I wish Android 14 inspired as many app updates as iOS 17 did - 9to5Google
Whenever Apple releases a major OS update, as it did last Monday with iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and watchOS 10,...
Maybe if android 14 was guaranteed to have 70% adoption in one week developers would actually care. There’s no point developing features for 5% of users
Google never should have opened it up for hardware manufacturers. They should have just made the OS and licensed it out like windows. Then hardware manufacturers wouldn’t be able to release crappy forks that never get updated.
This assumes that Android would have anywhere near the reach it does now because of it's openness.
Google actually is enabling hardware manufacturers to control the end to end experience by allowing them this level of control over their own ecosystem.
The difference is ... they're not Apple. No Android manufacturer operates at the scale Apple does. Licensed Android won't change that any more than it will change all of the Windows 7 and 10 licenses that still live on in the real world.
It would also put the onus on Google to produce all the device drivers and compatibility layers needed to support the breadth of hardware currently available. This would slow the entire market down.
They didn't really have a choice. They were building on open-source software and Linux and Arm are somewhat bad at abstracting the hardware. So this means that the manufacturers must homebrew their own distro for their hardware, instead of just publishing drivers like windows hardware does.
They've been working on fixing this, but fundamentally they built their castle on sand. And if they hadn't, they probably never would've gotten anywhere at all and we'd all be on Blackberry or WebOS or WinPhone or whatever.
That's kind of a moot point seeing how it will be adopted by 100% of phones at one point (except for phones which are out of support, but those won't get used at all after a certain point)
Is there not a thing where Spotify user still funny have an icon that changed with the wallpaper you use and people where angry?
Remember that all apps need to target the almost-latest target API at least. That means Android 13 for all new apps and app updates since Aug 31.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/11926878
The update philosophies on Android and iOS are vastly different, as is mentioned in the article.
iOS bundles a vast amount of things in their updates, such as core app updates, platform capability updates and developer API updates.
Android uses the OS update to bring new platform capabilities, mostly, and not even entirely through the mechanism, with lots of things now starting to be delivered unbundled from OS version. Core apps are delivered entirely separately from the OS version. Developer API updates often are backwards compatible using the AppCompat library, meaning that older OS versions sometimes get to benefit from the updates as well.
These differences have led to some significant differences in OS version support - a common OS version support policy for iOS app developers is to support the two most recent OS versions, while android support often is afforded to versions as far back as 5.0.
This in turn leads to an interesting effect, where the useful life of an Android device can actually be longer than that of an iOS device, despite the latter having access to OS updates for a longer time. This being because of the fact that the iOS device essentially becomes unusable once it's no longer supported - you literally can't install apps from the app store anymore, because they have long since dropped support for your OS. Android in the meantime keeps on going, because of the different philosophy of backwards compatibility among Android developers.
All of that being said, I do wish that Android developers were a bit better on things like UI consistency and supporting the latest OS features. I don't know if I'd trade it for what iOS has, though.
This in turn leads to an interesting effect, where the useful life of an Android device can actually be longer than that of an iOS device, despite the latter having access to OS updates for a longer time.
This is so true.
I have a first-Gen iPad Air that runs fine, but is fast becoming useless, despite having received an OS update months ago.
While an old Galaxy S4 I have around runs many apps that still function fine (especially since I can find old compatible versions on apk mirror).
Pretty frustrating, because the iPad Air performance is plenty for the things I want to use it for.
All the things they listed that Apple added is already possible though
I think there also is something different in play. Most Apps come from the U.S. where most people in the tech sector use iPhones. So what OS are they most likley to support better?
Most people in the tech sector use iPhones
As someone in the "tech sector", this is not my experience.
Yea, we'll use them for work phones because Corp manages them anyway (so no advantage to using Android). But pretty much everyone uses Android for personal devices.
Management and above are iPhone.
I think there also is something different in play. Most Apps come from the U.S. where most people in the tech sector use iPhones. So what OS are they most likley to support better?
I wish Apple hadn't abandoned so many devices to rot on an old version for no good reason and then made their "One" service only work on the latest version as a blatant push to make people buy a new iDevice when the one they have would work just fine otherwise.
What he means is that typically after 5v years your iPhone won't get a system update. Lets say you're on iOS 10. Then next year Apple will tell all Devs that their apps may not longer support iOS 10 and below and all apps must use the ios 11 SDK.
Immediately all those folks stuck on iOS 10 cannot upgrade their apps and eventually they may stop functioning.
Whereas on the Android Play Store most apps require Android 5 and above. We're about to get Android 14. That means that an 11 year old Android can still install the very latest apps and games.
if you bind the web browser to the system update you can have as long updates on Android as iOS. Considering how old devices get a washed down version of "updates" and everyone claiming that's the holy grail of system support when google can push browser and security updates through Google Play Services. But keep repeating the only talking points you've ever known. You don't have to wait for a system update for a browser vulnerability like a caveman on Google supported Android. And if Apple has to release the patch for the same vulnerability, it has to push a "system update".
woo hoo, I had to use the Apple system update, Apple is the GOAT.
jeezus. 🤦♂️
Android by no means is perfect, is fragmented beyond control and Google is shit but these "consistent major updates" is apple fed bs. but you do you
My old iPhone 7 (manufactured Sep 2016-2019) received a security update last month. Meanwhile, I bought a Samsung Android tablet new a few years ago only to find that the currently selling model wouldn't upgrade to the current very of Android.
I'm not an iPhone user, but they have better long-term updates than the vast majority of other vendors. Five years of support, I don't disagree with them wanting to push their newest device - they are a business and want to make money. Most features work except for things where there are hardware limitations.
Yep
It is a tough decision…. On one hand you screw older devices; relegated them to second tier status and leave them abandoned and at risk
On the other hand you have a more consistent install base and better support and the ability to drop older systems and their bugs.
Someone gets screwed either way
Yeah, but not the same amount or scope of "someone", though.
You're saying you either make several hundred million devices into ewaste overnight versus "had to wait for a bit for the latest update to propagate".
Not the same scale of problem right there.
Personally I'm giving all of the apps that haven't implemented a themed icon a 1 star when Android 14 launches.
You've literally had a year and a half. It takes 60 seconds to do. Stop being incompetent.
It literally does take 60 seconds to do. It also is incompetence if you're not up to date on the latest Android design guidelines.
in some cases the company behind the app vetoes conformity. not much a developer can do when management wants their branding to stand out
Then the company deserves it.
A very small percentage of android users are at Android 14. Grow up
Android 13 has themed icons.
Maybe developers should grow up and learn to be competent?
A think that a lot of devs take "themed icons" as a gimmick feature on top and rather focus on app stability and other features, or they just don't care because they don't see it as a deal-breaker in any means.
Yep.
As a user, I agree with them.