Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by vetinari » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 8:56 AM UTC

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…

Google was just realistic at the time. ARM boards do not have platform services at firmware level, nor plug and play buses like PCI. If Google required that in 2008, Android would have market share similar to Sailfish or FirefoxOS.

Have look at Redhat, how far got them requiring UEFI at server ARM boards. That's market, where the buyers have much more impact on the design than mobile.

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

#382

Post by eeZah7Ux » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 9:01 AM UTC

bighi wrote: post #242

ezoe wrote: post #220

When I was a kid, I was frustrated for most of the adults can't use the computer so our society is very inefficient at daily life. I was thinking, since our generation has affordable personal computers, when our generation become adults, the world will finally embrace the efficiency of computer where everything is computer-friendly and everyone can write code. I was wrong. The birth of so called "smartphone" made eve…

> I refuse to own a smartphone. That is your loss. You're blaming the tool instead of the people. And then you renounce said tool, when it could be used (as the tool it is) to improve your life and your work. To create greater things. Before the smartphones, people were made dumb by the TV. And before that, by the radio, and before that it was something else, and something else. People that want to passively waste th…

A better comparison would be with a TV that doubles as your main communication tool and work instrument while it serves you addictive contents, ads, and spies on you.

Rings any bell?

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

#383

Post by najati83 » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 9:16 AM UTC

yokohummer7 wrote: post #350

najati83 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in this thread don't remember the NET SEND spam from Windows Messenger. (Which was a system service and had absolutely nothing to do with MSN Messenger) You could basically do "NET SEND 12.34.56.78 my spam message" and it would appear on the screen of your victim. http://blogopod.com/image/2008/net-send-spam-big.gif

Actually I liked that feature. We used to chat with each other using it when I was in school. It was definitely a right choice for Microsoft to disable the Messenger service, but I was a bit sad when it actually happened.

You can still do that using msg.exe

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

#384

Post by belorn » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 9:20 AM UTC

_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…

If we are comparing 2017 android with 2001 Windows we also need to compare the exploits. During times of 2001 windows we saw things like worms that permanent destroyed hardware (or forced owners to replace them), worms that shutdown whole city networks, computers that got infected in less than a second when connecting to the Internet, and botnets that were bigger than the biggest super computers of the time. The harm were big and scary on a global scale, and specific malware were often calculated to cause billions in damages. On the "lower" end there were bank account hijackings and credit card theft.

What are the worst 2017 android malware doing to the world?

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

#385

Post by krylon » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 9:39 AM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #206

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…

Seems to me that Android had better security from the outset than (consumer) Windows had. It was not until XP that most home computers even had a notion of multiple users in any real sense, thanks to the NT core. And i don't think the problem is so much that people do not value security, but that they approach a computer like it is an appliance. Meaning that they do not internalize that it can do things without them…

> the damn thing do not even have a HDD activity light

My work laptop and one or two of my private machines have no HDD light, either. It drives me crazy.

For Windows, there is a tool called HD Activity Indicator. It only works after logging in, obviously, but still better than nothing.

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

#386

Post by Tomis02 » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 10:29 AM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #109

rb808 wrote: post #20

Does that mean google can't bundle a web browser with the operating system now?

Google now has: The dominant operating system, the dominant web browser, the dominant search engine, and the dominant email service. They bundle all of these together and make them relatively independent, and there still isn't an antitrust suit in the US. This is where all the money Google pours into government comes into play.

When Chrome was launched, all you could see when using Google were Chrome ads, and with good reason - success by word of mouth alone can only come if your product is significantly better than the alternatives, which Chrome definitely was not (probably still isn't).

I do find some satisfaction in this, though, because another browser comes to mind. Firefox won its brief market dominance not through intrinsic quality (although it had some potential, and was surely better than IE), but through marketing campaigns, just like Chrome. Now the once-mighty are falling, and they ask themselves what went wrong. Well, when your product's only selling point are extensions (mainly developer extensions) and instead of focusing on performance, features and security you keep spouting "safer faster better" [1], there will come a time when someone with more marketing money to throw around will take your place, because your foundation isn't solid. Also, "good enough" works for most people, so if the IT person in their family set up Chrome for them, that's what they'll be using (just like they were using Firefox a decade ago).

[1] There used to be a "Firefox myths" website, it's not up anymore. http://www.gilsmethod.com/whyfirefoxnotsaferfasterbetter

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

#387

Post by ue_ » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 11:02 AM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #250

floatboth wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, you're exaggerating. > tried so hard to prevent me to replace OS, modify the software, writing code and text It's pretty easy to install a new OS on a typical Android phone. 1 million registered LineageOS installations already, many many millions of CyanogenMod installations before that. How do smartphones try to prevent you from writing code and text? Apple even made this: https://www.apple.com/swift/playgr…

that is highly dependent on how close to "flagship" your brand and model of phone is. For every S7 (or S8 these days) there will be 100s and 100s of cheap ones sold that nobody over at XDA or similar with ever grace with an alternative firmware.

Like me, I have a "MyPhone" and there appear to be no ROMs for it, nor do automated rooting apps do the trick. There's so much crapware on my phone such that the home screen has been taken over by advertisments that I can't close.

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

#388

Post by dep_b » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 11:38 AM UTC

the_duke wrote: post #312

oefrha wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citing Google's blog post for Android security is not very convincing. If Android is so secure, why are we seeing (often more frequently than) weekly headlines on Android security woes, often containing something like "millions of devices affected" (and often enough, no fix in sight)? Also, quote from linked blog post: > only 0.05 percent of devices that downloaded apps exclusively from Play contained a PHA. 1. What…

Most Android issues arise due to either vendors which don't update the devices, or malicious vendors that actually pre-install malware (beware of phones ordered from aliexpress etc ...). Android is open source, after all. Not much Google can do there.

Why wouldn't a device receive updates when the manufacturer abandons it? Most laptops from 2008 long abandoned by their manufacturers still run Windows 10.

If Microsoft can pull it off Google can do it too. No excuses.

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

#389

Post by s_dev » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 12:50 PM UTC

ezoe wrote: post #220

When I was a kid, I was frustrated for most of the adults can't use the computer so our society is very inefficient at daily life. I was thinking, since our generation has affordable personal computers, when our generation become adults, the world will finally embrace the efficiency of computer where everything is computer-friendly and everyone can write code. I was wrong. The birth of so called "smartphone" made eve…

> The smartphone does not encourage its user to write code or text.

What about people who write iOS or Android Apps for those phones. The device itself isn't well suited to writing code.

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

#390

Post by ausjke » Tue, Apr 04, 2017, 12:53 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #376

ausjke wrote: post #355

what's the impact of this watershed for java as a programming language? it seems like the biggest boost for Java for years to come.

Depends how much one enjoys using an outdated dialect of the language and libraries, after Java 6, Android only gets support for Java 7 and 8 features cherry picked by the Android team, not 100% of them. One reason why they backtracked on Jake and Jill was that they weren't being able to make all the annotation tooling and bytecode manipulation libraries work on the new toolchain.

hope Android will support java8,java9 along the way and fully sync-up with the new languages.