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Comment by CubsFan1060 | Hacker News Reader

One of the two needs to be rock solid in case of emergency. If my MacBook crashes while trying to use it, it’s not a big deal. If my phone crashes while trying to call 911 when I have a car accident, someone may die.

https://www.androidpolice.com/microsoft-teams-911-break-emer...

https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/r4xz1f/pixel_p...

Interesting quote: Cause let's be real, as someone without a landline, I sure as hell don't want a phone that freaks out when I try to call 911 in the middle of a life threatening emergency. I'm supposed to trust that a phone will do the main thing is built for, and place the call, and let me speak to the human on the other end.

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Microsoft Teams is distributed through the Play Store. If iOS provided a similar API with a similar bug, the same thing could happen there. So clearly, blocking side-loading would have had no impact on this particular issue.

If you're worried about low-quality software being side-loaded onto the phone, you can just not side-load anything. That's probably how most Android users use their devices. But it's nice that the walled garden has a gate.

I’m sorry. The question op asked wasn’t about side loading or about separate stores. It was about what makes a laptop different from a phone.

But that’s an interesting question anyway. Apple and google can remove apps distributed through their stores. If a side loaded malicious app exploited this bug, would you have been in favor of google being able to disable those apps? Or should users wait a month until it is sort of fixed on some phones, and be unable to dial emergency services during the month where this was unpatched?

Apple can already disable “sideloaded” apps on macOS by revoking their notarization ticket. The same process could be implemented for iOS:

> Apple can also issue a revocation ticket for apps known to be malicious—even if they’ve been previously notarized.

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/protecting-against-...

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizin...

If my phone crashes while trying to call 911

And iPads?

“ Why should you be allowed to run whatever you want on your MacBook but not on your phone?”

This was simply the question I was trying to answer. No more.

My personal feeling, however, is that, if there is a suitable alternative, people should be allowed to buy a device knowing the limitations (artificial or not).

Nobody is surprised that there isn't an alternative App Store an iPhone or iPad. If that's important to folks, they have plenty of Android or Microsoft alternatives.

It feels a lot to me like people buy a blue car, then complain that it's not a red car. I honestly don't understand why people don't just buy the red car in the first place.

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