Well I'm not American
So you're complaining about something that doesn't affect you in any way, shape, or form. Either that or you think wildlings are entitled to that money for some reason, even though they're not. The only connection you have to this whatsoever is America just sent the first wildling, ever, outside of the Earth's atmosphere, which entitles you to nothing.
Nobody? Let's run down the list shall we?
Firstly we're talking about the core messaging app. I think people would be rightfully pissed if they were given a phone which lacked an app to send and receive SMSes out of the box. That's what we're talking about here. Samsung is replacing a core phone feature with a Google app. No thanks. Samsung messenger is nice and basic and does what it needs to do.
Samsung Browser - I use this. It's Google Chrome except you can install adblockers on it. Because God knows Google Chrome is a piece of shit on Android.
Their App Store - I use this. Only for one or two apps, but Google arbitrarily blocking apps from Huawei is a pain. Samsung still allow Huawei to publish apps in their store. Competition is a GOOD THING. You want vendor lock-in go buy an Apple toy.
Fitness tracker - I know plenty of people who use this. I use a Huawei one, but virtually everyone with a Samsung Gear watch or the Samsung Ring (which sold incredibly well) will need this app for core functionality.
Payment System - I know plenty of people who use this. Not everyone likes to be locked into Google Wallet, and above all not everyone CAN be locked into Google Wallet. I used to use Samsung's payment app back before my bank supported Wallet.
Bixby, and AppCloud - I'll give you that, that's a cancer. You can't actually disable Bixby though.
Microsoft Office, Onedrive, Facebook, X, LinkedIn etc. Just absolute garbage that has to be removed to make the phone usable and fit for purpose.
Precisely none of those need to be removed to make the phone fit for purpose or usable. In fact all of them do precisely nothing unless you click on them.
The worst app is "AppCloud" which is a trojan/malware that automatically installs "curated" software on devices without consent. It slips into the setup sequence asking for consent when people are already habituated to clicking through screens to make their phone work.
Poor phrasing. You say it is doing so without consent but then admitting that you actually give it consent and that you blindly click agree to whatever is on the screen? Maybe someone else should setup a phone for you.
It's one of those bits of software that cannot be removed so it's always there and I believe many people do not know how to turn it off.
It can be disabled. If someone doesn't know how pre-installed apps can be disabled then there's really no helping them. This was a feature introduced in Android 4.0 some 15 years ago.
Best you can do, and what most people do, is create a separate folder in the launcher, shove all the apps there and ignore them as they all deserve to be, bloody useless bloatware.
I think you'll find most people actually know how to use a phone and for apps they will never use they simply long press the app and then hit "Disable" which not only removes the app from the home screen, but also blocks it from updating freeing up space on the user writable partition on the phone.
Forgive me if I sound snarky, it's probably due to the fact that this feature has existed for FIFTEEN YEARS having been introduced back in Android 4.0
Also I'm not sure anyone on the face of this planet would call the default shipped SMS/RCS messaging app "bloatware". People generally expect the phone to do out of the box functionality of a phone when they open it up. What else do you consider "bloatware"? The contact list? The phone dialler? How about the OS itself?
>"Why would you want SMS app with "ads and in app purchases" when so many fully featured ad free with no in app purchases SMS apps exist?"
I have been using it for many years. Long before there were any good other options. There might be better options now, I don't know. I have been happy with Textra, though. Updated regularly, lots of features, and reliable.
Samsung has always had a messaging app. Always. In fact in the early days of Android *all* phone vendors had their own messaging app and virtually none shipped with a Google default.
And? Early adopters have bugs. The question is was your ex happy with the phone, not whether it lasted as long as someone other than her expected it to.
>"Everyone has their own message app, and outside US, almost no one uses it for anything other than SMS. For everything else, it's Whatsapp, Telegram, WeChat, Signal, etc."
I have never used Samsung's, although it is on my phone. Or any other manufacturer's (LG, Moto, etc). But I also don't use Google Messages. I use Textra with every phone, regardless of brand. But I also don't use any other messaging except SMS. I just want something that works and does what I want.
Thing is your constitution doesn't mean Jack diddly squat when it comes down to it if no one's prepared to actually enforce it. Democratic laws are only as good as democratic norms.
It's a system of checks and balances. For example, how do you think we got rid of school prayer when the overwhelming majority of the country was in favor of it at the time? Because the constitution explicitly gave SCOTUS the power to do so. Not the voters, not the legislature.
Your king holds all of the checks. You're just relying on him to exercise restraint. You can't impeach him, and you can't veto him in any way.
The code has been actively tested on real hardware recently
You misunderstand the term tested. Testing != using. Unless you used your Gentoo box to read through the commits to the kernel and then run specific tests against the 486 code to ensure there were no regressions.
If the people building the stuff are not onboard with security issues, then have a modern kernel which could run on their hardware will not improve the situation.
Why the distinction? The point is that in some cases security would be just fine if the software were kept up to date. The fact that a device has a listening port open doesn't mean security is good or bad, it means it has specific functionality. One of the biggest problems in the consumer IoT world is that 99% of the shit out there is set and forget, open to any bug regardless of whether the vendor has patched it in newer products. Deploying modern software is fundamental to the issue under discussion.
If a third party client existed then it would work just fine. RCS is an open and clearly defined standard, and even iMessages supports it. Samsung users had no problem receiving or sending RCS, Apple users had no problem receiving RCS, and Google has no "control" over RCS as that standard is managed by the GSMA and it's 750 members much like nearly every other aspect of your phone.
Except that comparison (and TFS) has this completely incorrect. Here's the actual GM ad;
"The 2026 Silverado our most capable pickup ever!" - Read in deep dramatic voice
"Remember Chevrolote Spark models are for entertainment purposely" -Read as the image fades to black in higher pitch at 2x speed.
The Copilot being sold to corporations is a different product that acts different and does different things than the consumer one with the ToS. If you have a corporate Copilot licence, every query will have a button above it asking you to which Copilot you want to send the query which produces different results.
Just like a farmer who may finish hauling a bay of hay with his Chevy Silverado when his daughter asks if she can borrow the Chevy Spark to drive into town with the girls.
As fun as the ToS comparison is, the reality it no Microsoft is *not* getting Corporations to pay for the use of Copilot which has that language in the ToS. That Copilot ToS is for individual consumers. It's significantly different not just in terms of Terms of Service, but also in actual function to what corporate Copilot is. In fact if you are a corporation that pays for Copilot licenses, your users will be presented with a button to switch between the different Copilots during every query because they work differently, treat data differently, provide different outputs, and have different use cases.
So the only way to qualify as middle is to be able to afford two of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country? I tend to think "middle" or even "upper middle" would include a lot more than that.
Nothing to see here. Just a test run of the human collars coming in ~2040. Shocking, I know.
BLISS is ignorance.
