Hmm what's more important is that mobile has overtaken the desktop. If you add Android and iOS you get 51.09%.
If your site doesn't work well on mobiles, it's high time you fixed it.
Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
181–190 of 417 posts
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hopefully you noticed that this PS/2 model did not have Microchannel.
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#183Earlier 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…
>Instead, if you tried to wave it, handset makers would have walked and just done something else. Heck, some did!
Yes some have and some more would have. And then it would have been up to these holdouts to come up with a viable OS. Good luck with that. Almost everybody who tried has failed.
There is no doubt in my mind that Google could force it successfully, but why would they? Everything is moving in their direction anyway and users don't seem fazed.
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#184Earlier 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.)
Windows runs on many CPU architectures. Android phones are packed with binary blobs.
Windows is one giant binary blob. Also, Android runs on many CPU architectures as well.
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#185I 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 min…
I don't really understand this metric at all. I've heard it colloquially, but I highly doubt anyone was scanning IP address ranges so often that you could be passively attacked on the internet without any interaction by two minutes in. Even more so, people are often behind NAT, which acts as a good firewall on its own.
Maybe it's related to browsing habits? IE? I mean, you aren't going to get hit by a drive-by attack on any major websites -- even in the heyday of malicious advertisements.
So, what I'm really asking is: where did this metric come from, and why does it get spread so often?
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hopefully you noticed that this PS/2 model did not have Microchannel.
So what?
It was a PS/2 model, even if without MCA and the only way to legally get OS/2 2.0, where I was living.
Getting a PC compatible and a OS/2 2.0 box just to try out if something works wasn't an option.
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#187Earlier 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…
«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.»
Interesting.
The OP's statement was for "upgrades" not security fixes; I read it as 2 years upgrades and 1 for security fixes beyond feature upgrades. The choice of "some" was ambiguous, but "upgrades" is much less ambiguous to me than you seem to consider and not something I'd directly confuse with "security fixes" alone and something that the (+ 1) seemed to directly add "security feature" context to me, despite the ambiguous wording.
Though that still raises the question of if Google properly subsets general (feature) upgrades and security fixes across that 2 + 1 time period. The ambiguous word choice of "some" could be an editorial indication that the OP considers that Google is likely to release some fixes in more general upgrades that don't fall into that (+ 1) time period. As a non-Android user/follower, I have no knowledge in that area and no opinion to offer of my own if that may in fact be the case. I'm also not the OP so I can't express whether or not that was an editorial opinion.
Even if it was an editorial opinion that was expressed, I'm still not convinced it was "disingenuous on purpose", as it may very well be a sincere/candid opinion of the OP. I can only leave that for the OP to comment on.
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sad part is that these are issues with Android that Linux already solved. Google uses Linux within Android but instead of allowing the underlying parts to be updated via package management-like functionality, the kernel level stuff is only distributable as images in one "big bang" go. You could have a bug in a single binary at the kernel level, but instead of a tiny 1Kb diff patch you wait a year for a giant 1.2…
>You could have a bug in a single binary at the kernel level, but instead of a tiny 1Kb diff patch you wait a year for a giant 1.2 GB vendor update that also contains a lot of other changes you have no interest in. Security patches are not 1+ GB in size - no where close to it. You're referring to OS updates that completely replace the old OS.
So there are security patches in Android? So the problem seems to be: some vendors seem not interested in distributing them... :/
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
AOSP may be open, but on its own it is a skeleton of a OS. Most of the magic in Android today is housed in Play Services, one of two things Google can push an update for (the other being the Play store app) without any dialog or concent from the device user.
I'd say the majority of end users are not particularly knowledgeable about Google Play Services and the Store app to make an informed decision on whether to accept or not an update.
I think I agree... and that is a huge problem! The same can be said about Windows Update. Or any computing topic in particular! Which is an even bigger problem.
Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine the bits that to talk to Google's servers need to be.
I imagine that's a purely business decision since Google owns the code and can open-source it if they wish. There's no reason that the code to talk to Google's servers needs to be closed source.
One reason is API change. For closed source solution they do not have to worry about API changes but open Android has to have much more elaborate API deprecation and change process.