441–450 of 474 posts
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The official Kernel.org LTS support is 6 years from the Linux devs, some vendors support theirs for longer.
The Kernel.org LTS support was 2 years until a few weeks ago. Due to Google’s pressure, it’s now 6 years.
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That's a rather narrow mindset. As previously explained, security is not binary, even in the circumstances you mentioned. I don't know all the players in the. Surveillance industry but I'm not as paranoid to believe they are worse the. Black hats. You probably also have little probability of knowing the actual intentions or motives, which actually helps little in threat mitigations.
It's not a "narrow mindset", but a formal basis that fosters analysis. It's true that drive by black hats could be looking to snarf up all the personal information they can, and selling it into the corporate surveillance databases. I just think it's less likely than they're looking for a quick hit to defraud some banks. It's not a matter of "paranoia" (there we go again with the handwavey maligning subjectivity!), bu…
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This is a function of market share and customer loyalty, and thus Apples ability to tell carriers to f-off. iPhones will sell regardless whether the given carrier does sell them or not. On the other hand, iOS updates do cause problems and then it's the carriers, who scramble to modify their networks to make iPhones work (remember when Brits didn't have mobile data for a few days after an update?). They would not do i…
Apple rested control from AT&T and the few mobile carriers around the world that were selling the iPhone during the first year with less than 10 million devices sold. There was no reason that Google couldn't do the same. You even had to wait for Nexus updates back in the day that were sold by Verizon.
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Your PC, including your Mac Mini, has BIOS/UEFI/other firmware with both boot-time and run-time services. Additionally, it has a hardware, whose sole purpose is to detect and enumerate all the other hardware. Mobile phones and other embedded devices have none of this.
There was nothing stopping Google from designing such as system -- just like Microsoft and Intel did.
First, Google didn't design anything. They were looking for partners for their OS and these partners used their existing design. The first HTCs were almost identical between their Android and Windows Mobile versions.
Second, there are reasons why the embedded systems do not have them. Apart from increased complexity (bad for the designer and manufacturer), increased energy consumption (bad for consumer, and being a competitive disadvantage too), very few of both, embedded devices manufacturers and customers, even count on using other software than the one supplied. From the point of view, there every cent of saved costs on the device makes millions in margin, that would be wasted money.
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As someone who goes as long as possible without performing updates, this is exactly the reason why. Example: Last time I updated my iPhone, the music app got an update and now they are trying to shove iCloud down my throat. Not to mention needless UI changes when I was more than satisfied with how it was before.
If only security updates were unbundled from feature updates one could update with fewer worries.
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Samsung deserves a special shout-out for making their impossible-to-remove apps also impossible to move to remote storage, so their useless garbage takes up a solid amount of device storage even while disabled. It's frustrating how often smartphone customization/upgrading feels like an actively hostile process.
I recently switched from iOS to a Galaxy Note 8, and the sheer amount of garbage on the phone at setup is astounding.
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There was nothing stopping Google from designing such as system -- just like Microsoft and Intel did.
There are many reasons. First, Google didn't design anything. They were looking for partners for their OS and these partners used their existing design. The first HTCs were almost identical between their Android and Windows Mobile versions. Second, there are reasons why the embedded systems do not have them. Apart from increased complexity (bad for the designer and manufacturer), increased energy consumption (bad for…
I've got a 7 or 8 year old Google Nexus phone. Google stopped updating the OS 5 years ago. The only impact I've noticed is that newer apps won't run on and older OS. For me, however, that really isn't a problem since I use it for making and receiving calls and texts, and checking my email. Right now, I'm in no hurry to lay out hundreds for a new phone, Apple or Android, that will be obsoleted in just a couple years w…
I've got a Samsung S4 laying around that I hadn't used for years (it's 4 1/2 years old). Recently I fired it up just to check some things. As expected, it still runs beautifully for normal Web use across all sites. Other than the small form factor (which some people may prefer), it's easy to see how consumers might stick to older phones.