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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

#221

Post by floatboth »

CountSessine wrote: post #178
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.

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 vend…

On the Nexus 5X/6P and some other new phones, there's a separate /vendor partition for proprietary blobs that can be updated separately from your Android distro (which is at /system). Granted, the Nexus is Google-related and I'm not sure if that's the case on other devices…

By the way, the upstream Linux kernel supports the Nexus 5X! http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.9...

And the bootloaders are based on fastboot pretty much everywhere I think? At least that was the case with the non-Google-related HTC phone I've had.

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

#222

Post by ZephyrP »

hermitdev wrote: post #191
fridsun wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I admittedly have zero experience with configuring HW with ARM. However, to say that HW interfaces on the PC have been stable since the age of IBM PC clones is a joke. In the DOS days, users manually had to manually set IO memory addresses and IRQ levels. Early Windows sat on top of DOS, so still had to do it there. Plug'n'Play didn't show up until Windows 95, and even then it was hit and miss. Some devices worked, o…

You still need all of these things. An x64 Intel Processor manufactured in 2017 still boots into real mode at startup exactly like the original did 30 years ago. Complete with segmented mode without memory protection, multitasking, or code privilege levels, just as AT/AT compatible as the day it was born.

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

#223

Post by digi_owl »

dublinben wrote: post #81
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%.

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.

Yes and no. Google could rework Android such that it would be easier for companies to apply their own UX without doing deep code changes.

Also, they could isolate the Java VM layer further such that it could be updated independently of the Linux kernel and related userland.

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

#224

Post by babuskov »

Shank wrote: post #185
narrator wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> people are often behind NAT

Today, yes. But back in those days? I'm not so sure. IIRC, almost everyone had a public IP.

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

#225

Post by bighi »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #115
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.)

So it's Linux fault and Fuchsia is the solution, right? :)

What is this "fuck sea" you're talking about and how do I sail in it?

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

#226

Post by kbrannigan »

peterwwillis wrote: post #76
georgeecollins wrote: post #18

When 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'm curious? Why are electronic forms inferior. I mean what's the alternative? I've never considered that before.

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

#227

Post by temac »

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.

It is half-responsible, but MS did the necessary thing to achieve their capability to independently update the OS (and deliver it as binaries, instead of letting phone vendors built it from source, which MS do not want to distribute to anybody): they specified a common plateforme for ARM phones, that is, IIRC, basically ARM + ACPI.

Then they mandated secure boot with keys that cannot be controlled by the user, so that other systems can not leverage the platform on W10M hw :p . (That's in the spirit of what BG wanted for ACPI: something somehow incompatible with other OSes -- MS eventually managed to do this with a sidestep, but well, this did not really help their market share :P )

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

#228

Post by digi_owl »

enzanki_ars wrote: post #89
dublinben wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I dunno. Enthusiasts may track the versions coming out of Google HQ. But for most updating is a hassle rather than something they look forward to. This because it means downtime for their device, and if the update fails it may leave them with a bricked device (chance is small, but it is still in the back of their mind).

For most people a computer, a phone, or a tablet is an appliance.

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

#229

Post by floatboth »

cmurf wrote: post #127
_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 gist is that Google wanted to grow Android into something other than a niche player, and made a deal with the devils: hardware vendors. In effect, hardware vendors said they wanted to take a dump on their customers just like they always have, with bloatware baked in and planned obsolescence and Google said OK. And they don't control the hardware. On the manufacturing side, a huge team is assembled with piles of m…

> the code to support, e.g. the NFC

On Google devices starting with the Nexus 5X/6P, there's a separate /vendor partition for blobs, and Google publishes monthly updates for that. I'm not sure if other vendors do this…

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

#230

Post by cat199 »

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.

Not sure about ARM/Windows vs ARM/Android, but I do know that unlike the PC, Android ARM phones at least do not have things like a standardized BIOS, standardized peripheral bus enumeration, low-level firmware to hardware interface etc, or at least not to the same level..

This is why things like SBSA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Base_System_Architectur...) were needed before ARM servers could even be talked about, and why things like Rasberry PI's are not directly compatible with BeagleBones, etc, at least for the low-level stuff..

Nothing to do with ARM itself; just lack of ARM standards.

This was similar in the early PC days and had similar headaches - compare the various CP/M machines with what became the 'standard' MS-DOS/IBM-PC 'platform'..

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