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Introducing Android 9 Pie

android-developers.googleblog.com

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Re: Introducing Android 9 Pie

#281

Post by pjmlp »

kllrnohj wrote: post #211
pjmlp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently you haven't been paying attention, declaring off limits APIs started with Android Nougat for NDK developers. Because Linux APIs were never really intended to be called by NDK developers, only the POSIX subset and Android public native APIs. Likewise with Java, which is only a subset of proper Java. In any case, it might relate more to an eventual future support of Java 9 module system, where private really…

> Because Linux APIs were never really intended to be called by NDK developers, only the POSIX subset and Android public native APIs. That's not even slightly true? Android doesn't pretend to be anything but a Linux system, with all the Linux details shining through in all their glory. There is a seccomp policy that blacklists some syscalls, but it's only 17 out of 271 for ARM64 and it's things like setuid or reboot…

You can try to do it, but good luck guaranteeing that your APK doesn't crash and burn across Android OEMs and people want to still give you money.

These are the only APIs devs are officially allowed to touch.

https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis

Anything else is "works on my phone" kind of thing.

Re: Introducing Android 9 Pie

#282

Post by pjmlp »

Klathmon wrote: post #221
pjmlp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why most OEMs went with Nougat instead of Oreo for their brand new 2017/2018 devices. I really like it went this bad as always, because apparently as disclosed at Google IO 2018 they are finally considering making updates a requirement on the license agreements.

Well considering they just got slapped by the EU for doing stuff like that, I can see that license agreement getting weaker not stronger.

They got slapped for abusing their monopoly to force OEMs to integrate Google Play Services, which is a bit different than ensuring my phone doesn't look like a Swiss cheese in security.

Re: Introducing Android 9 Pie

#283

Post by radicalriddler »

givehimagun wrote: post #279
radicalriddler wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct. If you force check for an update, then it lets you update to Android Pie. I assume that the gradual rollout will send notifications to phones that it's available.

Force check on my Pixel 2 did not work =(

Ah well. That proves me the hell wrong then. Bad luck, try again tomorrow XD. FeelsBadMan.

Re: Introducing Android 9 Pie

#284

Post by pjmlp »

swebs wrote: post #234
anonytrary wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the top comment I came here for. I really hope there is a way to turn off all the "machine learning stuff" because I would rather not sacrifice any of my personal data so that Google can better predict how to "optimize my phone experience". My human brain learns the random quirks of an OS in a matter of days, I don't need the OS brain trying to learn how I use it, as it would be confusing for both of us. I ju…

> I discovered that www.google.com was also accessing my Chrome browser's location, and I can not recall when I said "yes" to any such location prompt This is the worst when traveling through Europe. Cross a border and suddenly all Google services are in a language you don't speak.

I really hate that and I do speak quite a few.

It is not only the UI language that changes, the search results do as well.

Suddenly something that was easy to find becomes a mess of local results with similar names or machine translated, even though I used the original language name.

Re: Introducing Android 9 Pie

#285

Post by lovelearning »

vagab0nd wrote: post #257
unethical_ban wrote: post #6

* It looks like they've taken away the "apps" homerow button and swapped it for "swipe up from anywhere". So that is one less gesture available to apps, unless you install an alternative desktop. * Wi-Fi RTT sounds pretty neat, I had not heard of that before. * Shutting mic, camera and sensor data off for idle/background apps is neat, though I'm shocked that wasn't an option before.

> Shutting mic, camera and sensor data off for idle/background apps is neat, though I'm shocked that wasn't an option before. What do I do now if I want a skype or wechat voice call in the background while using the phone normally?

That is still possible. The authors of those apps have to modify their designs to use foreground services - essentially, services that don't require a full UI but have to show their status in notification bar.

Most popular apps already use foreground services for use cases like yours. This restriction is to prevent dodgy spying apps that recorded without user knowing about it.

Re: Introducing Android 9 Pie

#286

Post by halflings »

0x00000000 wrote: post #254
halflings wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, one thing: the people working on these projects are not dumb. They are not going to launch a feature that simply does not work. These teams run experiments and confirm that the feature actually does what it's supposed to do (e.g improve battery life) before launching them in production. It sounds like this feature is exactly made for cases like the one you describe: if you don't use Snapchat throughout the day…

Yet I get ads for something I bought weeks ago, I get ads saying "sign up for Facebook" even though I'm logged in on the very same phone, and Facebook's "advertising profile" is completely backwards for my political views. When I accidentally click a certain type of YouTube video my recommend fills up with that type of video even if I watched it for 5 seconds. Same with Amazon recommended. In my experience, "personal…

Personalized recommendations make or break certain businesses like media and e-commerce. Not unusual to see an increase in revenue between 10% and 30% after adding recommendations. They're not "universally trash", since the alternative is showing you truly random items, or whatever item is the most popular.

Check YouTube's "trending" tab and come back here to say if you'd rather have that instead of the personalized recommendations.

Re: Introducing Android 9 Pie

#287

Post by pjmlp »

hueving wrote: post #265
wpietri wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a good general assumption. But in the case of Android, I think of it (and Chrome) more as a defensive move. Google's business depends on having access to users. A free browser and a free mobile OS are a loss leader so that nobody can cut off their major revenue streams. Not that we shouldn't keep an eye on them, of course. The great bulk of their revenue comes from advertising, which is all about selli…

Google location services makes the picture much worse though, which the majority of Android users (in the US at least) have enabled.

Yes, it feels really spooky getting notifications to review the supermarket, coffee shop or anything else close to our surroundings.

The spookiness is even greater for those of us that know what it means to live under repressive regimes.

Re: Introducing Android 9 Pie

#288

Post by nunez »

jmgao wrote: post #162
mmastrac wrote: post #4

One of the quieter features of Android 9 is that they are reducing the API surface of Android by explicitly black-listing and white-listing various APIs and fields that previously required reflection to access. None of these APIs were documented, but none of them were explicitly "off limits" before Android P. That suggests that the life of Java as Android's primary language might be really coming to an end, even thou…

That's a bizarre conclusion to come to. The real motivation is that if you know apps are reflecting into your internal implementation details, and you want to make a change, you're stuck with a bunch of bad choices. 1. Break the apps. Users tend to get annoyed when they upgrade the OS and their apps stop working. 2. Maintain a compatibility shim. Depending on what the change you're making does, this might not even be…

Dumb question: isn’t this what the Google Play submission process is for?

Re: Introducing Android 9 Pie

#289

Post by pjmlp »

ptx wrote: post #144
wyldfire wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are awesome. Android is slowly catching up with iOS in this regard.

They are both slowly catching up to Java ME[1] where all of this worked perfectly well, except for the silly decision to disable the "always allow" option for non-trusted apps. If they had just let the users (rather than Verisign) decide for themselves which apps they trusted, so that every app wouldn't have to pop up i confirmation dialog every time it wanted a network connection, I would be much happier with what w…

And Symbian. :)

Re: Introducing Android 9 Pie

#290

Post by pjmlp »

nunez wrote: post #288
jmgao wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bizarre conclusion to come to. The real motivation is that if you know apps are reflecting into your internal implementation details, and you want to make a change, you're stuck with a bunch of bad choices. 1. Break the apps. Users tend to get annoyed when they upgrade the OS and their apps stop working. 2. Maintain a compatibility shim. Depending on what the change you're making does, this might not even be…

Dumb question: isn’t this what the Google Play submission process is for?

Yes, the problem is that many use private APIs to get around bugs that never get fixed, or even if they do, never reach customer devices.

Google is promising that now things will be different, take it with the usual skepticism.

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