From my perspective it seems like Apple keeps releasing new privacy features and Android keeps being forced to catch up. What are the major privacy enhancements that Google has put out first?

Android blocked background clipboard access in 2019.

Here's a source confirming that: https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/03/14/android-q-will-kill...

It's worth noting that (AFAIK) iOS has never allowed apps in the background to read the clipboard buffer: https://security.stackexchange.com/a/176375

Sorry, I don't have a history of this here. I'm running off my sense of a fair portion of the time when I hear "this new privacy feature coming to iOS" I think "oh I've had that for a little while", and the rest of the time something equivalent shows up later for Android.

I believe Android was the first to have fine grained app permissions where you could actually choose what an app has access to. iOS added that later.

No, it’s the other way around.

In the beginning, Android showed you what an app could before you installed it, and it was an all-or-nothing approach – if you didn't want the app to do those things, your only choice was to not install it.

In the beginning, iOS didn't have this, and instead it prompted you for permission the first time an app wanted permission to do something. Additionally, app review had rules that apps had to operate correctly if you refused permission and that apps couldn’t ask for permissions irrelevant to what you are doing. So you can install an app, then pick and choose what you grant permission for.

Later, Android added the prompts to work the same as iOS. iOS hasn't changed to include the Android approach.

In the beginning iOS basically didn't have permissions at all. There were some random ones like GPS (and push notifications?!), but there was for example no permission to access contacts. Or photos. That didn't come until iOS 6.

So in the very very very beginning it was:

iOS: prompts for permissions, but almost nothing (including accessing user data) requires permissions anyway

Android: Granular permissions for everything, but only asked at install time.

Since then iOS has become "more Android-y" in adding increasingly more granular permissions, and Android has become "more iOS-y" in those permission grants being on-demand and time-gated.

Android had install time permissions for a long while. The user either had to allow all permissions asked by the app during install or not be allowed to install the app. On the other side, iOS had runtime permissions (nothing during installation) that were prompted by the system whenever the app needed a permission. When runtime permissions were added to Android 6, apps used to crash when not granted the permissions (so much so that some Android versions also started faking location data to apps when the user denied location access).

This took a few years to improve, but even today, there are Android apps that will refuse to work if you don't grant some (unnecessary, in the view of the user) permission. That kind of behavior is very, very rare among iOS apps.

As a checkbox prompt on install, yes. iOS has always and will continue a slightly different model of throwing a modular question up to the user at the moment the action that requires the permission first occurs. This gives the user more context about the question, but also gives more alert fatigue. Which is better is left as an exercise to the reader.

Android has supported piecemeal permissions for ages (only let app X access this one photo, or this one contact), which Apple seems to be starting to copy in iOS 14 (though, as usual, seemingly without a single thought to the long-term UX).

Not sure about this. I can give an app permissions to contacts, not a specific contact. Unless they changed this in Android 11?

You can send an Intent to request that the user pick a contact, without having the contacts permission. The app gets a copy of the contact that the user picked.

That's how Apple users feel in general.

I'm actually an android user, but okay.

Not being an Android user, one of the negatives that was often talked about (maybe no longer true?) is that a lot of phones could not upgrade to new versions of Android. Is that still a thing, or was that limited to the lower tier phones?

It's definitely still a thing, as android updates are normally pushed by the manufacturers. The Android One phones are an exception to this.

It's crazy that this ever became a thing. When Android first came out I assumed it would essentially be like Windows for the smartphone.

But imagine if Windows worked the way Android does. You buy a Dell Windows laptop and then you receive all your OS updates directly from Dell, they limit you to only 2 years of updates (if that), and put some bloated skin over the whole OS.

I don't know why Android users accept this.

Updates are still pushed by the manufacturer. I have the Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite (with Android One) and only got Android 10 last week.

Biggest advantage is that it's a pure Android with no bloatware from the manufacturer. Also you get a guarantee IIRC to have at least two versions upgrades for the phone (my Xiaomi came with Android 8, so 10 should be the last one), and most of all security updates.

Phones only getting 2 major software updates (which are released yearly, so 2 years) is a bit of a deal breaker for me. I understand older versions of Android are pretty well supported at least by apps in Google Play.

Also what bothers me about Android devices: I got a Galaxy S8 to do development for work, and not all manufacturers are created equal in updates of course; IIRC I waited almost a full year after the Google flagships to receive Android 9 — in fact I think I got Android 8 around the time Android 9 came out.

Why did you even need a physical phone? Emulator works fine for most development use cases.

I think you just answered your own question. Emulators work fine for most use cases. In the other cases, a physical phone is best.

I mean, the fact that you need to say “pure android” kinda says it all, though.

All iOS is pure iOS. That’s the selling point for me, at least.

That's only because there are no other vendors to muddy the meaning of "pure". Only one vendor of devices for the OS means only one conception about what "pure iOS" means. It doesn't necessarily mean that Apple's conception of iOS is the best possible conception of iOS.

So if you can choose between pure and not pure, locked vs unlocked, is worse? Interesting selling point

For some of us, having a locked down, reliable, secure, and pure phone is a great solution.

I don’t want iOS on my random experimental project laptop, for that I have Linux or windows, or vms. But, cellphones are not something I need to hack around on.

their point is that you can choose to have "pure" android or "unpure" - which is not an option apple provides. why is that worse?

Because "unpure" Android barely receives updates and the few occasions where it does, it's extremely delayed. So that's pretty "worse"

You can also choose to jailbreak an Apple device if you really want to be unpure, and luckily doing so won't prevent you from updating your phone in the future.

>cellphones are not something I need to hack around on.

Different strokes for different folks. I like having the ability to sideload apps and flash a different OS to my phone

Fun. My Xiaomi came with ads baked into the app installer and a very questionable use of tracking in the web browser. Yes, Android One is great but not every device is in that program.

It's still true. You'd be lucky to get updates beyond two years (so choosing the brand with this in mind is more important within the Android ecosystem). There are also devices that don't get updates after a few months of launch. Updates are also delayed by several months depending on the brand.

Security updates are pushed monthly though. And Samsung supports security updates for much longer period.

Except for all the Samsung devices that don't, of course. Mine periodically says "security update available", I click "install", it says "install failed" and that's the end of that. There appears to be no way to know what the update was or to retry the install.

Apples vs oranges. With iOS the norm seems to be that apps support 1 version back, if even that. So as soon as your device is no longer updated (or if you dislike the update!), you're stuck.

Android puts much more emphasis on backwards compatibility, with Google moving more and more functionality into app libraries rather than system frameworks. Our app still supports Android 4.4 (released in 2014!).

You can walk into any Best Buy and buy new devices on the shelf that are running versions of Android so old they can't run apps like Netflix -- devices that are out of date now, and will never get an update. This is part of the reason Android developers need strong backwards compatibility.

No, the norm on the iOS is current and two versions back. It is also worth mentioning that iOS are usually supported for much longer than Android.

iphoneOS 15 will be supported by iPhone 6S: this was released in 2015. If app supports iOS 12 (which most do, as it is only one version below the current iOS 13) it means they support iPhone 5S: which was released in 2013.

And Apple users are likely to update: 92% run the latest version, and 7% are on the iOS 12.

It is true that many vendors abandon their devices more quickly than I would like, but it depends on the vendor and the "flagshipness" of the device. Also, since version 8.0, Google has made a number of improvements to the modularity of the OS which make it easier for vendors to release updates ("Project Treble"), so the problem has been reduced somewhat

While fact checking my other comment here, it seems like Samsung has been slow to roll out major version upgrades _since_ Android 8. Have other manufacturers improved in this regard since Project Treble?

Motorola's pretty on top of the game.

$200 G7 got Android 10 about 3 weeks ago.

Lol you realize this used to be true of iOS too? I know after a few years my 3GS definitely wouldn't be able to handle the next iOS version.

The iPhone 3GS was released in June 2009, and the first iOS release that didn't support it was iOS 7 in September 2013.

4 years is much better than current Android phones, though it's true it doesn't quite live up to the current Apple lineup where iOS 14 is going to support the 6S which will be 5 years old by the time it launches.

Even if iOS 6 could be installed on the 3GS, it wasn't advisable.