a fanboy.

No argument here.

IDEs, emulators, and

[tepples]

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:

• Apps to develop apps, such as AIDE.
• Wireless network analysis tools.
• Video game console emulators that run ROMs that you dumped using a Kazzo (NES) or Retrode (Super NES and Genesis) or CD drive (PlayStation) or homebrew ROMs that hobbyists are still creating for these platforms.
• Web browsers that aren't Safari wrappers with all the intentional limits of Safari, such as no uploads of media types other than pictures and videos and no WebGL and no getUserMedia. And yes, I mean "intentional limits": Apple has implemented WebGL on iOS but allows it only for iAds, not for web sites.