Whether it is easy or possible is irrelevant. For the 99.7% of the world that isn't a software developer, the real-world observed use case will predominantly be the least-friction commoditized workflow. People mostly have one phone with one authenticator app, and that's what they'll use.
A combination of Google Assistant, Talkback, USB-C-to-USB-A-Adapter and Keyboard, a Bluetooth keyboard, scrcpy, Anydesk and a new Pixel phone for practicing helped get some data off the device and even do a migration to the new phone. Needed all of the above and a lot of trial and error and time!!
I love OrganicMaps but lacks in certain situations.
When I want to be able to zoom into any and all of my bookmarks, I have to keep the map data of all countries I've ever been visiting. Thats tens and tens of GB of data on a mobile phone.
And everytime there are maps updates I have to redownload all of it. Tens and tens of GB of data.
When you're traveling and forgot to DL everythibg beforehand and have to use some WIFI hotspot you might not be able to get your maps downloaded. Happened to me multiple times.
Isn't this already the reality in the mobile space?
I own a rooted Samsung device and have to jump through 100 hoops to be able to use my banking app or Netflix or some rando game (which I don't actually play). SafetyNet broken, hardware fuse blown, Magisk Hide + some other havks just to still be able to do online banking.
I just want to be able to ssh into my own device or install a real ad blocker, like Adaway without losing access to real world applications.
> they would love to extend this to all computing devices to remove control
That's not really true. Apple is encroaching freedom of software choice on their devices, but they know that they can't extend the same kind of security policies to the desktop. You can disable secure boot on Macs and even run Linux if you like. Additionally, it's a bit difficult but if you disable SIP you do get access to the entire systems file system. They're a shitty company when it comes to repair-ability and their walled garden, but they know they can't extend this to the desktop, or else they would disqualify themselves from the developer market (where they are quite popular).
One option is for sysadmins and IT shops serving SMBs to preinstall Firefox on workstations. That way users get used to the browser and might use it privately as well. Bonus: Preinstall uBlock Origin.
When I click in my Gmail android app on a link from a received E-Mail, the opened Firefox browser opens a google domain for a second and only after that the domain from the link opens... any idea what that is? Tracking?
Google bounces all URLs through a redirector which strips referrer information and also allows them to warn about malware sites that were identified after the message itself was classified and delivered.
I would like to test that but when clicking different links I get mixed results. The URLs get modified alright but a lot of referrer info seems to not get removed.
I guess its just Google collecting one more metric.
It's for security. Checking against a list of banned URLs, etc. When you have user-submitted content, protecting your users from bad URLs is important.
Also, I'm sure they're doing plenty of click tracking too :)
Choice to always store media locally on the phone.
What I miss with most messenger apps: Archiving old stuff and offload it to a remote device.
Right now Signal is 8GB in size and doesn't stop growing.