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

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

#171

Post by pjmlp »

yuhong wrote: post #159
pjmlp wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

OS/2 never required a PS/2.

Well it required on the tiny city I was living in the early 90's, where getting OS/2 2.0 meant buying an actual IBM PC instead of a PC compatible.

OS/2 was offered as option instead of IBM PC DOS + Windows.

Actually you just made me search for the model I had as option, the IBM PS/2 Model 35 SLC.

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

#172

Post by pjmlp »

Oletros wrote: post #166
pjmlp wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

OS/2 Warp did work on standard PCs.

However, OS/2 2.0 was only available to those with enough deep pockets to buy a IBM PS/2 Model 35 SLC, back on the city I was living.

There weren't any shops selling OS/2 2.0 boxes without an IBM PC to come along.

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

#173

Post by fridsun »

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.…

If you break those PC models open what's really different? The hardware interfaces of PC has almost always been stable since the age of IBM PC clones. It might not be a monoculture in terms of all the RGB lightings you can put on your machine, but you definitely don't need to worry about different protocols. All the while Android phones can have the weirdest SoC's on the planet in them.

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

#174

Post by pjmlp »

cobookman wrote: post #135
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%.

Google has broken out GMS from android core so that they can do OTA updates w/o updating the OS itself. I do agree this needs to be better, however its also a non-trivial problem to solve.

How is signing a contract, with the respective legal consequences for breach of contract, a non-trivial problem to solve?

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

#175

Post by [deleted] »

Const-me wrote: post #140
drvdevd wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are Windows versions that work on ARM: phone/mobile, and Win10 IoT. They update just fine, sometimes even on the major versions. E.g. my phone initially had windows phone 8.1 and now it’s windows mobile 10. And despite the phone is 3 years old, I'm still regularly getting OS updates. That’s why I don’t believe ARM hardware is responsible.

[deleted]

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

#176

Post by pjmlp »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #157
WorldMaker wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't 36 months 2 + 1 years? Also, the point is still valid that 36 months (or 3 years) is still rather short security lifetime for a device. At some point (presumably soon now that carriers are dropping most device subsidies) the 2 year replacement scheme of mobile devices stops being sustainable and you do start to have to deal with the long tail of people sticking to 5-15 year old hardware devices. Google seems to…

>Isn't 36 months 2 + 1 years? He stated "+1 for some fixes" which is incorrect as it implies that you may not get all of the security fixes for that additional year and only "some" of them. >Also, the point is still valid that 36 months (or 3 years) is still rather short security lifetime for a device. At some point (presumably soon now that carriers are dropping most device subsidies) the 2 year replacement scheme o…

I stand by my remark, as I don't have a way to confirm what security updates Google bothers to release at all to "outdated" devices.

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

#177

Post by pjmlp »

Oletros wrote: post #160
pjmlp wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There wouldn't be any problem with Oracle if they didn't try to scam Sun. There are lots of companies selling JVMs, many of them with extensions, and none of them got sued. Why? Because they play by the rules, instead of trying to be different. And at least on those platforms I can make use of proper Java 7 and 8 features, not the cherry picked ones on Android.

Apache Foundation tried to scam Sun?

Nice game of words.

Google was pretty much aware that GPL with Classpath exception was only for Java SE, not targeted at embedded deployments, but paying the license required for embedded deployments was too expensive apparently.

According to Gosling, Sun would have sued Google if they still had any money left on the bank, instead Jonathan decided to make the public support announcement, angering quite a few folks internally.

His blog posts are no longer live, but old references are quite easy to find.

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

#178

Post by CountSessine »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #44
_wmd wrote: post #25

I guess this means we can officially stop hating on Microsoft for having such a lax attitude towards security, considering their last OS to suffer from that attitude was released 16 years ago, and it accounts for less than 3% of present day traffic according to statcounter.com Meanwhile according to the same stats, Android sits around 37.9%, and I have to wonder just how many of those devices are still impacted by fo…

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.

Which is mostly a problem that Google themselves architected into Android. By not building a sensible HAL in to android like requiring ACPI in the hardware for the first android phones (especially the moto droid which they worked on closely with Motorola), they condemned us all to vendors-specific kernels and bootloaders.

Google's inept 'management' of the android ecosystem has left us with openness for hardware vendors like Samsung but not end users. Their design of android deprives end users of regular security updates that iOS users enjoy but also deprives them of the right-to-modify that licenses like the GPL were intended to guarantee.

I don't know what everyone at Google intended, beyond 'let's beat Apple', but the way android turned out looks awfully evil to me.

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

#179

Post by narrator »

_wmd wrote: post #25

I guess this means we can officially stop hating on Microsoft for having such a lax attitude towards security, considering their last OS to suffer from that attitude was released 16 years ago, and it accounts for less than 3% of present day traffic according to statcounter.com Meanwhile according to the same stats, Android sits around 37.9%, and I have to wonder just how many of those devices are still impacted by fo…

Just to play devil's advocate: Windows became the dominant platform when it had terrible security. Android became the dominant platform when it had terrible security. Maybe people don't care that much about security vs other features. At it's low point, Windows security was a lot worse than Android security. At one point, a fresh Windows XP machine plugged into the Internet would be compromised within a couple of minutes max.

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

#180

Post by nthcolumn »

I'd just like to point out that Microsoft win either way: Says Forbes: Financially Microsoft is one of the biggest winners from the growth of Android as a platform, thanks to its wide range of patents. Samsung's royalty payment to Microsoft in 2013 was for over one billion dollars ($1,041,642,161 and fifty cents), roughly $3.41 per device.
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