[deleted]
Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
101–110 of 417 posts
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they cared one second about it, they would have changed the terms of access to the Google services. The sad part is that the 2016 security report just came out and they brag how the whole security improved, without mentioning the elephant in the room. Google IO is around the corner and I bet they will keep talking as if everyone could upgrade right away to Android O, with N now having barely 2%.
Everyone (who buys Google phones) can upgrade right away. It's not Google's fault that the other manufacturers refuse to update their products in a timely manner. The responsibility for these devices lies solely with the manufacturer.
Surely it is their fault, because Google is the very first to give the example of selling devices more expensive than desktop computers, above the minimum wage in many countries, with updates limited to 2 years (+1 for some fixes).
As for the other OEMs, there is this thing called contracts and legal obligations.
No updates, no access to Google services from invalid devices.
It is as easy as that, if Google actually cared about the consumers.
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they cared one second about it, they would have changed the terms of access to the Google services. The sad part is that the 2016 security report just came out and they brag how the whole security improved, without mentioning the elephant in the room. Google IO is around the corner and I bet they will keep talking as if everyone could upgrade right away to Android O, with N now having barely 2%.
Everyone (who buys Google phones) can upgrade right away. It's not Google's fault that the other manufacturers refuse to update their products in a timely manner. The responsibility for these devices lies solely with the manufacturer.
This excuse completely ignores the fact that through the MADA contract, Google controls all of the manufacturers and defines whether or not they are allowed to sell Android phones, effectively. And that the OS is designed, by Google, to require the manufacturer to distribute the update, rather than, as with... pretty much all other OSes, the software developer being responsible for updating their own software.
Google would like you to blame the manufacturer, but you need to realize the fact that you even can blame the manufacturer is a design flaw in the OS which Google designed.
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I remember it, I would need to buy an expensive IBM with PS2 architecture to be able to use OS/2 properly, instead of the 386 I got with Windows, so lets not forget that IBM didn't managed the whole situation properly.
That was always a myth, of course.
What was a myth?
Me saving around 500€ on today's money, because I got to use my savings on a no name OEM PC running DR-DOS/Windows 3.1, instead buying an IBM PC with OS/2 2.0?
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference being that you can install or upgrade Windows on a system without buying a new laptop or requiring support from the vendor; the vendor doesn't lock down laptops to prevent upgrades and force people to buy a new device instead.
Let me ask a (potentially) very stupid question here: What prevents doing the same on phones? What would make a phone hardware able to install anything that compiles to its CPU architecture the same way a PC can?
Paraphrase the question in the reverse and you get your answer: What makes this possible on Windows desktops?
Stable binary driver ABI. Hardware monoculture. Expensive driver certification program. Letting hardware vendors release binary drivers without releasing the corresponding sources. An opt-out automatic update mechanism.
(Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on the Android team.)
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#106When I was younger there IBM, Apple, Be, and Microsoft were all working on these amazing new operating systems. Now the #1, #3, #4 most popular operating systems are all some variation on Unix. What happened? Why did no one except Microsoft come up with a new operating system worthy of mass adoption?
There's a very long list of inferior technologies that beat superior ones in popularity, or age. QWERTY keyboards, Electronic forms, Combustion engines, Agribusiness refinements, Byte-oriented computers, Genetic technology (outside of GM crops), Building construction/insulation, Monorail and near-sonic trains, Pharmaceuticals, PlayStation, 8086, TDMA, USB, PHP, VHS... The most common link between them is a low barrie…
I realize that this has nothing to do with your larger point, but what technology do you consider to be superior to the original playstation? My understanding is that the PS1 was a significant technological leap.
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#107Android: the experiment gone horribly right.
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#108I had recently been looking for a laptop to replace my wife's aging machine. She wanted something to hit all her social media stuff, save pictures and videos, basic office, and watch her tv and movie streams. I had a barely-used lenovo that I had put xubuntu on that I wanted her to try first to gauge her size and performance requirements, but she wasn't ready for linux. I searched around a bit (knowing putting window…
That seems like the direction Google is going with Chromebooks. Presumably newer models support running Android apps as well. There's an open source version of ChromeOS that you can install on normal PCs, but I'm not sure if this version comes with Android support.
Every Chromebook launched from 2017 onwards will support Android apps according to Google.
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#109Does that mean google can't bundle a web browser with the operating system now?
Google now has: The dominant operating system, the dominant web browser, the dominant search engine, and the dominant email service. They bundle all of these together and make them relatively independent, and there still isn't an antitrust suit in the US.
This is where all the money Google pours into government comes into play.
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me ask a (potentially) very stupid question here: What prevents doing the same on phones? What would make a phone hardware able to install anything that compiles to its CPU architecture the same way a PC can?
The short answer is that phone hardware is all over the place .. x86/64 has actually made generic kernels (including Windows) possible by having a slew of very similar machines. You can't expect the same thing from ARM systems yet - each system has to be specially targeted.
and you also have other things such as other pieces of hardware the the os needs to talk to. this might not be part of what "android is", in it's barebones, so you can't just hope to build an updated version of the os and that's it. a lot of vendors customise their android builds, which means that they need to be the ones pushing updates. i'm not siding with google, but that's the way it is. could they have done a better job in assuring continued security updates? yes, but they were far too focused on trying to spread android everywhere they could.