Actually, this is a pattern that many products follow, as they evolve from a newly tinkered thing pioneered by enthusiasts to a mature consumer device.

There is much more "freedom" in 80's and 90's audio equipment. (And markedly higher build quality. Bargain stuff I bought as a teenager is now lauded on ebay as the good old stuff, "built like a tank.") However, there are also a lot more cables to deal with.

The progression is like this:

    1) Pure tinkering, no standards
    2) Enthusiast market, standards, high modularity/complexity
    3) Prepackaged experience, no modularity

I remember my dad complaining all through my youth about how the more modern that cars get, the less serviceable you are. That in new cars you need special computers just to tell them that yes, you did fix the problem and the car can stop complaining now.

10 years later ... man, if I have to even think about opening the bonnet and poking at something, I assume the manufacturer has failed at their job. I don't want to maintain my car. I expect my car to be a tool. Even taking it into the shop to get its tires changed every winter (and the additional 30euro checkup and winter-prepr, then spring-prep) are too much of a hassle.

Maintainability is the feature of unreliable equipment.

Not quite. The whole purpose of maintenance is to increase the longevity of a product by making small, cheap, tweaks to complex parts that can fail due to wear and tear.

Everything lasts longer if you maintain it. A good knife, a high performance vehicle, a good pair of shoes, a couch, etc ...

I don't know of any product that is "as good as new" after years of use. Watches, even spoons, aren't as shiny as they were when you bought them for the first time.

Maintenance is the work of the caring.

Agreed - which is why building mass market convinience stuff that require it is a bad idea - I have limited hours in a day - I do not want to spend any of them doing chores such as maintenence - I'd rather just buy a new working thing every x years and not care. Paying someone else to do the maintenence is nice in theory but finding someone reliable who won't ripp you off is too much hassle.

The fundamental problem with changing your oil is that it involves oil. I saved $30, at the cost of an hour of my labor. As soon as I had a job, that equation didn't make sense.

I now have a much newer car (that I probably don't need since I don't need to drive to work and live in a city) and no garage so I pay for oil changes. On the college car I knew how everything fit together, I took everything apart to fix it multiple times, I changed/ upgraded/ retrofitted things in their to make it more enjoyable. On my new car I can't really do those things without more complicated tech. It definitely changes how you view the object. Both are fun "tools" but one was my fun tool the other isn't

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/intel-skylake-bug-cau... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug

PS: We call them silicon chips, but there are several tiny blobs of different chemicals involved. The process is closer to 3D printing than you might think.

pärt/Submit noun 1. "a piece or segment of something such as an object, activity, or period of time, which combined with other pieces makes up the whole."

2. some but not all of something. "the painting tells only part of the story"

You might be thinking of Component, but even that's arguable. CPU's often contain nonfunctional parts so each transistor is actually a meaningful distinction.

Early CPU's where built to be maintained, modern CPU's are not. That in no way makes modern CPU's worse. The Hubble cost more to maintain than it would have been to replace with something better. From a utilitarian standpoint the ability to maintain it was useless, from a political standpoint NASA loved being able to pretend those missions where useful.

At a deeper level maintenance generally means some parts break down before others. So, an ax becomes less sharp over time. Meanwhile the head also loses strength which limits how long that head can reasonably be maintained.

QED: Maintenance is all about having different parts that ware out a different times.

I think there is enough of a luxury market for that to be a thing, and I am surprised we haven't seen it yet.

Expensive items are an exception - I want my car to last long, not to avoid maintaining it. But there is space for very few exceptions.

Whether that applies to mobile phones with their general lack of moving parts is an entirely different question.

While I agree with this, I understand where Swizec's comment is coming from. I have a few business acquaintances who have been automotive engineers for 30-40 years now. They have an excellent idea of how their cars work. And yet, they rue that earlier, they could open any broken car and get it to run. Now, there's not much they can do to fix their own cars. Pretty much all they can do when they see a blinking light is take the car to a mechanic. The older generation has learnt that they can't fix their cars. The newer generation, unsurprisingly, doesn't even want to make the effort. The older generation could fill up their oil, change their filters, etc. Now, most people just get their mysterious machine serviced every few months. "I don't want to maintain my car" seems like a natural consequence of how cars work now.

Why? Don't they have OBD-2 readers?

E.g. The weirdest part of it (after driving an old car for the longest time) was they explicitly tell you not to have gas-station attendants check your oil for you. If you're leaking/losing oil, the lights will at some point come on and prompt you to take the car in for service.

Why is that weird? It's a pressurized system with plenty of sensors, you are certainly better off following the data than a gas station attendant (which itself is an old fashioned concept in most places).

What if they have? It's not like they'd bother to (a) decipher them, (b) fix the issue themselves.

It is in the interests of the user to do away with the costs and complexities of making something maintainable and the consequent obligation to do maintenance.

This only doesn't work well because once something reaches a reasonable 'end of life', there often is no identical or equal replacement. This generates in the user a wish that they could maintain their old device to prolong its use, to avoid having to choose and learn a new and different device which may not even have any improvements.

There is no reason an item can't be user friendly, reliable, and need no maintenance.

The majority of people don't even maintain their bodies, which are priceless and irreplacable - it does not make sense to say capitalism is failing because it's not meeting people's interest in doing maintenance, when people don't show any interest in doing maintenance (outside of a small subset who care about maintaining certain specific highly prized or expensive and necessary items).

Without intervention, the artefacts of civilization would literally crumble within decades. With proper maintenance, a building could last for centuries, a car for decades, a computer or phone I would hope for at least 5 years.

Our throwaway culture is threatening our existence via environmental degradation. We're in the middle of a mass extinction, and climate change could literally end life on Earth. We need to consider the long term sustainability of our economy, way of life, and civilization.

The computer I used before that was from 2006. Which is now in use by my sister.

Both of them have been unmaintained (except for automated updates of Kubuntu) since first installation.

The same I expect from phones. And from washing machines.

My family’s microwave has been bought and unmaintained since 30 years ago, and that’s what devices should provide:

A literal lifetime of working without maintenance.

OTOH, I always maintain it by taking it into the shop and having them do what they do.

The only issue I'm having now is the A/C would sometimes go out last summer, but I'll be getting that looked at as we get into the summer months.

I expect this vehicle to be running just as well at 240k miles. I've already got over 10 years in it and I don't expect another 10 years to be outlandish.

That's lasting power, but I don't maintain the vehicle myself, I pay others to do it for me.

The fault code is not always the problem. It's just not that simple to fix a modern vechicle. I pull a generic pid of XXXX, but maybe, around 30% of the time it's just that error code.

Manufacturers have scan tools that read there products very well. Much better than my Snap-on 2500mt. I can't buy their tools, nor will they sell their priority information to most mechanics.

So, working on vechicles made after, I say, 2000 is really getting hard.

So hard, I believe most vechicles made in the 90's will become collectable? Why--they have less do-dads, and Emmission sensors.

It gets monumentally difficult if your trying to get a vechicle to pass CA Emmission tests.

I thought OBD2 would make working on vechicles a breeze. I have not found it to be the case.

I have found buying a new vechicle is a lifelong relationship with the dealership; at dealership repair prices. I think manufactures did this on purpose. "Get them to buy your vechicle, and keep them coming back?" A sales tatic that software companies have been relying on for years now? I still remember buying Lightroom 1 at $199.00, and thinking that's all I will spend. What a deal?

I actually foresee a bunch of bricked, by failing emmission tests, vechicles in the near future.

That and I have a hard time with the new "smart" driving technology. I was in my friend's Subaru last week and it beeped anytime he did anything remotely out of line...

If that day comes you should find a way to secure it because almost all older cars are very easy to steal. Those computer bits make new cars much more difficult to snatch.

http://www.dmv.org/insurance/most-stolen-cars-and-other-vehi...

In Germany, we have exemptions for what we call Oldtimers and Youngtimers (tax breaks, permission to enter environmentally restricted areas etc.).

I had a 1974 TR6 with an H kennzeichen! It was an adventure owning that car in Germany.

Not necessarily. Modern airliners are highly reliable, so long as you follow the maintenance schedule.

Disposable equipment is a feature of markets driving costs down. It's a sign of commoditization and convenience+short-term reliability winning over long term reliability.

I always chuckle to myself when I'm told by 40-year-olds how their 14-year- olds are "so amazing with computers!". But yeah - Jimmy can open up Facebook on the iPad like nobody's business, but Jimmy has no fracking clue what's actually happening or why, or how to even diagnose common issues. Then again, maybe that's ok if Jimmy doesn't give a crap about how computers work.

I grew up in Europe and never had a car until I was in my late 20's so I never tinkered with them. Now, if something goes wrong, I just take it to the dealer. So I'm like Jimmy with the iPad.

There's no problem for me or Jimmy. The world is fine.

But then there's Billy. Unlike me, Billy didn't grow up with DOS and early Linux, so Billy has never had to look at a hex dump or figure out what pointers are or registers or flags - Billy just hits "Go" in his Java IDE and prays everything works out. If it doesn't, his eyes glaze over and he heads over to Stackoverflow.

Billy is hampered by today's world. He doesn't have to tinker with his PC or iPad, but not only that, he's actively being prohibited from tinkering with them. They're not only appliances, they're sealed off, protected by dozens of copyright and patent laws appliances that you don't even technically own anymore without signing-off on 7 different legal agreements. It's insane.

Billy might never learn about how a computer actually works. And one day he'll have to diagnose/fix something that only the 30-somethings can and he won't know how, and not because he's dumb.

Those DOS hex dumps meant nothing to me until I had a couple of microcontrollers and CPU architecture classes under my belt.

Like you, I'm also nostalgic about those error dumps and tinkering. But I also don't remember a single time when my reaction was more than "Oh neat, I understand my CPU did an error. reboot"

I want to see a two hour debate on that by top engineers from several industries because that seems to be one of the big questions of our time in regards to product development.

There is, quite simply, NO good argument in favor of non-maintainable equipment, unless your goal is to increase profits. This doesn't mean we should go back to the days of carburetors and points; modern cars are extremely reliable and actually highly maintainable if you have the right equipment, but there's no reason they can't make the computer-based service tools publicly available so that anyone can service them themselves. They keep that software and those interfaces secret to increase profits.

As a universal assertion, particularly in the realm of products intended for personal mobile use by the general population, this absolutely and utterly wrong. The fundamental core issue is that many forms of maintainability require dead matter, simple as that. Take removable vs non-removable batteries, perhaps the most classic example in portable electronics: having a removable battery requires user safe contacts that can handle repeated mechanical strain, the battery itself to have its own protective case, the device case to have a way to interface the battery and the resulting structural support and tradeoffs therein, the dimensions and shape of the battery are significantly constrained, etc. All of this boils down to significant additional stuff that isn't battery, or performing any other useful role for that matter, but rather is simply scaffolding/support infrastructure. In other words, dead matter. There is no free lunch. A removable battery fundamentally can never match the size/weight/performance matrix of a non-removable one, full stop. That's the tradeoff for being able to swap it. In this specific example there are additional potential tradeoffs too for some use-cases (it's significantly easier to have a higher degree of harsh environmental tolerance with a fully sealed system for instance).

Now, yes, there is absolutely room for reasonable disagreement about what side of the tradeoff is correct for any given application or use-case. There are times where the utility of maintainability or modularity is well worth a reduction in default performance. But there are also many cases where a higher percentage of active matter in a product is a legitimate feature to the majority of its intended users. The "No True Scotsman" fallacy you use to start your argument should have been a flag and caused you to rethink the rest of it.

If there's an actual engineering reason to reduce maintainability (e.g. it improves performance), that's a worthwhile consideration. What I'm talking about is when a product is made intentionally non-maintainable, or maintainable only by people with service tools which are non-obtainable, solely because it increases profits. There's no good reason for this.

Now, for your battery example, I don't think that even applies. From what I've read and heard, most "non-replaceable" batteries are actually completely replaceable, it's just not so easy to do and requires a bit of skill. "Maintainable by a service technician with some common hand tools and half a brain" does not equal "non maintainable". I've seen tons of videos on YouTube showing non-professionals how to take apart their phones and replace those "non-maintainable" batteries. It's not like the things are epoxied in there. And you're right, you can save a bit of space by going that route; it's an engineering trade-off.

My example of something that's deliberately designed to not be maintainable (by the end-user or someone not employed by or affiliated with the manufacturer) would be a car that requires regular service, but where it can't be done without connecting a laptop to the car and using an extremely expensive software program to really do nothing more than tell the car the oil has been changed. This makes it impossible for the customer to do the service himself, or have an independent mechanic do it unless that mechanic is willing to shell out the money needed for that tool.

And probably not a true Scotchman either.

I mean, obviously only a failed engineer would ever propose not maintainable products -- everybody should use old maintainable razors for example, and not (recyclable) disposable ones. /s

As for razors, that's a terrible example. Gillette is famous for the whole "razor and blades" marketing scheme, which obviously was invented by a business person seeking to maximize profit. Disposable razors are a bad idea all around (and they're not recyclable easily; recyclable things don't have metal and plastic merged together so they can't be separated): they perform terribly and are wasteful and cost more over time. The only thing they're good for is if you left your razor at home while traveling. I like old DE razors personally, but even a modern razor is "maintainable": you can replace the cartridge heads. You can't replace the individual blades because there's no feasible way of making a blade assembly that small, with that kind of precision, where an end-user can replace the blades individually, and besides the plastic part of the blade-holder isn't very much plastic anyway. This example is just silly; it's like claiming a car air filter is "unmaintainable" because you can't wash it out, or you can't separate the paper pleats from the plastic frame. That's just dumb. As long as the filter is fairly easily replaceable, it's OK for the filter (a consumable) as a whole to be a disposable product.

I am not arguing for things to be made so they can be easily disassembled to their smallest components.

And Scotch tape was named after the Scots (and features a tartan design).

It's best to think of "unmaintainable" things as monolithic components of a larger system. You wouldn't complain about not being able to fix a light bulb, would you? Then don't complain about not being able to fix a smartphone. Your phone is just the tip of a leaf on a very large tree... and the same will be true of our cars, soon enough. This isn't necessarily a bad thing.

As for what "true engineers" would do, engineers have to take the big picture into account and design accordingly. Everything real is a compromise of some kind, and maintainability is only one factor among many that can make a product succeed or fail in the marketplace. If you design something that fails in the marketplace, it probably doesn't matter how awesome it is... or how easy it is to fix.

It's the feature of equipment designed for long term

Would you pay 100x more for a reliable equipment?

I want to think about tech, but the right tech, the tech landscape, ecosystem, and tools that have to evolve to achieve my or my customers' mission.

Everything else, don't make me think. Don't waste my time. Toast my toast. Protect my data. Always work when I need, with no cognitive load.

That's funny, as I see the nexus line as somewhat non-modular, given the lack of a storage expansion (SD card) slot.

I had a perfect Nexus 10 device running KitKat. And then it keeps nagging to upgrade to Lollipop, so I did. Ever since that, it runs every application slow as hell. If you allow the battery to run out, prepare for pain. Once you fill up the battery and it restarts it will start "optimizing" all installed applications. I have about 80 applications and this takes an hour. Every time it reboots!

Also, whether the sound will work after reboot, is a lottery. If you leave it plugged into the power, it surely won't work.

It's been how long since Android L came out and they still haven't fixed these issues for their own flagship device. Nexus is a mess and we're not even beta testers. Just a big fu from Google.

I ended up moving to an iPhone 5S and I love it. Right size (for me) to hold with 1 hand while holding the rail on the train or bus, and runs really well with no problems. I maintain my work computer and home machines, that's enough. I really didn't appreciate what Android offers and it really is a shame that even the Nexus isn't the answer. I'm not a hater, I use what works for me.

There is no real iPhone equivalent in the Android market. The real kicker for me was that my wife has been using an iPhone 4S to this day, since 2011. I went through 3 or 4 Android phones in that time. Not low end phones either, Motorola Droid, GS3, GS4, HTC Thunderbolt... absolutely absurd.

Today we buy apps once and both use them, enjoy the iPhone tracking services that are built in, and the fact she just got iOS 9.3 is flat out fantastic.

Apple has literally earned our business and will continue to get it.

The best phones I had were the Droid 1 (for its day it was ok) and GS4. I don't have a ton of bad things to say about them, but the GS4 was too locked down and got returned for a 5S. Androids bigger appeal is easy hacking with CM and other mods. My GS3 just started randomly restarting, so it flaked out. My HTC Thunderbolt was definitely the worst piece of electronics and software that I've ever put my hands on. It was an absolute abomination. They all had strange slowdowns, lockups and restarts at one point or another. The Tbolt took the cake on that behavior though. I still have the GS3, it works but it gets used as an Alarm Clock Xtreme that sits next to our bed. It's running CM and reliable enough for that. But when I really use it, seems to flake out eventually.

The biggest things I appreciate from the Android space is the great variety in smartwatches, and GearVR is pretty neat. If Apple has their own GearVR someday I'll definitely be onboard. I think that's the future of VR for the masses and Apple will swoop in and perfect it.

The only think I wish was better is the load times on the kindle app. We're talking seconds, so not worth $600 to get better hardware for it.

As far as I'm concerned, the 4S is perfectly usable.

It's amazing too because the phone was originally Verizon carrier locked, then Apple/VZW sent out an update to unlock 4S phones through iTunes and now she's been using AT&T and before that, T-Mobile.

I sparsely use my 5S, and will probably replace it with a SE when the time comes. I'm more than happy buying apps from Apples store because of the ability to install on both our phones. My most expensive app was $20 for TouchDown (coming from Android I was using this for work email and liked it). She's able to use it as well. But given something with the right utility, I'd pay more than $20 if it's on iOS.

Apple made the right call in building higher quality devices, providing the best support they can, and then banking on the AppStore to pay off. Since there's only so many iPhones to optimize for, when we do buy apps they Just Work. I had a lot of trouble with certain apps on the phones I listed in my last post.

When she's missing on a Saturday morning I can see she just went to the store without hassling her. If I'm at a Python meetup or other user group, she can see if I'm still there without calling/texting. Just now I see she's 2 miles from being home from work. If she loses her phone, I can locate it or make it sound an alert, lock it, wipe it. iCloud is so nice as well for both backups and getting access to photos without even plugging it in. It's rendered iTunes useless for me, and I was never an iTunes fan.

Yes, a lot of these features are possible on Android but iOS got there first and they just work so well and built in from day 1. Zero additional apps needed. I'm also happy with iOS' interface. It's just ideal IMO. Then the build quality and support as mentioned before.

I use a NUC for my desktop, but she uses a laptop and I've never had a Mac or Macbook but we have absolutely no qualms in buying them when we need new machines. If I weren't 100% satisfied with the NUC, I'd strongly consider just buying a Mac Mini as well.

Anyway, sorry about that. I'll stop singing the praises of our experiences with an old iPhone 4S and 5S. :) But I completely understand how you're happy with a 4S. We're really that happy about our situation as well. And I hated smartphones before. I wanted to go back to no phone at all before moving to iOS.

My reception on my MVNO carrier sucks at the house, but that's OK. She just has my Facetime Audio number down as primary. Signal is much less of an issue, and call quality is much better. If I've got WiFi in the building, it doesn't matter if my cell signal is weak.

I could go on all day... but yeah. I guess it cuts both ways (Apple/Android) to an extent. But there's a lot to be said for being on the same platform as your spouse.

Maybe something went poorly with the OS update. Try a factory reset and see if those issues are still happening?

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/nexus/0CDPXvY...

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/nexu...

http://androidforums.com/threads/nexus-10-volume-wont-work-p...

I wouldn't mind, but even with Nexus phones, my experience of issues is that you end up crawling Google, and the answers are the technical equivalent of doing the hokey cokey in the hope of curing a cold: "Uninstalling Snapchat made the problem disappear!"; "Install this app and use it to work around an issue", etc.). And then the last resort - the factory reset. I'm not doing anything particularly exotic with my phone, the thought of the hassle of a factory reset is just depressing.

I bought a Nexus 5X at launch, after my replacement Nexus 5's power button died. And it has been a laggier experience than the 5 (I admit the latest update seems to have improved things (though it's still not equivalent to the 5 IME). But looking for other people with the same problem you see the same responses, like a repeating background in a roadrunner cartoon - "Mine runs buttery smooth"; "Maybe yours is faulty, RMA?"; "Tried a factory reset?". Sorry, I don't enjoy this detective work/maintenance.

I doubt the iPhone experience is perfect, but it can hardly be worse, can it?

I've wiped my n10 many times. Wipe boot and let it reinstall. Takes a while to reinstall but hands off.

The n10 is problematic hardware wise. Mine will do random reboots and always has. Boots fast so not a huge issue but annoying.

Quick mention: To the average user it might seem like an OS ugprade when integrated apps, like the Play Store, have to be updated.

My current phone is a $200 Moto G and I'm perfectly happy with it. Lollipop runs well, battery life is good, and with a cheap SD card I don't have to think about storage. It isn't as nice as the iPhone 6S, but the Moto G is great value.

This isn't a typical experience. There's a reason that iOS9 is only on 80% of "active devices": people hold off deliberately. There have been many iOS updates since iOS4 that have caused widespread criticism for their effects on older phones.

A Nexus may be hardware limited after 2 years, but it doesn't stop you.

Nexus 6p is still considered to be the best phone (and camera) all around even though it's last year's phone. And it's selling for massive discounts.

I think this is a HUGE problem, and that somebody is going to die because they're unable to call 911 while the phone is "optimizing"

The phone environment is not conducive to JIT'ing, unlike your typical desktop/laptop.

It's always a matter of trade offs. For some people, tinkering with their device is more important. And for the rest, they just want to get their work done and for their devices to get out of the way. I have come to terms with the freedom in the latter category now.

Nexus devices have a variety of manufacturers. The current 9 is made by HTC, the 5X by LG, and the 6P by Huawei

>one company provides the software

Nexus devices all come with unlockable bootloaders that allow you to flash custom Android ROMs such as Cyanogenmod. Past that, other operating systems such as Firefox OS and Ubuntu Touch could be flashed on Nexus phones such as the Nexus 5.

>app store

F-Droid is an alternative FOSS app store available for Android. You can also use Amazon's App store which is what Amazon's Kindle Fire Android tablets do rather than Google's.

You have realized that from Android M on you can’t rely on getting notifications on Android anymore unless they go through Google?

Any application running in background – unless it is from Google – can be killed at any moment to save battery.

In Android M, when the device hasn’t been used or moved for half an hour this "Doze" mode activates, usually during the night.

In Android N, it activates as soon as the screen is off.

I find it extremely annoying that android devs assume this, because apps fail to install/work when one doesn't have google play services installed.

Obviously only the latest matters?

And those are manufacturers, not the company designing it, which what matters. Otherwise Apple uses a variety of manufacturers too, not just Foxconn.

Long story short: just because you can doesn't mean you must. Options are nice but so is not having to think about it. The Nexus is a middle ground for Android

Apple relatively recently removed the requirement to pay for a developer account to compile and run apps on your own device. You can pretty much sideload apps like you can on Android, just with the added requirement of re-signing them for your device specifically (which is IMHO a nice security feature). A lot of the app store rules are enforced by human review (e.g. only being allowed to use background execution for certain things), not the sandbox itself, so you have a comparable amount of flexibility (one thing I still really miss is the ability to do JIT and dynamic code generation).

I value reliability over everything else and in Androidland, that means Nexus devices with zero customization.

No, he's saying that he got himself out of being the prisoner of his device (time, maintainance, etc wise) to being the casual user of his device.

All you need is learning how to prioritize your time. A lot of adults can do that.

That's an incredibly hyperbolic way to spin their choice. No one's in prison here. A choice was made based on desired functionality and features. And they paid for that choice out of their own free will.

They've chosen 'the jail of a simple interface' the same way someone who gets tired of working on a classic car just to keep it running as a hobby decides they'd like to buy an A8 has imprisoned themselves to the dregs of luxury car use and bumper to bumper manufacturer maintenance.

So he switched to a device that worked well enough so he did not feel that compulsion. After all, he could equally choose to jail break his iOS device and tinker with it. But there's no reason (for him) to do so.

In general, even the devices I don't personally like with OEM skins and addons work just as well out of the box for typical uses like web, email, phone, calendar, nav, and your average smattering of entertainment and communication apps.

In that regard, there's not a lot of difference and both platforms succeed well. It's more about how well they "fail". When I use my iPad and it doesn't do something I want or behave in a way I prefer, my options are often similar tweaking and tinkering. Many times, I would need to jailbreak the thing in order to install an unsigned app not approved by Apple to get it to do what I want.

On my Android devices, it's usually a lot simpler. iOS has improved a bit in terms of customization (being able to "open with" various apps instead of the factory defaults, third party keyboard layouts, and stuff like that) but that was always the case on Android.

As these platforms have matured, they've both got their "success states" pretty solid so now it's down to how well they "fail" and how easy it is to get my device to do what I need without jaibreaking or otherwise taking advantage of security holes to gain access to certain settings or capabilities.

I tried in February to switch to the Nexus 6P. I literally had to restart it TWICE on day one. How is that even reasonable? for 650 dollars, that's a joke.

I'll get downvoted to hell, but I really don't care, iOS just works (tm), and I'll take that over custimizibility any day of the week.

Finally settled for the Nexus 6P, and I'm loving it. No need more dealing with crapware!

This is the main reason I stuck with iOS, even the the "pure" Android experience the Nexus line is supposed to offer is tainted.

We you buy a device that comes with third party apps that are not removable it feels like you just paid for an advertisement.

To actual users, it doesn't matter whose app it is. It just matters that they don't want them, and most of the Apple preinstalled apps are utter crap.

Meanwhile on Android, though the apps aren't removable because the system partition is read-only, the apps are disable-able so the user never sees them, which is far better than what iOS lets you do.

With each Android revision I've encountered, I feel more pissed off at it. Whoever's making these changes -- it feels like they are jerking me around for the sake of their own purposes -- whether ego, marketing/ads, or whatever.

And did I mention, my device -- still under contract -- is stuck on a vulnerable version of 5?

I'm about done with this shit. I've been looking at the Nexi, but... I'm just pissed, at this point. Maybe Apple's a "bully", but sometimes that seems to serve a good purpose.

Just one of the many small reasons why I ended up going back to iOS. To be fair, I could still happily use Android and the main reasons had nothing to with UI, but still, it contributed.

If you are addicted to TV but want to spend your time on more active pursuits, you get rid of your TV.

If you're addicted to futzing around with your Android device…

Hmm, I think it's only a jail if it feels like one. I did something similar for my photography, "jailing" myself to a fixed lens with no zoom. It was truly liberating to lock myself in. Yes, I realize the oxymoron there. But I could concentrate on making the best of my skills rather than falling into a gear swamp.

All that said, I don't trust Apple one bit ;-)

> Switched to iOS from Android (with reasons)

> Counterargument is: But you didn't try this specific Android device.

Sort of "moving the goalposts," is it not?

Galaxy Nexus: released in November 2011, last release: 4.3 in July 2013. Update Window: 1 year and 8 months.

Nexus 4: released in November 2012, last release: 5.1.1 in May 2015. Update window: 2 years and 6 months.

Nexus 5: released in October 2013, last release: 6.x (?), probably April/May 2016. Update window: probably 2 years and 6 months.

(Granted, the Nexus 4 received security updates for a longer period.)

They have recently announced a better policy:

Nexus devices will continue to receive major updates for at least two years and security patches for the longer of three years from initial availability or 18 months from last sale of the device via the Google Store.

Source: http://officialandroid.blogspot.de/2015/08/an-update-to-nexu...

But 3-4 years is definitely false. Up to now ~2-2.5 years, in the future 3 years.

"Is this not... better?" - Loki

And the fact that every iOS version ever has been jailbroken only tells you how hard security is... specially against an adversary with full physical access to the device.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/31/software-with-the-most-vul...

Until it gets infected with malware that requires a firmware reflash to close:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/03/rooting-bug-in-andro...

What happened was paid apps would pop up adverts. And the browser would redirect to adverts before navigating to page links.

Citation desperately needed.

Clearly not all are iOS, and clearly not all happened to have that one compromised version.

That was indeed a serious breach, but the rigor of your comparison is lacking.

  What you're saying is that you left the freedom of your device to jail yourself into simple interface...?