For most users today, an iPad is good enough for just about anything they will ever want to do.
I think that's only true for the tasks that are common to most users. Yes browsing the web and light email is something most users do, but most users also do other things that aren't suited to tablets. Even if we discount the entire professional market that uses desktop computers for everything from CAD to simulation to structural engineering to content production there is a huge market of hobbyists that do image, video, audio editing/production, the "maker movement" product design, programming, web design, PC gaming, desktop publishing, 3D animation, etc... Even things like ripping CDs, ripping/encoding Blurays and DVDs for storage and LAN streaming which used to be the domain of experts are now one-click operations done on a desktop.
Not yet, but it could. One that accepts swift structures and types.
You can call any API from any language. You should have learned that in what ever CS course you have been.
In order to do that from a practical perspective you need a layer that binds the native function calls to language-specific ones and marshals the data types and structures. If a C API function returns a pointer to an object you can't expect to just be able to call that function from a language that has no concept of pointers, you should have learned that in what ever CS course you have been.
You are right - that's why the first "big" Android phones actually had a lower resolution and still were so much better to use. Or something.
Not sure why you think I'm implying that, I put it pretty simply that the notion that screen resolution is the only thing that matters for usability is pretty stupid. Just you because you have a high resolution screen doesn't mean it's automatically going to be fine for web browsing.
You seem to agree with "shove systemd down the admins' throats", you just say it in a more roundabout way. "Open wide or GTFO and switch everything you use to something else."
Rubbish. You're the one begging for updates and then don't like what they offer, if you don't like it then stop taking it. The problem is you take whatever they give you and try and blame them when you don't like it and pretend like they forced it on you.
And I do feel the Linux FOSS community has dropped a ball here a bit, as there doesn't seem to be a good, complete server distro without systemd dependency, even though there seems to be demand for one. I'd have thought somebody would have picked that ball and run with it.
Yes this is the obvious mentality, everybody seems to think somebody else should have done it for them by now. So everybody sits around bitching and nobody does anything.
I'm beyond the point of caring about whether software is free.
Yes it is becoming clear, particularly from this systemd debacle, that it doesn't matter to most people.
For years, GNU/Linux worked better for me then anything else I had. In recent years, it has fallen behind in quality, and the infighting has gotten worse.
Then you can do something about it, use something else or take it as it is. If you want your chosen Linux distro the way it was then either pay somebody to backport fixes or do it yourself. All the options are there.
How should Apple be able to force you to use one or the other?
Well you're going to have a hard time writing for iOS9 if the iOS9 SDK doesn't come with Objective-C bindings for the API. If they do that then practicality will dictate that you use Swift or a cross-platform language & toolchain. Sure you could create a wrapper for the SDK like some other cross-platform tools do but given that Objective-C is really only used for Apple's products it would seem pretty pointless and impractical.
Yes you're right that they can't actually force you and you could go way out of your way to get around their recommendations but we're obviously talking about a practical sense.
It's funny how people always point out there were smartphones before the iPhone which were just fine for web browsing - but they had a lower resolution screen than the Apple Watch, which you can't use for browsing. Errhmmmh.
Obviously because screen resolution isn't the beginning and the end for usability.
There are real reasons why systemd is bad software which doesn't belong in a Unixlike, and they have been discussed extensively. If you won't consider them simply because some people have arguments you don't like, then you're the problem.
So perhaps linking to the well-reasoned, objective posts would be appropriate. I understand this is an emotional issue for some people so an emotional response is expected but the vitriol-spattered posts don't do anything to progress the issue, they lead to it being dismissed as the agenda of "nutters" or "trolls" and such (the conspiracy theorist might say they are the work of the pro-systemd crowd;) ).
If you want people to reverse course then more vitriol isn't going to work.
I like the optimism but an intuitive smartphone browser solved an actual problem, an Apple Watch browser (even if it's intuitive) still doesn't solve any problem, provide any advantage or improve on any workflow. Scrolling through the clickable areas is how WAP browsing worked on my dumbphone and that is just awful.
I hope you realize that's exactly the kind of forcing he's talking about? Most users need an OS now. Creating a stable, tested, trustworthy, secure custom distro is beyond resources (be it employers willingness to pay for maintaining an independent Linux distro, or hours per day reserved for maintenance of custom Linux instead of doing what one actually wants to do) of 99% of even those Linux users, to whom systems matters.
And finally they are starting to realize that Libre != Gratis. There are people working hard to produce software that they need and want, a side-effect is that you can get it for free and if you're not contributing then you're leeching and that is OK but you don't get to dictate what they do. Now if you are contributing then vote with your wallet and take your contributions elsewhere. The mentality of you entitlist little shits where you conflate this to mean they are "shoving systemd down your throat" is fucking absurd.
It's pure laziness, use Windows, use OS X, use BSD, use any one of the many Linux distros that does not have systemd, use a version of Linux distros from before they incorporated systemd and backport necessary patches. There are plenty of options out there but you just want it all done for you and all done your way for no cost. With this mentality I see why Free Software is still struggling to get mainstream adoption, most people are just in it for the gratis aspect. If systemd truly were a tiny minority pushing something largely buggy and unwanted on the masses then the Free Software ideology and the free market would have stamped it out by forking the existing distros. Maybe it is buggy but if so those who see that are too lazy to do anything about it.
NB: I have no opinion either way on systemd, it's just sad to see how far the Free Software movement is falling. If a well-reasoned, objective argument won't win them over then obviously resorting to vitriol won't, let it go and move on.
I remember people asking about why anybody would use an internet browser on their phone when they could just use their laptop.
Most people didn't except in the case where they didn't have their laptop with them because it was a crappy user experience, then the iPhone came along and made the experience good. The Apple Watch needs you to have your phone with you for connectivity so I don't think many people are going to prefer browsing on a watch which is a poor experience where you have to scroll through clickable areas and can't type URLs when they can just use their iPhone.
It isn't that simple. Using old versions isn't a viable option once security updates stop
Well that's the whole mantra of Free Software, you can either fix it yourself or pay somebody else to fix it for you. So many people still don't understand it isn't meant to be a gratis, leeching ideology. It's gratis due to it being libre, this doesn't mean you're entitled to have everything your way for no cost. If people share your view so much that they produce what you want and you are able to leech off that then good for you but if not then you need to contribute to producing what you want.
I still don't see people want to pay indefinitely to be able to hear their music.
Why not? For a few bucks a month I can listen to whatever I want on whatever device I want. In the rare case I can only get some specific music by buying the digital version or buying the CD I'll do that but that's a pain because I have to sync it to all the devices I want to use and I don't always have access to it.
Your notion of "optimizing for the hardware" is something that isn't real. According to your theory, Linux also shouldn't perform well because it also is hardware-agnostic.
Why would it not perform well? Optimization would make it perform better it isn't a pre-requisite for it to perform adequately.
And of course we optimize for hardware, if you're doing GPU acceleration for example you're going to use the specific features of a particular GPU, if you want to utilize it effectively you don't just use the same path for all the different PowerVR GPUs, different Ardreno GPUs and different Mali GPUs. It would be quite a task to write an optimized implementation for all which is why iOS and Windows Phone do it only for a limited subset while Android goes for a generic approach. It's not going to exploit the hardware capabilities as well but it will work across more hardware.
As for what OEMs have to do, a modern mobile device is immensely complex, consisting of dozens of processors, many on the SoC (system on a chip) but many not. All of them have to be configured, which is a complex and tedious operation, and easy to get wrong -- and
every custom board requires a custom configuration.
I didn't realize this was something that changed so much for each Android version.
I get what you're saying, that you want it to be hardware agnostic and that's ok, but you know that it's just silliness to argue that optimizing for specific hardware isn't a real thing.
Surely you browse the web and check your e-mail on each.
Yeah and my bookmarks and email sync to both.
Surely there's files you have on each.
Some, but relatively few exist on both. I have terrabytes of storage on my desktop and only gigabytes on my phone.
And I'm guessing the current generation of mobile phone processors are already powerful enough for the desktop for most people
If you're just doing simple tasks then sure but most people will have a desktop because - even if only for a very small percentage of the time - they do something other than those simple tasks that cannot be handled by a phone or a tablet or an ultrabook.
Yes what an excellent idea, your phone is stolen, lost or broken and then all your data is gone and your peripherals useless. A better idea is cloud (or your own private NAS) sync so that data is available - as you say - "no matter what device you're using".
And before anyone says you can't; you most certainly can delete every App, even the "Apple" ones, from an iPhone. I know, because I accidently deleted iTunes from my iPhone, but I was able to get it back from the App Store, too.
How did you do that? When you long-press (in iOS8.3 anyway) the Apple apps (including iTunes) don't get the little 'X' to delete them like all the others. I have no real interest in deleting them (ones like the Apple Watch app just end up in my 'Junk' folder), just curious.
How would any user buying it know? Does it say "beware, running unsupported 5 year old phone OS, buy at your own risk" ??
Well I did say it's good "if you're ok with that", (insofar as "that" references that the software is outdated and unsupported), now of course being "ok with that" is predicated on knowing it. If you don't know it then you can't really say whether you are or are not ok with it.
Does it not have warranty?
I don't know, maybe.
If it has warranty, is it not supported?
Maybe it has a warranty and if so I guess it would mean it has some level of support but whether that extends to the software being patched for security issues is possible but I would say unlikely.
We do work with the hardware vendors and they have access to the under-development code. But most of them (quite sensibly, IMO) hold off doing very much until quite late in the product cycle, because change is fast and furious and they don't want to spend a lot of time spinning doing work they just have to redo.
Out of interest what is all this work that the OEMs have to do to make an Android version run on their hardware? I would have assumed it would be optimizations for the hardware but that doesn't seem to be the case.
I don't know what you mean by "better matched". Android is specifically not tailored to any particular hardware. That's by design, and it's a good thing. Certainly there are some down sides, but its what makes the vibrant, competitive ecosystem possible, and that ecosystem is why Android's market share is what it is, because it serves consumers.
What I mean is that the software is not particularly optimized for any hardware - and yes you point out that is the intention, that it be hardware-agnostic - but the performance suffers as a result. It's more of a brute force approach to getting more performance so naturally you end up with hardware being over-powered and under-utilized. Ultimately it means that the user experience of "Android" in general varies wildly depending on what device and what version you are running, but maybe you're right and that doesn't matter.
Obviously iOS is vastly different because of the hardware and software being made by the same company but Windows Phone for example offers a pretty consistent user experience across whichever device you use because they limit it to hardware for which the software is optimized.
The only way Google could provide the same instant update experience is to finish and release it to OEMs then embargo the release information for months until the OEMs were ready to go.
But the development process is closed, the problem is that they develop the software and don't work with the hardware vendors, this is part of the problem. After the software is complete the OEMs have to make it run well on their hardware. If the OEMs were involved in the development process you would have the hardware and software components better matched and optimized and also a more timely release.
I'm not suggesting opening the development process completely but at least working closely with OHA partners.
Microsoft has been dealing with this issue for...ever? Older hardware can't run the newer versions of operating systems.
Unless you have the most absolute low end system then even systems from a decade ago can run Windows 8.1 just fine.
Not really sure why Android is being singled out for such accusations, Windows suffers the same issues, and has always had problems getting people to upgrade.
The difference is that most people can upgrade if they want to and for those who can't/don't want to the older operating system still gets updates and security fixes. For example you pointed out that there are a lot of Windows XP installations going, well these systems received updates for well over 10 years. In fact most 10-year-old systems can quite easily be upgraded to Windows 7+. Now if you have a look at Android Froyo for example, there were a lot of installations of that and while there were updates released for it for just one year most of the systems couldn't get any of those updates and almost none of them could be upgraded to Android Gingerbread.
Many people don't see a point to upgrading for a very simple reason: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
But the older versions of Android are broken, they have bugs and security problems that will not and can not be fixed. People didn't upgrade from Windows XP because it was still supported and still received updates and security fixes, then shortly after Windows XP stopped receiving fixes its usage plummeted as people upgraded.
They provide the OS in source form, then each device maker and carrier goes out, compile it and ship it for their hardware.
But even the official OHA members - Google's official partners for Android - don't set a good example. You're not going to eradicate cheap lowend devices that ship with unsupported versions but at least the official Google-certified Android devices should be supported for a decent length of time.
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For most users today, an iPad is good enough for just about anything they will ever want to do.
I think that's only true for the tasks that are common to most users. Yes browsing the web and light email is something most users do, but most users also do other things that aren't suited to tablets. Even if we discount the entire professional market that uses desktop computers for everything from CAD to simulation to structural engineering to content production there is a huge market of hobbyists that do image, video, audio editing/production, the "maker movement" product design, programming, web design, PC gaming, desktop publishing, 3D animation, etc... Even things like ripping CDs, ripping/encoding Blurays and DVDs for storage and LAN streaming which used to be the domain of experts are now one-click operations done on a desktop.
Something like an "Swift API" does not exist.
Not yet, but it could. One that accepts swift structures and types.
You can call any API from any language. You should have learned that in what ever CS course you have been.
In order to do that from a practical perspective you need a layer that binds the native function calls to language-specific ones and marshals the data types and structures. If a C API function returns a pointer to an object you can't expect to just be able to call that function from a language that has no concept of pointers, you should have learned that in what ever CS course you have been.
You are right - that's why the first "big" Android phones actually had a lower resolution and still were so much better to use. Or something.
Not sure why you think I'm implying that, I put it pretty simply that the notion that screen resolution is the only thing that matters for usability is pretty stupid. Just you because you have a high resolution screen doesn't mean it's automatically going to be fine for web browsing.
The API is C/C++ ... very hard to not be able to call that from Obj-C
Or they only provide a swift API.
You seem to agree with "shove systemd down the admins' throats", you just say it in a more roundabout way. "Open wide or GTFO and switch everything you use to something else."
Rubbish. You're the one begging for updates and then don't like what they offer, if you don't like it then stop taking it. The problem is you take whatever they give you and try and blame them when you don't like it and pretend like they forced it on you.
And I do feel the Linux FOSS community has dropped a ball here a bit, as there doesn't seem to be a good, complete server distro without systemd dependency, even though there seems to be demand for one. I'd have thought somebody would have picked that ball and run with it.
Yes this is the obvious mentality, everybody seems to think somebody else should have done it for them by now. So everybody sits around bitching and nobody does anything.
I'm beyond the point of caring about whether software is free.
Yes it is becoming clear, particularly from this systemd debacle, that it doesn't matter to most people.
For years, GNU/Linux worked better for me then anything else I had. In recent years, it has fallen behind in quality, and the infighting has gotten worse.
Then you can do something about it, use something else or take it as it is. If you want your chosen Linux distro the way it was then either pay somebody to backport fixes or do it yourself. All the options are there.
How should Apple be able to force you to use one or the other?
Well you're going to have a hard time writing for iOS9 if the iOS9 SDK doesn't come with Objective-C bindings for the API. If they do that then practicality will dictate that you use Swift or a cross-platform language & toolchain. Sure you could create a wrapper for the SDK like some other cross-platform tools do but given that Objective-C is really only used for Apple's products it would seem pretty pointless and impractical.
Yes you're right that they can't actually force you and you could go way out of your way to get around their recommendations but we're obviously talking about a practical sense.
It's funny how people always point out there were smartphones before the iPhone which were just fine for web browsing - but they had a lower resolution screen than the Apple Watch, which you can't use for browsing. Errhmmmh.
Obviously because screen resolution isn't the beginning and the end for usability.
There are real reasons why systemd is bad software which doesn't belong in a Unixlike, and they have been discussed extensively. If you won't consider them simply because some people have arguments you don't like, then you're the problem.
So perhaps linking to the well-reasoned, objective posts would be appropriate. I understand this is an emotional issue for some people so an emotional response is expected but the vitriol-spattered posts don't do anything to progress the issue, they lead to it being dismissed as the agenda of "nutters" or "trolls" and such (the conspiracy theorist might say they are the work of the pro-systemd crowd ;) ).
If you want people to reverse course then more vitriol isn't going to work.
I think reality is going to, again, surprise us.
I like the optimism but an intuitive smartphone browser solved an actual problem, an Apple Watch browser (even if it's intuitive) still doesn't solve any problem, provide any advantage or improve on any workflow. Scrolling through the clickable areas is how WAP browsing worked on my dumbphone and that is just awful.
I hope you realize that's exactly the kind of forcing he's talking about? Most users need an OS now. Creating a stable, tested, trustworthy, secure custom distro is beyond resources (be it employers willingness to pay for maintaining an independent Linux distro, or hours per day reserved for maintenance of custom Linux instead of doing what one actually wants to do) of 99% of even those Linux users, to whom systems matters.
And finally they are starting to realize that Libre != Gratis. There are people working hard to produce software that they need and want, a side-effect is that you can get it for free and if you're not contributing then you're leeching and that is OK but you don't get to dictate what they do. Now if you are contributing then vote with your wallet and take your contributions elsewhere. The mentality of you entitlist little shits where you conflate this to mean they are "shoving systemd down your throat" is fucking absurd.
It's pure laziness, use Windows, use OS X, use BSD, use any one of the many Linux distros that does not have systemd, use a version of Linux distros from before they incorporated systemd and backport necessary patches. There are plenty of options out there but you just want it all done for you and all done your way for no cost. With this mentality I see why Free Software is still struggling to get mainstream adoption, most people are just in it for the gratis aspect. If systemd truly were a tiny minority pushing something largely buggy and unwanted on the masses then the Free Software ideology and the free market would have stamped it out by forking the existing distros. Maybe it is buggy but if so those who see that are too lazy to do anything about it.
NB: I have no opinion either way on systemd, it's just sad to see how far the Free Software movement is falling. If a well-reasoned, objective argument won't win them over then obviously resorting to vitriol won't, let it go and move on.
I remember people asking about why anybody would use an internet browser on their phone when they could just use their laptop.
Most people didn't except in the case where they didn't have their laptop with them because it was a crappy user experience, then the iPhone came along and made the experience good. The Apple Watch needs you to have your phone with you for connectivity so I don't think many people are going to prefer browsing on a watch which is a poor experience where you have to scroll through clickable areas and can't type URLs when they can just use their iPhone.
It isn't that simple. Using old versions isn't a viable option once security updates stop
Well that's the whole mantra of Free Software, you can either fix it yourself or pay somebody else to fix it for you. So many people still don't understand it isn't meant to be a gratis, leeching ideology. It's gratis due to it being libre, this doesn't mean you're entitled to have everything your way for no cost. If people share your view so much that they produce what you want and you are able to leech off that then good for you but if not then you need to contribute to producing what you want.
Anything higher than 44.1/16 is scientifically proven to be wasteful.
Yes but be it SATA cables, Ethernet cables or higher than 44.1/16 you will find people that will believe their confirmation bias over facts.
I still don't see people want to pay indefinitely to be able to hear their music.
Why not? For a few bucks a month I can listen to whatever I want on whatever device I want. In the rare case I can only get some specific music by buying the digital version or buying the CD I'll do that but that's a pain because I have to sync it to all the devices I want to use and I don't always have access to it.
Your notion of "optimizing for the hardware" is something that isn't real. According to your theory, Linux also shouldn't perform well because it also is hardware-agnostic.
Why would it not perform well? Optimization would make it perform better it isn't a pre-requisite for it to perform adequately.
And of course we optimize for hardware, if you're doing GPU acceleration for example you're going to use the specific features of a particular GPU, if you want to utilize it effectively you don't just use the same path for all the different PowerVR GPUs, different Ardreno GPUs and different Mali GPUs. It would be quite a task to write an optimized implementation for all which is why iOS and Windows Phone do it only for a limited subset while Android goes for a generic approach. It's not going to exploit the hardware capabilities as well but it will work across more hardware.
As for what OEMs have to do, a modern mobile device is immensely complex, consisting of dozens of processors, many on the SoC (system on a chip) but many not. All of them have to be configured, which is a complex and tedious operation, and easy to get wrong -- and every custom board requires a custom configuration.
I didn't realize this was something that changed so much for each Android version.
I get what you're saying, that you want it to be hardware agnostic and that's ok, but you know that it's just silliness to argue that optimizing for specific hardware isn't a real thing.
Surely you browse the web and check your e-mail on each.
Yeah and my bookmarks and email sync to both.
Surely there's files you have on each.
Some, but relatively few exist on both. I have terrabytes of storage on my desktop and only gigabytes on my phone.
And I'm guessing the current generation of mobile phone processors are already powerful enough for the desktop for most people
If you're just doing simple tasks then sure but most people will have a desktop because - even if only for a very small percentage of the time - they do something other than those simple tasks that cannot be handled by a phone or a tablet or an ultrabook.
Yes what an excellent idea, your phone is stolen, lost or broken and then all your data is gone and your peripherals useless. A better idea is cloud (or your own private NAS) sync so that data is available - as you say - "no matter what device you're using".
And before anyone says you can't; you most certainly can delete every App, even the "Apple" ones, from an iPhone. I know, because I accidently deleted iTunes from my iPhone, but I was able to get it back from the App Store, too.
How did you do that? When you long-press (in iOS8.3 anyway) the Apple apps (including iTunes) don't get the little 'X' to delete them like all the others. I have no real interest in deleting them (ones like the Apple Watch app just end up in my 'Junk' folder), just curious.
How would any user buying it know? Does it say "beware, running unsupported 5 year old phone OS, buy at your own risk" ??
Well I did say it's good "if you're ok with that", (insofar as "that" references that the software is outdated and unsupported), now of course being "ok with that" is predicated on knowing it. If you don't know it then you can't really say whether you are or are not ok with it.
Does it not have warranty?
I don't know, maybe.
If it has warranty, is it not supported?
Maybe it has a warranty and if so I guess it would mean it has some level of support but whether that extends to the software being patched for security issues is possible but I would say unlikely.
We do work with the hardware vendors and they have access to the under-development code. But most of them (quite sensibly, IMO) hold off doing very much until quite late in the product cycle, because change is fast and furious and they don't want to spend a lot of time spinning doing work they just have to redo.
Out of interest what is all this work that the OEMs have to do to make an Android version run on their hardware? I would have assumed it would be optimizations for the hardware but that doesn't seem to be the case.
I don't know what you mean by "better matched". Android is specifically not tailored to any particular hardware. That's by design, and it's a good thing. Certainly there are some down sides, but its what makes the vibrant, competitive ecosystem possible, and that ecosystem is why Android's market share is what it is, because it serves consumers.
What I mean is that the software is not particularly optimized for any hardware - and yes you point out that is the intention, that it be hardware-agnostic - but the performance suffers as a result. It's more of a brute force approach to getting more performance so naturally you end up with hardware being over-powered and under-utilized. Ultimately it means that the user experience of "Android" in general varies wildly depending on what device and what version you are running, but maybe you're right and that doesn't matter.
Obviously iOS is vastly different because of the hardware and software being made by the same company but Windows Phone for example offers a pretty consistent user experience across whichever device you use because they limit it to hardware for which the software is optimized.
The only way Google could provide the same instant update experience is to finish and release it to OEMs then embargo the release information for months until the OEMs were ready to go.
But the development process is closed, the problem is that they develop the software and don't work with the hardware vendors, this is part of the problem. After the software is complete the OEMs have to make it run well on their hardware. If the OEMs were involved in the development process you would have the hardware and software components better matched and optimized and also a more timely release.
I'm not suggesting opening the development process completely but at least working closely with OHA partners.
Microsoft has been dealing with this issue for...ever? Older hardware can't run the newer versions of operating systems.
Unless you have the most absolute low end system then even systems from a decade ago can run Windows 8.1 just fine.
Not really sure why Android is being singled out for such accusations, Windows suffers the same issues, and has always had problems getting people to upgrade.
The difference is that most people can upgrade if they want to and for those who can't/don't want to the older operating system still gets updates and security fixes. For example you pointed out that there are a lot of Windows XP installations going, well these systems received updates for well over 10 years. In fact most 10-year-old systems can quite easily be upgraded to Windows 7+. Now if you have a look at Android Froyo for example, there were a lot of installations of that and while there were updates released for it for just one year most of the systems couldn't get any of those updates and almost none of them could be upgraded to Android Gingerbread.
Many people don't see a point to upgrading for a very simple reason: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
But the older versions of Android are broken, they have bugs and security problems that will not and can not be fixed. People didn't upgrade from Windows XP because it was still supported and still received updates and security fixes, then shortly after Windows XP stopped receiving fixes its usage plummeted as people upgraded.
Replace "version" with "security patch" then, Android is extremely poor in this regard, no matter how you try and spin it that is a very bad thing.
What stick would you suggest they use ?
I assume he means the OHA.
They provide the OS in source form, then each device maker and carrier goes out, compile it and ship it for their hardware.
But even the official OHA members - Google's official partners for Android - don't set a good example. You're not going to eradicate cheap lowend devices that ship with unsupported versions but at least the official Google-certified Android devices should be supported for a decent length of time.