Re:Android loses 8% of its global OS market share in five years
by tomComb on Saturday April 23, 2022 @06:21PM
(#31139197)
But you don't have to worry about or understand the Android security updates - they are applied without you even having to do a firmware update. As you indicate, security updates are not something you should have to worry about.
And just because they are applied by the play store doesn't mean they are closed source. The play store itself is closed source, but the security updates to the OS get published via the normal processes.
Android is open enough to allow competition, eg. Amazon's Android, Microsoft's Android runtime, etc. are all done without Google's permission.
To me, that's key, but I'm not trying to tell you whether open source should matter to you. I just wanted to clear up the stuff about the security updates because I think the Android way of doing it is now better than Apple's method.
It sounds like what you're saying is Google has only continued to shuffle ever more vital functionality into the Play store since I left Android, which negates the often claimed benefits of an "open source" operating system. If all the important stuff is in a proprietary blob attached to a proprietary platform, I might as well stick with the one I already know that's never given me any trouble. I'm not going to root my iPhone or install a custom OS, so that's irrelevant to me.