Mid 2021, Google forcefully replaced the launcher/home screen for all android TV devices, such that the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the screen is taken up by an ad. You can't disable it, you can't remove it, there is _nothing_ you can do about it. Every time you use this home theatre device, the first thing you're presented with is an ad. I paid for that device and the software on it. I paid for youtube premium to avoid ads. I paid for google drive space to store my data. It's not like I was getting a free lunch.
I've got an Apple TV now, and an iPhone as well - replaced my OnePlus.
I use chrome for work unfortunately, yesterday I was _delighted_ to see that Google had very helpfully placed an add for their new wireless earphones on my new tab page. Very cool.
I can’t vouch for their iOS browser (yet) but I’ve been using their Mac browser and it’s been pleasant.
> Is Orion open-source?
> We’re working on it! We’ve begun with some of our components and intend to open more in the future.
Forking WebKit, porting hundreds of APIs and writing a browser app from scratch has been challenging for our small team. Properly maintaining an open-source project takes time and resources we’re short on at the moment, so if you want to contribute at this time, please consider becoming a beta tester.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/saf...
As I'm sure you know, Android 13 does more here...
It's frustrating. They make fantastic hardware, but their software leaves a lot to be desired, and they are extremely insistent on maintaining control over the devices that they sell. The M1s look like a small step in the right direction, but they have a lot of lost trust to rebuild.
they just innovate in different areas. and they borrow from each other all the time. Android introduced multi-tasking, notifications, PiP, widgets, etc. iOS introduced the app screen, app store, gesture navigation, fingerprint unlock, etc. I think Android tends to cater towards power user features (like PiP and multi-tasking) whereas iOS tends to focus on UX (like gesture navigation).
I'm probably going have to buy a newer Android phone to be able to install Android13, I doubt the Lineage crowd are going to bother building a version to run on even my newest Android phone - at least not anytime soon.
If Samsung and other phone makers don't push Android 13 on their current phones, then that's not Google's problem.
> I'm looking forward to trying it out, but realistically it's gonna be running on low single digit percentage of all Android phones for at least 2 years.
What difference does it make to you?
Except it's even worse than that in the Android world because different vendors produce not just their own drivers, but their own UIs and apps that override the defaults. There's not just one Android but one for every major vendor, and thing like calendars, photos, messages, voice assistants, files, accounts, etc. can't easily be shared between them. I have a Pixel and my partner a Samsung, and we can never figure out how to share things with each other because every vendor's Android is so different.
That is a direct result of Google releasing Android under a certain model of openness, trying to catch up with iOS when it was first released and needing to give phone vendors a reason to adopt it. It got really bad for a while and they tried to rein it in with Play phones and the Google One phones and the Pixel line, but the market is still incredibly fragmented, especially between the Samsung, HTC, Google, and other major vendor variants.
Meanwhile on my iPad and Mac, everything is just seamless. After a decade of Pixels, I'm gonna switch to an iPhone soon, just because iMessage is still so much better and the carriers don't really seem to care about RCS. Android has like two dozen chat and messaging programs, all of which suck in various ways, while iOS has had one superior one all these years. Centralized control can make your platform a lot cleaner.
As for communication apps, there is exactly one great app for both Android and iPhone. It's the same app: Signal.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30074185 (6 months ago, 683 comments)
I tried moving to iOS for the bleeding-edge app permissions and privacy protections. But because they forbid any browser besides Safari/WebKit, the iOS version of Firefox cannot run ordinary extensions.
I tried, but I could not find a content blocker that was nearly as effective as uBlock+noScript. So I'm back on Android, where I can browse the web in peace.