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

Re:Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used ope... by bubblethink on Monday April 03, 2017 @03:24PM (#14026204)

Android's fragmentation and shitty vendor blobs are nothing new. What's more disappointing is that Google, despite all its might, didn't do anything significantly different for its own phones. The cost of owning a google phone used to be ~$100 a year given the price of Nexus used to be around the ~$300 mark and a 3 year support cycle. With Pixel, that cost has become more than 2x for the same support cycle. If google with its current stake can't strong arm Qualcomm and other h/w vendors, I doubt if it'll ever happen. Microkernels may make it better, but that's just shifting the perception. What's really needed is more competition in the h/w space.

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Re:Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used ope... by temac on Monday April 03, 2017 @03:37PM (#14026335)

I don't see how microkernels have anything to do with all of that? Userspace drivers exists in all systems and arguably they are not more backward compatible or anything than kernel-space drivers, just the incompatibilities appears against other system-frameworks in other address spaces, instead of the (micro)-kernel. Ex: when windows switched to 64-bits, 32-bits userspace printer drivers where incompatible (it could and IMO it should have been done otherwise, but what happen is that they were broken!)

And more competition in the h/w space? Common, you already have an insane amount of competition for Android phones, and even some of the biggest multinational don't give a shit about maintaining SW for their product beyond a few months, even for security purposes. The only think we can do is prescription to every people we know: ex. tell all your non technical friends to never buy e.g. a Samsung phone.

It's ridiculous, because Android is the worse ecosystem for security purposes. If you want to be somehow protected, you can stick to iPhones, or, in a funny way, Windows 10 Mobile.

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Re:Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used ope... by bubblethink on Monday April 03, 2017 @03:50PM (#14026464)

>And more competition in the h/w space? Common, you already have an insane amount of competition for Android phones

That competition is only on the surface. For SoC, GPU, baseband, radios etc., you are stuck with Qualcomm. Or maybe Samsung's exynos, which isn't necessarily better.

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Re:Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used ope... by temac on Monday April 03, 2017 @04:20PM (#14026762)

Not sure how exaggerated this is, but even then, those vendor can very well have the bad idea to don't give a shit about compat between one chip and its next version. Given where there go and the associated ecosystem, I suspect they do exactly that...

And then on PC too, you pretty much only have competition on the surface; then it's Intel and AMD. Given how modern CPU are SOC (and chipsets are now paired with CPUs, and with no 3rd party licence anymore), you have almost all of what matter in your system (for system compat) there...

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