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Bergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo DiasporaBergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo DiasporaPosted Jul 9, 2012 3:47 UTC (Mon) by jcm (subscriber, #18262)In reply to: Bergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora by mjg59 Parent article: Bergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora
Android isn't perfect, and yes, I do own redundant phones and this is a sad requirement. But my operating rule is that I try to run stock firmware if possible, and I don't just randomly update it. I don't consider it a failure of Android if there aren't updates for older phones. If Google (or whatever phone vendor) want to push an update out to existing users then cool, great, it ought to work, but if they don't, it's not a failure if some user/developer downloads a build of Android (or makes one) and it doesn't work with an older phone. That's like expecting your car manufacturer to field upgrade last year's model through a recall just because there happens to be a newer in-dash software system available that you don't need.
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Bergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora Posted Jul 9, 2012 11:48 UTC (Mon) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
I think you've missed my point. If updates break things, how is the platform stable? Given that it's irresponsible to run a network-connected device without applying security fixes I'd really hope that most people do run the updates.
Bergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora Posted Jul 9, 2012 18:27 UTC (Mon) by markhb (guest, #1003) [Link]
I think "most people" run their vendor-supplied Android version and apply whatever updates trickle down from the mfgr. and carrier. Under that model, I've never had an update (as opposed to a version upgrade) break anything, and I don't carry or own a backup phone.
So far as the version upgrade goes, the Eclair upgrade for the original CLIQ broke some things, but that was largely because the Moto team did yeoman work forcing 10 lbs. of manure into a 5 lb. bag.
Bergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora Posted Jul 9, 2012 23:42 UTC (Mon) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link]
Android has more smartphone preinstalls than anything but iPhone. Non-Android Linux has fewer smartphone preinstalls than blackberry or symbian. The number of consumers who reformat their phone and install a different OS is too small to measure, so in the short to medium term compatability is entirely a vendor issue.
This may change as the platform matures, but as yet we've seen no sign of it. Right now we're in smartphone version of the "ROM Basic" era of PCs, where all the apps are java blobs running in Dalvik and nobody really cares about native code. The PC outgrew ROM basic as it commoditized and people started pushing the limits of the hardware, but to get there the platform had to open itself up to third party vendors who didn't get distribution through IBM.
As long as installing apps goes through Google's app store, it's Dalvik all the way down. And as long as "people who don't have smartphones" is a bigger market than "people who have inferior smartphones", saying that X is an incremental technical improvement over Y will get lost in the noise. And by the time that stops, we'll have a winner.
Feel free to complain about how Google's version is less important than aftermarket Cyanogenmod while iPhone passes 50% and locks in the network effects. Did you know iPhone sales have surpassed Microsoft's entire gross revenue? Sure, Apple's being dickish, which will obviously hand the market over to Linux the same way Microsoft's repugnant behavior handed the desktop to DR-DOS, OS/2, BeOS, and Linux. Obviously they're doomed. (And of course _technical_ inferiority prevented Windows 3.1/95/98 from ever amounting to anything, and network insecurity immediately gutted XP's market share.)
But somehow, I'm not finding these arguments persuasive.
Bergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora Posted Jul 10, 2012 5:53 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
> As long as installing apps goes through Google's app store, it's Dalvik all the way down.
It's possible to develop Android apps purely in native code without even touching Java. A lot of games do just this, for example.
Java is necessary only if you're using Android's widget toolkit and functionality not exposed in NDK. And even then you can use thin Java wrappers.
Bergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora Posted Jul 9, 2012 18:55 UTC (Mon) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
You're also missing his point that getting apps to run across the breadth of deployed devices is really, really difficult. It's almost as bad as trying to target desktop Linux.
Android is strong proof that you can actually develop a current smartphone platform while learning nothing from Symbian/Series 60.
Bergius: The Dreams of the MeeGo Diaspora Posted Jul 9, 2012 18:56 UTC (Mon) by obi (guest, #5784) [Link]
Say what you want about the closedness of the Apple's walled garden, but at least they get this right.
I still have an app that's been pulled from the Apple store years ago (trademark violation), and so this hasn't received an update since. Yet it still works after multiple major OS updates (of iOS 3/4/5), and hasn't stopped working.
People shouldn't be afraid to update their phones. And there's no reason perfectly decent Andriod phones should be abandoned and relegated to "legacy" after a year or even a few months. The 3GS will still get a major iOS update in september, three years since its release. This should be the norm.
I don't know if this is in spite of Apple's closed nature, or because of it.
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