Did we all just witness Windows start to die?

[nicholas]

I hope MS dies the horrible death it deserves for the misery it inflicted upon developers for the last 20yrs.

I couldn't give a toss whether dumb users liked their products.

[nicholas]

I've seen NT4.0 running on SGI and DEC Alpha machines too. :cool:

It runs quite nicely too.

I saw it running on a PPC machine once but not sure what the actual hardware was.  Might have been an RS/6000 or StarMax model but don't quote me on that.

[nicholas]

Linux is as much derived from Minix (not Minux) as Justin Bieber music is derived from Black Sabbath...

:roflmao:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_debate

[nicholas]

And a less creaky, archaic userland.

Android uses the GNU userland, I use it every day.

[nicholas]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but according to what I read, it doesn't have the full set of GNU libraries - and it certainly doesn't have X or any X desktop environment.

I run the full gamut of software available from the Debian ARM repositories on my phone.

[nicholas]

Hmm, really? And you didn't have to manually install an X server?

Guess someone needs to update that page...

I don't use an xserver on it, but I could if I so wanted to.

edit:  I don't think you quite grasp the concept of what "GNU userland" is either.

[nicholas]

I needed to install BusyBox to get a shell which is somewhat usable on my Android phone and some people will claim BusyBox is not GNU userland.

Surely there are such people.

But the fact I can ssh into my phone and apt-get install pretty much anything I need makes Android no different to any of my other Linux boxes.

[nicholas]

Android has barely dented iOS on the tablet front.

Orly? :?

Android tablets now account for 61.2 percent of the Western European tablet market, more than double the 25.1 percent recorded the same time last year. Apple iOS devices, meanwhile, fell to 37.2 percent of Western European tablet market sales by distribution, from 71.2 percent at the same time last year.

http://www.osnews.com/comments/27219

[nicholas]

You know that there are other parts of the world than western Europe, right?

Nowhere worth living though.

[nicholas]

I must admit Ice Cream Sandwich is pretty nice, you know an OS has come of age when it stops stealing ideas from Apple and Apple starts stealing ideas from it.

ICS 4.0 is nice but it's 3 versions ago.

Jelly Bean 4.3 is out now and looking pretty tasty indeed, even compared to the JB 4.2.2 I run on my ancient SGS2 and HTC Sensation phones.

I think the stealing is a good thing too, when they all start taking each others ideas and improving upon them (even if it's just a tiny little improvement) it means a better experience for all of us users no matter which OS we use.

Didn't Jobs say something like "Good artists copy, great artists steal!"?

Wise words, and usually I couldn't stand the man! lol

[nicholas]

Being mainly an Apple person I haven't gotten to use Jelly Bean too much, what are some of the best new features of Jelly Bean?

It's not slow is the main one.

I use CyanogenMod on my devices, even the wife and kids phone's and tablets so I'm not sure what are stock features and what aren't tbh.

[nicholas]

All Android phones are a pain in the ass if they come with manufacturer skins/bloatware.  Buy a Nexus or HTC One/S4 Google model, or just roll vanilla android onto whatever you have.  It's well worth it.  I found my last S3 damned near unusable with TouchWiz, but loved it with vanilla JB.  Cyanogen is a Godsend.

Vanilla Android I find just great.  I'll likely never go back to an iPhone.

No rooted Android device should be without LBE Security Master.

TOTAL control over app permissions and unlike the crappy implementation we had in CM7 that crashed apps when they were denied a permission it requested this "just works".

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=43644495&postcount=1616

Also you should install the F-Droid "app store" for OSS apps and install AdAway using it.

Both of these together make using Android a thoroughly pleasant experience!

https://f-droid.org/FDroid.apk

[nicholas]

Very good points, Nicholas - and ones I should have raised myself, heh.  Always is security issues to be aware of when you start noodling around with custom ROM's and such.

Android isn't for everyone.  I still use an iPad on a day to day basis, mostly because a lot of my content (books and movies I enjoy re-reading/re-watching) are locked inside the Apple ecosystem.

A lot of people have terrible, terrible experiences with Android as a whole, and honestly, IMO - the single worst thing about Android is the fact that every different handset maker slaps their own goofy interface onto the darned devices, making the whole experience seem very fragmented and disjointed between different manufacturers.  I find vanilla Android, Jellybean in particular - to be just a killer mobile OS.  If for some reason I was forced to go back to Android with TouchWiz or a specific manufacturers skinned up variant of Android I'd probably rather use a feature phone, heh.

I feel yoour pain.  Whenever my Dad (In his sixties) asks me for help with his SGS2 I get so annoyed with it as it's the stock Samsung Touchwiz ICS ROM on there and I'm so used to Cyanogen it really bugs the hell oout of me trying to find things in the settings.  Especially when he's asking me to help him "blind" over the landline so he can fix whatever problem he's having.

I would love to root it and install Cyanogen oon it for him but he uses the Sky Go app to watch sports and movies as he works 12hr night-shifts and the damn app refuses to work on rooted devices.

I did install the DTV India app for him as it has all the sport channels he needs but not the movie channels that he pays for as part of his Sky TV satellite subscription.

He is thinking of changing from Sky TV for Virgin Media Cable TV so hopefully when he does I'll be able to put CM10.1 on the phone for him at last as the Sky Go app is tied to his satelllite subscription so will no longer work.

On a related note my Mother-in-Law (Also in her sixties) has had an iPhone since the day it was released in 2007. She's never once installed an app on it nor has she upgraded the OS on it.  She uses it for phone calls, text messages, mobile Safari and nothing else whatsoever.

She might as well have a feature phone! lol

[nicholas]

It is annoying though. It'd be like ford selling a car that only had 1 forward gear and you had to take it to some back street garage to have a new gearbox fitted. Sure some people will do it, but most will just not buy the car in the first place.
 
The stupid thing is that they add all the stuff on it to differentiate. I would like one of them to differentiate by shipping AOSP (I always pick a phone on hardware and not software anyway, I look for the smallest phone with the best camera). Android development needs to mature though, there are too many kernel ports. There should be one source tree that can be built for all phones and you shouldn't have to choose what features you want to work and what bugs you are willing to live with.
 
I don't recommend hacking anything to anyone, I'll only help them if they come to me & they know the risks. With Android I wouldn't even recommend updating to the latest manufacturer supplied firmware, most people are happiest with the software that was on the phone when they bought it. Every manufacturer update is worse in terms of speed & stability.

Just buy a Nexus device.

[nicholas]

Android claims to be more open than iOS but the reality is very different, Google have actually handed the carriers more power than they have ever had and the reality is iOS gives consumers a better deal with no carrier bloatware, no carrier controlled updates, no carrier branding uglifying your phone and you know what you get every time you buy an iDevice, a consistent apple user and support experiance.

Ahem.... http://www.google.com/nexus/all/