Apple, in macOS, has something called "Full Disk Access". You can grant it if you want, deny if you don't.

If you allow that, the app works like the way the person you're replying to wants. If you deny that, the application works the way you want.

If one company have it, the other can implement it, too. There's no shame in copying a good feature, is it?

I imagine the reason is probably why Apple doesn't copy that feature in iOS: MacOS is much less of a walled garden than a phone ecosystem.

In iOS the same feature appears as "Files integration", which allows you to see an app's files from the "Files" application, and some applications can see all "Files Enabled/Allowed" applications in their file selection window.

Just checked with Dropbox, and yep, that's how it works. Files can access Dropbox transparently, and Dropbox can access any files which can be seen by the Files app.

So an equivalent is present in iOS.

Oh, that's changed since I last checked. Fair enough.

If google controlled the trade codes, your house would have electrical panels that could only be opened with a tool that was only available to google certified tradies, you know, for safety.

If Google's reputation were on the line if anyone's electrical panel broke, or if someone stole all your personal data from your life that they run through that panel then, yeah. I imagine so.

And that electrical panel would still break and now it would have people like me shitting on their reputation at every chance given whether it breaks for me or not. Because philosophically its a stain, now I likely pay more and i can't have my knowledgeable family in the trade deal with the issue and me with some of the others.

I suppose, but that's pretty nothingy in the grand scheme of things.

And you can do some things with a phone, e.g. hard reset it if it's really broken. What do you want to be able to do with a phone to fix it that you can't do today?

Replace misdesigned components. It shouldn't matter than “most people” don't need or want to use a thing in a particular way, but yet I'm constantly prevented from doing things that are trivial on other platforms and used to be trivial on this one.

> Replace misdesigned components

As in software or hardware?

> It shouldn't matter than “most people” don't need or want to use a thing in a particular way

Well, it does a bit. If I buy a Fiat Uno I shouldn't be expecting to be towing a 2-tonne caravan with it.

>As in software or hardware?

I'd presume he means software

> If I buy a Fiat Uno I shouldn't be expecting to be towing a 2-tonne caravan with it.

Sure but you're basically suggesting people shouldn't be able to tow caravans. That since most people won't do it and some who do will overload or take stupid turns and damage their vehicle so it shouldn't be possible for nearly any road vehicles.

>I suppose, but that's pretty nothingy in the grand scheme of things.

Not for me. For me it's another general computing device that can't do general computing. Some random person installing dodgy apk's and giving em stupid permissions on the other hand doesn't bother me in the grand scheme of things.

The problem is the naughty/nice dichotomy in terms of software that needs effectively global permissions to accomplish it's task, like apps like this arguably would. I have also compromised the ever loving hell out of my household ubuntu box to make it do various things, but I'm also doing that on purpose, knowing full well that it's kept safe by other means.

The problem is casual users aren't interested in learning about this shit so they can make informed choices. They just click through and give apps access to the entire device without thinking or reading, and then bitch at Google when their data is breached. Google doesn't want to deal with that so they lock everything down.

I dunno isn't this why Android users root their phones?

> I dunno isn't this why Android users root their phones?

No, because it would be like using dynamite to drill a small hole in the wall - effectively destroying the platform's entire security model as well as locking yourself out of vital apps (finance/banking), and many non-vital apps that pretend they need the same level of security and refuse to work on rooted devices.

> locking yourself out of vital apps (finance/banking)

My controversial take here is that Google's creation of a remote attestation scheme is also anticompetitive, intended to reduce the commercial viability of any non-blessed Android distributions.

Everyone could see the bad intent when Microsoft proposed the same thing about a decade earlier under the name Palladium, but Google's Safetynet didn't prompt much outcry from the tech community. I'm disappointed by that.

Well sure I don't disagree with you at all, but the way I always hear it from Android fans, that's why they want it. I don't get it personally, I'm quite happy with a "locked down" iPhone.

I don't know how it is on iPhones, but many Android phones come with a crap-ton of unwanted software that is uninstallable unless you have root. I'm exaggerating but it feels like buying a car with all the stations pre-programmed in the radio.

edit: s/it/the radio

Depends on the phone. This is the un-walled garden.

I use OnePlus, which has very little/no bloat.

Huh. I have a OnePlus 8T and it has some stupid stuff on it that I can't remove.

> The problem is casual users aren't interested in learning about this shit so they can make informed choices.

That's a good point. And for non-casual users there is F-droid. It sucks for app developers who lose a giant audience for sure. But maybe in the long run it's good that power users have a place to go?