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Android Overtakes Windows as the Internet's Most Used Operating System (betanews.com)
As expected last month, Android has surpassed Windows to become the world's most used operating system, according to the web analytics firm StatCounter. From a report: Usage figures published by StatCounter show that Android accounted for 37.93 percent of the worldwide OS Internet usage share in March. Windows is not far behind at 37.91 percent, but Android taking the lead is being described as a "milestone in technology history." The fact that Android is now topping the charts can be attributed to the fact that mobile devices are now used to connect to the Internet far more frequently than desktop computers and laptop. Coupled with declining PC sales, Windows is starting to lose out overall, although it still accounts for 84 percent of the worldwide desktop operating system market.
mobile devices are now used to connect to the Internet far more frequently than desktop computers and laptop.
Even more than that, use of Windows is heavily tilted towards businesses and workplaces. Among the browsing public, they are overwhelmingly doing it on mobile these days.
"Windows is too difficult for the average person to use. That is why it will never gain popularity succeed as an operating system." I always wanted to say that!
For all practical purposes, this analysis looks like a comparisons between desktops/laptops vs phones/tablets. Anybody who primarily uses the former to be on the internet is a Windows user, while the latter would be an Android user. However, while Windows Phone/Mobile is practically dead, ChromeOS is making a valiant effort to gain a bit of desktop share.
If ChromeOS picks up, I expect Windows to lose even more, particularly if ChromeOS gains the capability to run Android apps and also the ability to store files offine. Also, it would help if ChromeOS became an option not only on entry level netbooks, but also on higher end laptops
My sister was chiding me a while back about me saying over a decade ago that "Linux" usage was going to explode and "that ended up not happening at all." I then pointed out that Android was Linux and that the Personal Computer had just shrank to cellphone size. That shut her up good. . . : p
I am now living the dream, working in a start-up where the flagship product runs on. . . you guessed it, Linux. We have come a long way. It will be interesting to see where the next decade takes us.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
For a long time, I thought "Android - and its awful datamining daddy Google - is more and more pervasive, but at least Windows isn't serving me ads, and with moderate efforts, isn't putting me under surveillance." Well... ahem... that sure turned out well lately :(
So the irony is, Android has overtaken Windows as the most used OS, but Windows has overtaken Android as the most evil. And the losers in all that are all of us users.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Use your own fucking cell connection. MITM "problem" solved.
I've seen so many statistics on this on SD.
One minute. we're to believe that some browser has overtaken the market as a whole, the next minute we'll believe that Linux is the most used (perhaps in server environments), Next minute we'll know that Windows still is used by 90% of the worlds population as a whole...so, all of a sudden Lin...I mean Android is the most used, oooh on the INTERNET, right right! So...that means that a whole lot doesn't have internet and still use windows, oooor?
What I am trying to say, these statistics means BUBKIS!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Android is not an operating system, it's an app delivery system.
I'd like to see that breakdown. Is the net being overwhelmed with out of date releases of the OS?
Microsoft will bringt Windows on phones and then google will learn, what qualiy is ... ... oh wait.
Anyone else jump straight to the comments to read the shills? It's a joy to watch them try to spin things.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
If Google ever decides to implement the Windows-equivalent model for third-party applications (i.e., more than WINE) and "HAL", it will...for the first time since Windows v1...establish that there is a serious competitor to Windows. We have needed a competitor to Microsoft's dominant OS for a long, long time, if for no other reason than to keep them "honest" (as contrast with, say, the "Free Windows 10" gag that basically thrust all "Beta Testing" onto unsuspecting geeks, which led to the arrogance they exhibit with "we'll decide for you when you should update your system!") And, the arrogance they exhibit with egregious changes in User "Agreements" over the past two years, turning customers into serfs.
But, for both of these oversized behemoths, you must remember this: If you're not PAYING for the product, you ARE the product being sold. Windows AND Android users are ripe for a revolution against a high-handed, self-interested purveyors of the sole remaining products without competitors, because their respective GUIs are so ubiquitous.
And each of those examples you provided is a valid set of statistics to know. It's pretty common to break down usage statistics into certain markets and categories. If you can only handle everything lumped together into one giant category lump, maybe you should stop looking at the more detailed stuff. You certainly shouldn't start complaining about stuff that the rest of us are interested in.
I had a get-together at my house last weekend, family and friends of family.
We decided on some music. I turned on my windows machine which has some decent speakers on it. Loaded up Youtube and told everyone to have at it.
A person somewhat younger than me said "Ooo! A mouse. I haven't used one of these in years."
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Or as we call it, Linux with Java. No Windows systems in our house!
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Does AppCounter app apps of apping appers?
Those stats are biased. Android has overtaken windows at least a year ago, but statcounter is lagging behind.
This is due to statcounter being strongly biased towards western countries.
This shows that we are still a young sector. We only have two mainstream operating systems.
For example the car industry has multiple major mainstream car brands, models and domains (sports cars, SUV, sedan, etc).
I expect even more kinds of operating systems, operating system brands and operating system principles to become mainstream.
We're still a young sector.
It took Microsoft a while to lose the battle as the on ramp to the internet.
The top post on Slashdot on 02 April 2003 was "Microsoft Wants to Take on Google"
"We do view Google more and more as a competitor. We believe that we can provide consumers with a better product and a better user experience. That's something that we're actively looking at doing,", says Bob Visse, director of marketing for Microsoft's MSN Internet services division, said.
Downplay truth, distract.
and so continues the slow slide into obscurity for Micro$oft.
Another article
http://www.pcmag.com/news/3528...
"Doctor Android, tell me the truth! Is it corporate cancerism?"
Just the obligatory weak joke, but the topic is much deeper. I can't decide whether or not this is a good thing.
Obviously it's basically driven by Moore's Law. We can now pack enough computing power into a smartphone that most people don't need a full-sized computer for their daily tasks. Microsoft sort of saw it coming, but on the distorted and twisted foundation of their cancerously overgrown OSes and bloated applications, they never figured out how to do small things. That left the increasingly important small world to Apple and the google, but I think they are evil, too.
More or less evil seems like a difficult trade-off, but that seems to be where all our shopping decisions arrive these days. If you can point me at a really large and successful company that is not tainted by the evil, please do so. I'd feel much better.
I think the real problem is that American capitalism died years ago. What we have now is corporate cancerism. We basically take it for granted that the rules are written by the most cheaply bribed politicians and the bribers are the most dominant and hugest companies working to get rules that eliminate all the "loser" companies. Per my sig, the real EVIL is the resulting loss of freedom as competition is eliminated.
Do we still have any meaningful freedom in smartphones? At least two choices would be better than one, if you think Apple is competing against the google. However my impression is that relatively few people consider both options. The customers seem to live in like separate, not competing, worlds. Or maybe the choices within the Android world count, even if the google has all of those choices by the balls?
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
It was a combination of the windows 8 catastrophe coupled with the failure to recognize the smartphone market in time. Windows won't be gone overnight, but barring a technology miracle, they are marching into obscurity. The question is will Google buy them out, will Apple (As predicted by SeaQuest) or will Amazon pick them up to remain competitive.
I then pointed out that Android was Linux and that the Personal Computer had just shrank to cellphone size.
It's too bad these computers are stuck back in the DOS era of one application maximized to fill the whole screen. Even Windows 1.0 could split the screen to put two applications side by side. But with the "all maximized all the time" window management policy of stock Android 1 through 6, you need to buy two devices just to (say) read a document in one application and take notes in another, or have a game and its walkthrough visible. This is despite a tablet's display being (physically) large enough to show the equivalent of two phone displays side by side.
The multi-window mode in the customized version of Android for select Samsung Galaxy devices is not present in stock Android <= 6. Because of this, applications need to be specially marked in the manifest to be compatible with Samsung multi-window, and many are not. I can run the Chrome web browser and the Skype chat client side by side on my Galaxy Tab A, but opening the Discord chat client causes multi-window to end.
Android 7 "Nougat" claims to have multi-window mode. But neither of the Android devices I use runs Nougat, despite both being "up to date" according to the update manager in Settings. And I imagine few others have received an OTA upgrade to Nougat either.
For any computer user, Linux would be an OS that would either take them to a bash shell
If you're using GNU's command prompt as the contrast, say "Android doesn't run applications made for GNU/Linux."
or to an X/Wayland based desktop environment, like KDE, GNOME, XFCE, et al.
If you're using the X Window System as the contrast, say "Android doesn't run applications made for X11/Linux."
What you could have pointed your sister to could have been ChromeOS: it's been gaining popularity
How well does Chrome OS run applications that aren't written in JavaScript, especially while riding a bus in a city whose buses doesn't provide Wi-Fi?
Sure, in the corporate world desktops are going to be around for some time to come, but in the home consumer world
Would an individual author working from home fit better into "the corporate world" category or "the home consumer world"?
I find it dangerous to assume that all authorship is "corporate", that people at home exclusively "consume", or view works made by others, as opposed to creating works themselves. It promotes the misguided view that only those who gain the approval of incumbent publishers deserve a platform for their speech.
certainly a fair portion of my emails and document reviews are done on my phone
How is that practical when your phone can display only one window at once? On a desktop or laptop running X11/Linux, I can split the screen to see the document in one half and an editor for my review comments in the other half. On Android without manufacturer-specific multi-window mode, everything is maximized, and many applications lack support for manufacturer-specific multi-window mode.
And since when did running the GNU userland represent a requirement for being classified as being "Linux".
It doesn't. But there is a noticeable correlation between "desktop Linux" and GNU.
But multi-window graphical display is a practical requirement for a desktop system, so that the user can see both what he's reading and what he's writing. And most multi-window Linux GUIs use the X Window System (or perhaps its direct successors such as Wayland), which is designed to let the user choose a window manager. Where GNU comes in is its correlation with X: GUI Linux distributions that include either X or GNU tend to include both. Fedora and Debian include both; Android includes neither.
you must remember this: If you're not PAYING for the product, you ARE the product being sold.
I purchased an ASUS Nexus 7 tablet on Google's store in July 2012. Does that count as "PAYING for the product"?
The difference is that "multiple major mainstream car brands, models and domains" can drive on the same roads to the same businesses. With computers, on the other hand, you need to make your application five different times to reach users of the five incompatibly different operating systems: Windows, macOS, X11/Linux, iOS, and Android.
Mark. My. Words.
as long as its not apple. or an apple based product
As I see it, Crouton is for people who live alone, not for people who live with someone far less computer savvy. Installing it requires putting the Chromebook in developer mode, which could also be called "beg whoever turns it on to wipe everything by pressing two keys" mode. If your roommate turns on your Chromebook with Crouton installed, she probably won't know to press Ctrl+D to skip the "OS verification is OFF" interstitial. If she follows the prompts in said interstitial to to reenable OS verification by pressing Space then Enter, do you enjoy having all your work since the last backup powerwashed away and having to reinstall Crouton?
I have had family members erase my disks by following unsafe defaults that they don't understand. In my case, it was the pixel art editor in The Print Shop on my Apple II offering to "initialize" a floppy disk before saving a custom pixel art image. While I was in the shower, my little brother "initialized" my pixel art disk, not knowing what "initialize" meant but assuming that the default was safe. It wasn't; "initialize" means reformat, which caused me to lose all the pixel art that I had already saved on that disk. I have been wary of buying a Chromebook for the purpose of installing Crouton because I fear that others will likewise follow the prompts to cause me to lose data.
It's largely irrelevant. Android and windows operating systems are for different uses. It's like the laptop vs tablet debate. Many people still have both, but the replacement cycles are longer as a result. Perhaps if Android & Chrome merge it will be more relevant. But that does not appear to be the case in the near future.
No offense to some of you but I had to go and type into google "denial is the first..." and it filled in "step of acceptance". I'm guessing a lot of people will be feeling anger right about now.
denial > anger > bargaining > depression > acceptance = stages of grief. I'm already accepted my next primary OS will be steamOS, just wish they would get out of beta, grrrr.