The OP covers this in the article:

> I’ve bought too many Android phones over the years believing Google when they say they’ve figured out how to be better with updates, whether it was the Google Play Store promise or the Android One promise or “Project Treble.” None of it has mattered. It’s too little, too late from Google.

which links to https://www.theverge.com/22881882/android-12-google-pixel-6-..., which says:

> By its nature, Android is a fragmented ecosystem. There’s no straight line from Android 12 to the Galaxy S21 or OnePlus 9 — every major update sees handoffs between the manufacturer, carriers, and Google, all of which result in delays. Initiatives like Project Treble seem to have helped speed up some parts of the process, but unless Google takes some drastic actions, nobody can completely fix the problem.

Case in point, Treble came out in 2017, one year before Pixel 3. Didn't help.

My rule of thumb is that Google products or initiatives with “Project” in the official name never work out. If it was a real thing they would have given it a real name at launch.

Exception that proves the rule: I use Google Fi (formerly Project Fi) as my mobile provider. While they haven't exactly added resources to it, it serves me remarkably well as a cellular provider. And I use an iPhone!

That's a good counterexample! Hopefully they won't realize it's still chugging along and keep it alive. :)

I haven't heard about Project Treble till your comment. A quick google:

"Project Treble (take a deep breath) is Google's ambitious effort to rearchitect Android in order to establish a modular base in which the lower-level code created by silicon vendors is separated from the main Android operating system"

As in abstracted away hardware code? As in...how operating systems have been built since before TikTokers were even born?

Everything is on a spectrum, they are further siloing off hardware from software and cutting out some spaghetti code between the two. Before hardware manufacturers had to merge in google's code with theirs before they release, with proper segregation google's aim with the project is to make a clean cut between the two so that kernel and up aren't so tightly coupled and they can upgrade their OS without breaking the hardware.

Further than they siloed it before, yes. In comparison to the competition (which sadly withdrew for other reasons), they are extremely far behind: Windows ME worked fine with hardware and drivers from Windows 95. But the whole problem is the consequence of Linux not having a stable driver interface.

There are many adjectives that could be used for Windows ME, but "worked fine" is not one of them. Whether with Win95 drivers or its own.

I've certainly used modem drivers from Win 95 in Win Me