• archchan@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    I really hate the term “side-loading.” We shouldn’t need a word for the normal way we’ve been installing apps for the past 40 years. If tomorrow Apple decided they were going to start only letting you visit web pages they approved of, we wouldn’t call some sort of alternating system that let you see the rest of the fucking internet “side-paging”. We’d instead call the whole thing bullshit.

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    • cmhe@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Until some time ago, I always though that “side-loading” is something different. Since I first saw “side-loading” used in ADB, so I thought that it means using another system on the side to load and install software onto a target system.

      So to me that seems fitting, but now it seems to be used differently. How is installing software using just one device “side-loading”. What side do they mean?

      • stephan262@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I’ve always took side-loading to mean installing from local storage, as opposed to downloading from remote storage. As far as I’m concerned downloading from a third party app store should not be treated as side-loading.

        • cmhe@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          But to install from local storage, you first download or fetch a storage medium from a remote location with the file on it. There isn’t that much of a difference IMO.

          I would not call it side-loading when I download a file and then install it on the same device. Because that is how it has always worked. I never before heard people describing downloading and executing a setup.exe as “side-loading”.

          • stephan262@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Fair points. I was mostly thinking of situations like downloading using a separate device, writing to a usb drive or SD card and installing via that. Downloading an installer and using it is just downloading without using an app store.