Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system • Hacker News Board

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#161

Post by ocdtrekkie » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #158

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As I recall, Google tried a laxer approach early in Android's history, and the quality results were pretty disastrous. Why do we fault the company for taking steps to pull Android as a brand together?

I actually really loved the choice and freedom we used to have and Android, and thought it was a valuable trade off for platform unity. Now we have a very homogenous platform that is still horribly insecure... The worst of both worlds.

Google uses their agreements with OEMs to force them to bundle apps and including Google's branding, and protect their business, but refuses to use those agreements to ensure even basic security for their users.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#162

Post by fixermark » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 6:51 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #109

rb808 wrote: post #20

Does 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.

Interesting. Why do you assume it's money as opposed to, say, federal prosecutors having over a decade and a half of hindsight to conclude that the Microsoft antitrust suit was a giant fiasco that cost a great deal of money and time and, ultimately, never had the desired effect?

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#163

Post by asveikau » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 6:53 PM UTC

hermitdev wrote: post #145

cbhl wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Hardware monoculture? Surely you must be joking. There are only a few to several dozen current Android phone models being sold at a given time. There are thousands upon thousands of PC models being sold among major manufacturers. This doesnt even begin to account for home builds or customizations. There is a very slim chamce that anyone has the exact same hardware config as my PC, yet Windows still has to work on it.…

My understanding is the interface between hardware and kernel is more vendor-specific on ARM than it is on the PC. So the PC has lots of hardware diversity but the way you talk to a given device is already somewhat abstracted from the perspective of the kernel.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#164

Post by rsync » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 6:54 PM UTC

alnitak wrote: post #85

JoshTriplett wrote: post #44

Earlier 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?

"What would make a phone hardware able to install anything that compiles to its CPU architecture the same way a PC can?"

The reason your question is "stupid" is because you think your phone is just one computer.

In fact, you can do just what you describe - and it wouldn't be that difficult - but it would only be for the application processor and you would end up with a nice PDA.

In order to make phone calls you would also need to control the other two, fully functional, general purpose computers inside of your phone: the baseband processor and the SIM card.

Currently, there is no way for you to control either of those in any meaningful way.[1]

There are deeply entrenched economic and technical forces standing in the way of controlling your own baseband processor and we are nowhere near to doing it.

[1] Osmocom on 2G phones is not meaningful, no matter how impressive and interesting it is.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#165

Post by Certhas » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 6:55 PM UTC

DannyBee wrote: post #137

_wmd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that our problem or Google's? You can point fingers at 50 different companies in the ecosystem, or you can collectively point the finger at the root cause. By the topic of this article, they're no longer the underdog when it comes to dictating terms to device vendors, they're the biggest shop in town and there's no reason the vulns-frozen-for-life-of-device model should continue to be adhered to.

This represents such a fundamental misunderstanding of the power structures i almost don't know where to begin. Suffice to say, if it was as easy as waving the magic wand you think it is, it would have happened already. Instead, if you tried to wave it, handset makers would have walked and just done something else. Heck, some did! Besides, why stop at Google? Why not blame the carriers for devices like this be on the…

Or it is within Googles power, but not within Googles interest to do so, so we in turn have power by getting outraged at Google, shouting from the rooftops and creating an incentive for them to apply more pressure to handset makers.

Walking away from Android is not currently a realistic option for most of them (recent Sony Sailfish news non-withstanding).

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#166

Post by Oletros » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 6:55 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #86

loudmax wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Microsoft put OS/2 and BeOS out of business, and nearly did the same for Apple. While this was happening, FreeBSD and Linux emerged as excellent Unix variants, so when Apple and Google went to look for their own OSs to deploy, they leveraged what was already available. If you're looking for alternatives, there is stuff being developed. Google's Fuscia is intriguing, and there are other non-Unix kernels from oth…

> Microsoft put OS/2 Actually regarding OS/2, IBM had lots of blame as well. They didn't managed the whole situation properly and trying to use OS/2 to get back into the game of selling their own PS2 architecture didn't help win the hearts of the buyers. I would have had to pay almost 500 € extra, on today's money to get a PC capable of running OS/2 properly, instead of the one I got with Windows 3.1.

OS/2 2.x and OS/2 Warp worked perfectly in clonic PC's

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#167

Post by bitmapbrother » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 6:58 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #143

bitmapbrother wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does not control whether OEM's are allowed to sell Android phones. Does Google control the sale of all of those Chinese branded phones that don't ship with Google Play Services? Or how about the Blackphone or the Copperhead phone? The MADA simply states what is required if your phone wants to ship with Google Play Services and Apps. >Google would like you to blame the manufacturer, but you need to realize the…

1. Note my use of the word "effectively". Unless you're in China, where Google does not operate, there is no such thing as Android without Google Play Services. (Attempts to sell Android devices without Google Play outside of China have, for the most part[1], been dismal failures.) And Google has to give their written approval for the release of each and every device or software update of Android with Google Play Ser…

> Google created the OS. In fact, OEMs are forbidden from forking Android, and therefore, cannot "roll their own OS" from Android, without violating their agreement with Google. Yes, they sprinkle some of their own apps and drivers in, but this is a design flaw in Android: Google needs to be updating their own software independently of manufacturer-specific components.

Forbidden from forking Android? Every OEM version of Android is a fork. What Google does not allow is for an OEM to distribute a version of Android that does not pass the Android Compatibility Test Suite.

>therefore, cannot "roll their own OS" from Android

Do you know how OEM's "roll their own OS"? They take the AOSP source code that Google drops and then they add all of their source code and then build and distribute their own version of Android that only they can update.

>Yes, they sprinkle some of their own apps and drivers

I'm not sure you really understand all of the changes OEM's make to Android if all you think they do is "sprinkle some of their own apps and drivers in"

>this is a design flaw in Android: Google needs to be updating their own software independently of manufacturer-specific components.

No it's not. Google does not build Android for the OEM's. They create their own version of Android and therefore are ultimately responsible for updating it. Once again, Google cannot update an OS they did not build.

>Google barely even does tablets anymore anyways.

Android is still the marketshare leader in tablets.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#168

Post by fixermark » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 6:59 PM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #139

enzanki_ars wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of is Google's fault. Most people associate any version of Android with Google. Manufactures that don't update their phones causes harm to both the manufacture's image and Google image. Personally, I place all the blame on Google for not making the upgrades possible from their side. It should be easy to upgrade the core operating system as easy as updating Windows, OSX, and Linux.

> It kind of is Google's fault. Most people associate any version of Android with Google. Manufactures that don't update their phones causes harm to both the manufacture's image and Google image. This makes no sense. "People associate X with Y" is not the same as "Y is responsible for X". If I associate Android with Linux, is Linus now culpable for Android's security problems? > Personally, I place all the blame on G…

In an open marketplace, "People associate X with Y" is very much the same as "Y is responsible for X." This explains a lot of the legacy code in pre-Windows Vista Windows; if new versions of the OS broke someone's favorite app, they blame Windows, even if the reason the app broke is it didn't adhere to (or even actively tried to circumvent) published API (Adobe was notorious for trying to squeeze a few extra cycles of performance out of Photoshop, for example, by hand-rolling their own C++ data structure instances by building a binary-compatible pattern in memory instead of calling the documented constructor in the WinAPI).

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#169

Post by peterwwillis » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 7:01 PM UTC

hrydgard wrote: post #144

peterwwillis wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3DO, Jaguar, PC-FX, Saturn, N64 were all superior technologies, and PlayStation absolutely trounced them in popularity for 10 years. Initially both the Genesis and SNES outsold all the 5th gen platforms, but eventually their perceived better quality and an increased availability of platform titles took hold.

N64 arguably yes, Saturn .. depends, but a bit of a mess. Jaguar and 3DO? No way, PSX was overwhelmingly better hardware than either of those. No idea about PC-FX though.

You're probably right there, they were released a year before PSX. PC-FX had no polygon processor and relied on prerendering, and had the same color support as PSX, and an older CPU. It was never released outside of Japan, though...

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#170

Post by narrator » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 7:03 PM UTC

technofiend wrote: post #95

pjmlp wrote: post #69

Earlier 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%.

And that even google-sourced devices have a very short lifecycle for OS and security updates. Google seem to be running under the assumption any phone over 12 months old is reaching the end of its usable life.

Google has a engineering philosophy of constantly deprecating old stuff. They largely ignore backward compatibility and stop supporting stuff all the time. Their SOAP API for AdWords would break if it wasn't updated every 3 months and this is an API for paying Google money! They are trying to do this in the consumer space, but I don't think this is going to work for things like Nest where people don't want to have to upgrade their thermostat to the new model every year.