5 ms·

That's a great point. Thinking back to the introduction of iOS and Android, iOS was appliance-like in that it was tailored to one use case (phone), while Androi

That's a great point. Thinking back to the introduction of iOS and Android, iOS was appliance-like in that it was tailored to one use case (phone), while Android felt like a general-purpose OS that just happened to run on a phone. As you point out, the benefit of Android was never quite taken advantage of. However, Google's upcoming Android laptops will hopefully push the issue to the fore. It would be amazing to have a more powerful alternative to iOS on the iPad Pro, more powerful in ways we notice everyday, rather than just being more powerful on paper.

digi_owl 10y ago
The sad thing is that back when 3.0 (Honeycomb) shipped, most of the 10" or so Android tablets included a full size USB-A port. But then came 3.1, and the introduction of the above permission, and basically the major selling point of said port evaporated (i have a Toshiba Thrive sitting here that i basically shelved after said change). If we observe Windows tablets, with the MS Surface at the forefront, many of them come with a easily accessible USB-A port (I recall Gigabyte tried to sell a tablet that came complete with a ethernet port even, but i think that series has since been discontinued). What worries me is that Google introduced this change to placate big media. Because around the same time they made the big announcement that people could now buy movies and music via the Android Marketplace (later renamed Google Play).
- kartickv 10y ago
  It's not to placate big media, but to increase security, as others have pointed out. But the bigger point is that I don't think it's just the USB port that limited Android's flexibility. Android was supposed to be a more flexible, more powerful iOS. That didn't play out in ways the average end user cares about.
- arviewer 10y ago
  What advantage does a A-port have over the current micro ports in a tablet? And now the new C port is slowly gaining more support, I bet the A-port will slowly vanish completely, or am I missing something here?
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    USB-A port = no fiddly adapters etc.
    - dingaling 10y ago
      Counter-intuitively, those big fat USB-A sockets have a much lower minimum-cycle specification compared to Micro-B or USB-C ( 1500, 5000 and 10000 respectively ). So the tiny, fiddly ports are more robust.
      - DannyBee 10y ago
        Don't worry, i'm sure folks would have also complained had they stuck with those ports and they broke.
- eeZi 10y ago
  > Toshiba Thrive sitting here that i basically shelved after said change You can access your media if you use a file explorer and media player which support the new API. > If we observe Windows tablets, with the MS Surface at the forefront, many of them come with a easily accessible USB-A port And all of the applications running on it can access all of your media. Life is easy when there's only one single flat security domain. https://xkcd.com/1200/ https://xkcd.com/1200/
djsumdog 10y ago
> Android felt like a general-purpose OS that just happened to run on a phone. And that was its big issue. They used the firmware model for a general purpose OS. This keeps Android from having the simple install models we've come to expect with Windows/some Linux distros/MacOS. I wrote a thing on this a while back: http://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Note that Chromebooks are similar (and Android 7 adopts the update strategy of ChromeOS). There you have two system partitions, one in use and one on standby. A system update gets applied to the partition on standby, and on next reboot it becomes the used partition (unless the boot is deemed faulty). BTW, event thought Chromebooks gets updates all the time the kernel and drivers are the same one as when they originally shipped. This means that older Chromebooks will not be able to run Android apps, as it is done using kernel provided containerization.
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    Does every vendor have their own image, or is there one universal image for chrome laptops? If it's the former, can you just put a stock image on it, or does each vendor embed their drivers?
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Dunno. I guess you could look through the project site and see if they have more details. https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os
    - fattire 10y ago
      Every device has its own kernel and drivers, which is signed and verified. See: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/verified-boot https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/... If you can unlock your bootloader, you can build your own version of chromeos and the kernel, but trust me, it's not as good. You'll have a chromium-based OS, not chrome based-- it's a lot like the difference between Chromium vs. Chrome in Linux, only affecting the whole OS. I haven't done it in a few years, but I imagine that with the Android integration, even if it builds, you'll have more of a stock AOSP experience sans any Google cloud features. Good for freedom and privacy, but if you're bothering to replace the OS like that actual Linux may be a better call. But if you go for standard Linux, you may run into issues with hardware support, especially graphics acceleration... just sayin'. The closed-source graphics drivers written for ChromeOS may not play friendly with Xorg or whatever. Aside from potential issues w such blobs, I don't see any reason you couldn't unlock the bootloader and try updating your own kernel...

digi_owl 10y ago

The sad thing is that back when 3.0 (Honeycomb) shipped, most of the 10" or so Android tablets included a full size USB-A port. But then came 3.1, and the introduction of the above permission, and basically the major selling point of said port evaporated (i have a Toshiba Thrive sitting here that i basically shelved after said change). If we observe Windows tablets, with the MS Surface at the forefront, many of them come with a easily accessible USB-A port (I recall Gigabyte tried to sell a tablet that came complete with a ethernet port even, but i think that series has since been discontinued). What worries me is that Google introduced this change to placate big media. Because around the same time they made the big announcement that people could now buy movies and music via the Android Marketplace (later renamed Google Play).

kartickv 10y ago
It's not to placate big media, but to increase security, as others have pointed out. But the bigger point is that I don't think it's just the USB port that limited Android's flexibility. Android was supposed to be a more flexible, more powerful iOS. That didn't play out in ways the average end user cares about.
arviewer 10y ago
What advantage does a A-port have over the current micro ports in a tablet? And now the new C port is slowly gaining more support, I bet the A-port will slowly vanish completely, or am I missing something here?
- digi_owl 10y ago
  USB-A port = no fiddly adapters etc.
  - dingaling 10y ago
    Counter-intuitively, those big fat USB-A sockets have a much lower minimum-cycle specification compared to Micro-B or USB-C ( 1500, 5000 and 10000 respectively ). So the tiny, fiddly ports are more robust.
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      Don't worry, i'm sure folks would have also complained had they stuck with those ports and they broke.
eeZi 10y ago
> Toshiba Thrive sitting here that i basically shelved after said change You can access your media if you use a file explorer and media player which support the new API. > If we observe Windows tablets, with the MS Surface at the forefront, many of them come with a easily accessible USB-A port And all of the applications running on it can access all of your media. Life is easy when there's only one single flat security domain. https://xkcd.com/1200/ https://xkcd.com/1200/

djsumdog 10y ago

> Android felt like a general-purpose OS that just happened to run on a phone. And that was its big issue. They used the firmware model for a general purpose OS. This keeps Android from having the simple install models we've come to expect with Windows/some Linux distros/MacOS. I wrote a thing on this a while back: http://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/android-fragmentation/

digi_owl 10y ago
Note that Chromebooks are similar (and Android 7 adopts the update strategy of ChromeOS). There you have two system partitions, one in use and one on standby. A system update gets applied to the partition on standby, and on next reboot it becomes the used partition (unless the boot is deemed faulty). BTW, event thought Chromebooks gets updates all the time the kernel and drivers are the same one as when they originally shipped. This means that older Chromebooks will not be able to run Android apps, as it is done using kernel provided containerization.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  Does every vendor have their own image, or is there one universal image for chrome laptops? If it's the former, can you just put a stock image on it, or does each vendor embed their drivers?
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Dunno. I guess you could look through the project site and see if they have more details. https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os
  - fattire 10y ago
    Every device has its own kernel and drivers, which is signed and verified. See: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/verified-boot https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/... If you can unlock your bootloader, you can build your own version of chromeos and the kernel, but trust me, it's not as good. You'll have a chromium-based OS, not chrome based-- it's a lot like the difference between Chromium vs. Chrome in Linux, only affecting the whole OS. I haven't done it in a few years, but I imagine that with the Android integration, even if it builds, you'll have more of a stock AOSP experience sans any Google cloud features. Good for freedom and privacy, but if you're bothering to replace the OS like that actual Linux may be a better call. But if you go for standard Linux, you may run into issues with hardware support, especially graphics acceleration... just sayin'. The closed-source graphics drivers written for ChromeOS may not play friendly with Xorg or whatever. Aside from potential issues w such blobs, I don't see any reason you couldn't unlock the bootloader and try updating your own kernel...