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Where did the "sideloading" expression come from?
Camera, phone, tablet, ereaders, certain game gadgets, PMP etc all can or do use mass storage USB. You can either drag and drop using a filemanager or open a library program. There have always been stupid exceptions like the Sony Minidisk and Apple imposing their nasty programs to manage file transfer.
A lot of makers Apps for gadgets are barely better than spyware. I don't use Adobe, Sony, Amazon or Kobo apps to "talk" to my ereaders.
I never even read the term "Sideloading" before visiting this forum. You have to charge stuff anyway, so I've never found it a chore to plug in via USB and use file transfer.
Before USB we did the same thing with RS232 serial. Simply a fatter connector, slower and having to use a compatible file transfer program.
Some stuff (inc iPods long ago) uses Firewire. It was killed by its royalty costs.
There is also Serial via USB, Picture mode USB, Video streaming USB, USB HID and networking via USB. But for file transfer, like MP3, JPG, Mobi, epub, mp4 etc the Mass Storage USB is best.
I can sort of imagine why it's called "sideloading", but it's daft and suggests that something is being bypassed. The Cloud isn't reliable. Gadgets are not reliable. The ONLY sensible way to buy digital downloads is to download to a laptop/tablet/PC, make backups and use USB transfer to put stuff on the gadget/ereader.
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