Modern smartphones: "Powerful", "marvelous", but corporate overlords dictate what you actually get to do with it.

They lock your bootloader and prevent you from installing third-party operating systems.[1] Now they are starting to block third-party app installation only in certain situations, but this will sure as hell escalate.[2]

They block you from using the MicroSD card properly or take away the memory card slot entirely, decide what you are allowed to screenshot[3], and they lock your user data (like browsing history and saved pages) away from yourself to "protect you" from imagined evils. But this "protection" is actually the curse.

They also refuse to implement features people ask for like always starting with the rear camera regardless of the last used camera[4] and let the user backed up saved pages[5]. Something as simple as turning the flashlight on and off while recording a video took over a decade for Samsung to implement when shouldn't have taken a single afternoon.

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Sources:

[1] Xiaomi prevents unlocking the bootloader but graciously allows it seven days after purchase. I believe that as the buyer, you should be able to install any operating system you like.
[2] (added through edit, hence last) Since Android 16, Google blocks APK installations during phone calls, supposedly to protect against scammers. But if history teaches us anything, it means this will quickly escalate and end with APKs being blocked completely or only installable through ADB, which requires an external computer and a USB cable.
[3] Google and Apple let app developers block users from taking screenshots. This is, for example, used by WhatsApp to prevent screenshots of profile pictures, even though everyone knows one should not put something in a visible spot on the Internet that one does not wish to be preserved. I believe people should have the freedom to screenshot anything that appears on their screen, like desktop operating systems (Windows and Linux) do. The buyer deserves to have the final say on a device they paid for.
[4] https://r1.community.samsung.com/t5...
[5] https://forum.developer.samsung.com/...

Sometimes, Google's solutions are worse than the problem they intend to solve.

For example, Google ReCaptchas are worse than spam, especially those with the pictures that fade extremely slowly on purpose. Unlike bots, humans are likely to not finish deliberately annoying captchas to save their precious time. (see http://archive.today/2022.06.25-110... )

In Chrome (mobile version), pull-to-refresh saves the one second it takes to reach for the refresh button in the submenu, but poses a threat of accidental refreshes each time you swipe down intending to scroll up. Over two thousand people have complained about this. ( http://archive.today/2025.02.26-153... )

With Android 4.4, Google blocked write access to memory cards (MicroSD) from all user-installed apps with the exception of app-specific folders so apps can not leave files behind when uninstalling. Google provided no option to change this. (source: http://web.archive.org/web/... )

But for unwanted files, there is already a delete button! Why take away the freedom to use the MicroSD card properly?

Google crippled the usefulness of memory cards for this nonsensical reason.

Google solved these problems with solutions that are worse than the problem.

On recent Android versions, moving a folder within the internal storage changes its last modified time (mtime) to now.

The purpose of mtime is to indicate when the contents of a file or folder have been modified. If it is moved itself, only the change time (ctime) is supposed to change. How could Google miss this? This has been the Linux behaviour for decades.

Google simply couldn't miss this opportunity to mess up stuff.

Fatal exception? More like fatal rule.

How to make my copy of Linux genuine?

I couldn't find my Linux product key. Do you know a way to crack the Linux product key?

Which miracle do you think will occur first?

Will Google create a file manager for Android that isn't garbage, or will Microsoft add ext4 support to Windows?

"2>/dev/null" is the command-line equivalent of "shut up, bitch".

If you too are sick of pull-to-refresh in Google Chrome, please consider signing this petition:

https://change.org/p/...

While I doubt it will get Google to change their minds, it is worth a shot.

FAQ:

Why not just use Firefox?
Because it can't save pages as HTML or MHTML file. Don't even get me started with SinglePage; it is bogus garbage.

Why not just use Kiwi/Brave/etc. ?
Because Google made it mandatory in its codebase, Brave and Kiwi browser and all those other chromium-based third-parties have it mandatory too. This needs to change.

It took Samsung over a decade to implement something as simple as staying in the current directory instead of going to the initial directory after tapping the "copy" or "move" button in their smartphone file manager.

How long will it take them to implement a simple option to always launch on the rear camera regardless of which camera was last used? Two decades?

It should not even take one day.

Streamlined means bastardized.

Drag-to-select in Samsung's "My Files" app is a disaster.

If you don't move your finger and stop dragging towards the top or bottom, it goes into "drag-and-drop" after one second. When you release your finger, it unselects everything, so you have to start over.

This is why every mobile file manager needs range selection. This means tapping two files, tapping a button, and everything inbetween is immediately selected.

This is similar to shift+click selection on desktop. We take this for granted since it has been a standard feature for three decades. But mobile apps still can't do this simple thing as of 2024.

"Drag-to-select" is better than individual selection, but comes nowhere close to real range selection. "Drag to select" is at best an ugly twin of full desktop-like range selection, but file manager developers can still get away with giving it the label of "mass selection".

ES File Explorer had this since at least 2012, yet billion-dollar Samsung and Google fail to implement this in their file managers.

(Yet another rant on TAR commands.)
Whose idea was it to make TAR file listing "tar -t" and not "tar -l"?

How does it make sense? It goes against intuition.

It would have been more logical to make "-t" tarfile instead of "-f", and to make "-l" list.

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1168/

Thanks to Google for at least keeping the local performance analysis tool in the Chrome developer tools.

Firefox Profiler is a joke.

Anti-features need to be fought with fire (metaphorically speaking).

This means they must be eliminated, not just made optional.

Why? Because an optional anti-feature is just one step away from a mandatory anti-feature.

For example, "secure" booting: https://youtu.be/vvaWrmS3Vg4?t=750 (Jody Bruchon)

Another example are disguised remote kill switches, such as add-on signing ( https://digdeeper.club/articles/... ). It started as optional and people were able to opt out, and everyone accepted it because no one expected what would come next.
All that was left was removing the ability to opt out, and then Mozilla has control over which extensions users are allowed to use.

For years, this feature sat dormant and users did not know of its existence. But in early May 2019, the metaphorical thread snapped and an expired certificate remotely disabled all extensions, wasting millions of man-hours of productivity.

From the digdeeper.club article:

"The funny thing is, the whole point of the extension prison was allegedly to increase security - and yet today, all security addons got disabled because of it! Shows how freedom always has to trump over security or it ends up in a disaster like this."

Evil needs to be nipped in the bud before it can flourish.

The "JavaScript-based web app" starter pack.
Build web sites, not web "apps".
JavaScript is an enhancement, not a replacement for HTML.

This is why my trust in updates is low.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Updates aren't always good. Sometimes, they might introduce problems and anti-features.

(Also, didn't whoever introduced this backdoor on a wildly popular component of Linux expect to be caught?!)

Google is known for frequently removing features from its products and services. So much that they have been given the nickname "Gookill".

If only they removed the one feature that deserves to be removed.

Pull-to-refresh.

To be honest, Windows Vista looks undeniably beautiful, no matter how unpopular it might was.

The user interface looked amazing. It looks decent even by today's standards. Windows XP looks more like a toy with its over-saturated colours, but Windows Vista appears elegant.

The stock wallpaper of Vista, "Aurora", is among the most beautiful out-of-the-box wallpapers I have seen.

Remember, Windows 7, arguably the most popular version of Windows, is a rebranding for a slightly altered Windows Vista Service Pack 2. Microsoft realized the reputation of the "Vista" trademark was ruined beyond repair, so they had to rebrand.

Image source: https://reddit.com/r/WindowsVista/... ( https://i.redd.it/dr4vqiqqi0q81.png ).

Also see: "Was Windows Vista THAT bad?" - Linus Tech Tips ( https://youtube.com/watch/... )

Both the FAT32 and ISO9660 file systems have a 4 GB file size limitation due to storing file sizes as a 32-bit integer. However, the developers of ISO9660 had an idea that the geniusheads at Microsoft failed to think of.

ISO 9660, the first widely used file system on optical discs, bypasses its own 4 GB file size limit by supporting multiple entries for the same file! So a 12 GB file can be represented as three entries for the same file name.

This is what future-proofing looks like.
If only Microsoft had had (sic.) this idea for FAT32 (and FAT16).

The "recycle bin" feature of Samsung "My Files" is amazing for data loss prevention when moving files out of the smartphone.

There used to be two ways to move files out of the smartphone to make space free. One is direct moving, the other is copy-deletion. The first is self-explanatory, the second means first copying the files and then deleting them on the phone.

Thanks to the the recycle bin, which keeps data for a month, files on the phone can be copied out and then put into the recycle bin instead of immediately deleted.

This means that if the copying was incomplete, there is a thirty-day grace period to get the files back from the phone.

The benefit of moving files instead of copy-deleting them is the lack of the deletion step. Moving files out directly does not have the emotional barrier of deleting the files from source like the deletion step of copy-deleting does.

Moving files feels like moving items to a new room, where as the deletion step after copying feels like destroying something.

So why not move files out? Because there is a risk of data loss if the device disconnects while files are moved to an USB OTG device. Due to write buffering, files that are moved out might be deleted on the phone shortly before they are completely written on the USB-OTG.

This is not an issue with MTP (Windows or Linux through USB cable) because the file systems are managed by the computer, so if the phone disconnects while files are moved out of the phone using MTP, the file system is kept intact by Windows or Linux.

Now, thanks to the recycle bin, there is no emotional barrier to deletion because the files on the phone are automatically deleted after 30 days in the absence of the user. The user can press the "delete" button without worries because of knowing "I can get it back until a month from now anyway".

Another severe UI fail by Google:

On stock Android 7, the expanded system control menu only shows FOUR controls per page in horizontal view.

Compare that to superior TouchWiz (by Samsung), which showed all 23 controls at once, as seen in the screenshot attached in a comment.

In addition, on TouchWiz, the user could tap multiple options at once. Tapping on a toggle would just turn a feature on or off, and opening a menu would require holding the toggle for a second.

On stock Android, tapping opens the menu, so turning a feature off requires three more taps to reach a toggle located inside the submenu and to then go back.

This makes deactivating multiple features on stock Android a finger workout.

I am not sure which other stock Android versions are like that because I couldn't find horizontal screenshots of the system control menu (or toggle menu, or whatever it is called).

Only four controls per page? Seriously, Google?

TouchWiz Android > stock Android > iOS.

A developer might think "now that computers have more RAM and an abundantly strong CPU, I am free to create resource-hungry inefficient software!"

This sets a dangerous precedent.

Computers can only get faster if the software stays efficient while the processors get faster and the RAM increases.

If computers get more powerful but software also gets more bloated and less efficient, it defeats the performance benefit.

Also, software must be efficient to extend the battery time on portable devices.

Jody Bruchon video: https://youtube.com/watch/...

When fsck has a bad day…

Websites requiring recent browser versions indirectly puts control into the hands of browser vendors.

If users are forced to update, they are at the mercy of browser makers Google and Mozilla. Google and Mozilla can deliver whichever malicious feature they feel like, like mandatory add-on signing with updates.

Add-on signing is the thing that caused all extensions to be remotely disabled on May 3, 2019.

Also, Microsoft can disable your computer through an update if they wanted to.

Jody Bruchon video: https://youtube.com/watch/...

How is a "web app" any better than a "web site"?

All a "web app" does is adding a JavaScript program as a middle-man between the browser and the server.

Where as "web sites" instantly deliver content, "web apps" deliver JavaScript code that then loads the content and puts it on the page.

A "web site" serves the browser useful content on a silver plate (metaphorically speaking), where as "web apps" serve some JavaScript code and the browser has to do the heavy lifting.

It appears that the only benefit of "web apps" is the fancier name. "App" sounds fancy while "site" sounds mundane. But technically, a "web app" is worse than a "web site". It's both slower and vulnerable to scripting errors.

Why would anyone in their right mind choose to create a web "app" over a web "site" to load text and a bunch of pictures?

I get it, some things such as posting comments without reloading the page and loading new search results when scrolling down are not possible without JavaScript, but why use JavaScript for everything, even where it wouldn't be necessary?

JavaScript should never be required to show a bunch of boxes containing pictures and some text. JavaScript is intended to enhance web sites, not to load entire websites.

As web developer Jake Archibald said, "[100% of] your users are non-JS while they're downloading your JS" ( https://twitter.com/jaffathecake/... ).

See also: I miss the good times when the web was lightweight. ( https://devrant.com/rants/9987051/... )

"App" is not an excuse: https://jakearchibald.com/2013/...

I am sad Archive.org switched to being a web app. But I applaud them for resisting that trend longer than most other large sites.

Add-on signing is censorship in disguise.

Imagine Google could remotely delete YouTube videos you downloaded, to "keep you safe" from the "bad content". Well, Google and Mozilla can remotely disable extensions you installed using their pre-installed trojan horse called "add-on signing".

Always remember, whenever a corporation cites "for your protection", consider it synonymous with "so we can control you more".

Graphic designer vs. programmer.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch/...

If Sony owned Android OS, would they have added severe restrictions and anti-features like Google did too?

I wonder how old the oldest file in any RAM drive is.

By that, I mean what the longest time a file resided in a RAM drive is.

Say after me:
/usr means USER!!!
$PWD means PASSWORD!!!
/dev means DEVELOPMENT!!!!

Don't you dare question this!!1!