I have been developing Android apps since Eclair, and I'm from a "developing" country. For me the deterioration of Android started after Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean for me is the best Android OS in history. So fast and fluid, it can run on the most low-end smartphones at that time. Developing for it was also very fun.
Then I remember KitKat OS came and it was all hell broke loose. Every OEM was just releasing different Android versions here and there every year. And Google did nothing. They just let every smartphone company do what they want
In my history of ~11 years of Android development, it's just hard to purchase a Google phone. I bought a Nexus tablet but I have to ask my sister in the US to ship it to me. The shipping fee is ridiculous high I remember. Then they introduced Pixel and Go editions but still I couldn't purchase officially from Google. I have to ask favor from someone in the US/EU to ship it to me.
Personally I miss Kitkat 4.4. That sweet, sweet Mass Storage mode made file management oh so easy. No trying to copy things around only to have it bitch at you that the device is busy, or the crippled replacement MTP making Windows lose its shit at the idea you might want to copy a filetype that wasn't on its approved list. God we've regressed.
MTP sucks hard and is slow and easy to overload with many files.
My 4.2 device was Umi X2 Chinese phone and I even hacked together couple Roms for such Meadiatek based devices back then. I remember my lightest ROM was like 250mb. With working PlayStore and all, but obviously only bare minimum included. Nowadays even the lightest custom Roms are 700mb+ . With Google apps and all easy 1.5GB and more.
The way they went with Java support and how the NDK still feels like a 20% project after all these years killed the motivation for doing side gigs in Android development.
Also Google IO is not fun any longer, knowing that I will only get to play with those features when my phone dies and is time for a replacement.
And even when buying one needs to take care, for example, plenty of Android 10 phones still on sale.
Back when I developed Android apps I never bothered to watch IO and barely kept up with the latest SDKs. There was no point because it takes years for new versions of Android to go live on enough devices to make the effort worthwhile. By the time half of users are on the latest version a whole new version has been released.
AppCompat, AndroidX, and their other library projects have basically made SDK concerns something you rarely have to think about at this point. Usually the only thing you need to consider are security concerns that newer versions force on you, like updated, new or more finely grained permissions. Everything else pretty much just works. My current teams app supports all the way back to API 23, and has only needed to drop support for older versions a couple times for security reasons.
It all works so well with older versions now that on an evaluation from the mobile teams of the new UI frameworks Jetpack Compose and Swift UI, we decided fully in support of Jetpack Compose because it worked very well out of the box with older versions and was getting tons of updates.
We decided against Swift UI since it was tied to the iOS version, and although most people who can update their phone do, significant numbers of users it seems don't immediately buy new iPhones anymore when they don't get updates anymore. As much as the dev experience would have been improved using the latest Swift UI on latest, the lowest version we support is stuck with one of the terrible first iterations. For something like UI, it just wasn't worth losing so many users.
I'll admit it has been a long time -- androidx was only just showing up when I stopped developing for the platform.
> AppCompat, AndroidX, and their other library projects have basically made SDK concerns something you rarely have to think about at this point.
I kinda wish this meant they would spread out the releases a bit more, say 2-3 years apart. At least then they'd have even more motivation to ensure that the support libs et al offered compelling features that don't require manufacturers to stop being lazy.
Apps targeting pre-2018 iOS versions bundle the mid-2018 version of swift runtime for compatibility reasons.
For example, when you run an app made in the iOS 15 era on an iOS 13 device, the app can’t use any runtime features that are not included with iOS 13. Given that swift is still rapidly evolving, that amounts to a lot of useful features. This year, iOS 16 apps get to use the cool new Regex features.
Marshmallow (23) is an odd version to support. Most legacy device apps go back to at least Lollipop (21). Compose UI and some other stuff requires API 21. Any reason for Marshmallow?
Our app heavily uses BLE and we integrate with a number of different partners. I don't remember which libraries required it, but a few of them required us to move up to 23.
I have worked on multiple apps from global top 500, we had a little bit of NDK for videos and WebRTC.
But that code was written in the times when there was no widely used non-NDK APIs for media. Right now landscape is very different: NDK is very niche, and if you’re seeing it everywhere, then either you’re in the gamedev / IoT / etc, or doing something in a very strange way.
I completely agree with android getting worse every major update.
I have an old-ish phone, but recently needed to update from android 9 to android 10. And have been plagued with issues ever since - volume is somehow lowered on bluetooth devices, and the battery doesn't last as long, and occasionally there are crashes that force phone to restart.
The Bluetooth audio issue is annoying.
There seems to be some disagreement between the headset chipset and the phone about what the default volume level should be.
You can turn off a setting called something like 'unified volume control', to go back to the old way of having separate (and redundant) volume control on both headset and source device.
This option should allow you to adjust the volume on your peripheral AND your device, instead of only adjusting it on the device which may max out via software.
This is something I set religiously on all the Android devices I use for audio-only media.
Interesting you had that experience, since KitKat had Project Svelte which was a big effort to cut memory usage. This made an enormous difference for low end phones.
My experience with KitKat is not that good. Yes memory usage improved but the introduction of broken APIs started here. I remember MediaPlayer API was just so broken in this build. It was breaking so much randomly in HTC and Sony that we have to search frantically for those phones. Plus our apps also run on TV by plugging an Android USB. It worked pretty well on JB and then broke suddenly after KitKat. I remember vividly since I have to code for 23 hours straight just to beat that deadline.
“As of October 2020, 1.47% of Android devices run KitKat. As of August 2022, it is the oldest Android version still supported by Google Play Services and is currently the minimum version to develop apps for the Google Play Store.”
I remember KitKat being great because it was the version that introduced Chrome based WebView, which made a huge difference for compatibility if you needed it. However the WebView component only got auto-updating in Android 5.0, so security double sucks.
And KitKat was the version that there was an explosion of devices for - impressive that 4.4.4 is still supported nearly a decade later (albeit without OS security patches!) It was released when iOS7 was released with the iPhone 5.
The thing you have to remember about those usage figures is that they don’t really include the large numbers of low-end devices that are often running quite old versions of Android.
The sort of person who uses SHAREit and other platforms to minimise their data usage, often has to delete one app and install another to switch between them (due to lack of space), and certainly can’t afford a new phone every few years, is not included in these statistics.
> They just let every smartphone company do what they want
I understand your point. It is like (me) linux user asking for a simple desktop - minimal GUI. Nothing flashy like winXP.
The world on the other hand (incl. many developers) want tons of features - bling etc. This is rampant in developing world (especially phones non-motorola phones).
BTW, you could have bought moto G, E editions in India. These are so close to stock pixel experience.
> er vividly since I have to code for 23 hours straight just to beat that deadline.
Lets be honest. That indicates app ecosystem matured. It is as big as OS. People that we ask to build apps charge tons of money.
> TV by plugging an Android USB.
For you it is a feature. For others it may be a security issue.
> And Google did nothing. They just let every smartphone company do what they want
What would you have expected them to do? Vendors are free by licensing to fork AOSP and do what they will with it. Ain't nothing Google can say to change that; any more than they can say what people can do with forks of Chromium.
- Google most certainly can restrict how its products are used, in fact they do. Licensing comes with rules.
- Huawei is “free” to use AOSP, but can’t use Google’s APIs. See how far they got with that. No App Store and no Google APIs means a lot of apps won’t work. So you really need Google’s version unless you’re in China.
>Huawei is “free” to use AOSP, but can’t use Google’s APIs. See how far they got with that. No App Store and no Google APIs means a lot of apps won’t work. So you really need Google’s version unless you’re in China.
I don't think that's the main reason why Huawei cannot make phones. Sure in International markets it's an issue. But Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi and other phones sold in China also don't have Google Play and Play Services.
Amazon devices are sold because they’re cheap ebook readers.
Huawei has only been blocked from dealing with the US, but as a result it’s been killed around the world after being one of the leading low-cost brands. Why? No Google.
Take out the Play Store and Play APIs and now you’re just a random Chinese Android manufacturer.
Most Amazon tablets I see aren't being used as cheap ebook readers but are being used by kids because their parents don't want to risk them damaging an expensive tablet.
they could've made the android naming and trademark licensing be the gateway - you have to maintain a certain level of quality, or not add crapware, etc. If a manufacturer forks, and don't get the naming rights, they cannot use the logos, name or branding.
> The "Android" name, the Android logo, the "Google Play" brand, and other Google trademarks, are property of Google LLC and not part of the assets available through the Android Open Source Project.
But guess what? This didn't (and still doesn't) influence the device vendors one bit. Instead, the device vendors worked around this constraint in the most blunt way possible: by stripping the word "Android" out of the OS in every place it appears, replacing it with some other term. That's half of what these Android-forked OSes (e.g. Xiaomi's MIUI) are about in the first place — giving the OS its own branding distinct from "Android."
Not the device vendors. Some device vendors did that. Some other device vendors would have preferred to use the Android branding and comply with Google's restrictions than to alienate the existing userbase. Can you really imagine Samsung selling SamsungOS phones? Once Android was established it was well within Google's possibilities to impose restrictions, but they instead chose to let the manufacturers do whatever they pleased.
At this point people who are in the Samsung ecosystem like the Samsung UI. The Galaxy brand is arguably just as valuable as the Android brand, if you want to be real about it. Samsung absolutely would have sold their own SamsungOS-branded phones.
The first truly successful Android devices were the Motorola Droid and the original Samsung Galaxy. Even back then, in the Android 2.X days, they were making modifications to the style of Android, similar to the way Samsung and HTC and others had similarly customized Windows Mobile in the pre-iPhone smartphone era.
Android managed to get a stronghold thanks to Google’s aggressive investment and the fact that they didn’t charge OEMs a royalty to use it (which Microsoft did and Symbian did. Also, neither Symbian nor Windows Mobile were at all competitive to iOS and Android was after Google pivoted post-iPhone launch) and the fact that they let carriers and OEMs do whatever they wanted to the interface and add whatever bloatware they wanted.
It wasn’t until well past the success of the Galaxy line that Google started to try to rein in the diversions and UX forks. And Samsung, which has a UX that at this point many of its customers prefer, has received a light touch from a lot of these attempts because they are consistently one of the largest Android OEMs.
Android largely has a userbase because Google let the OEMs do whatever they wanted, similar to what Symbian and Windows Mobile had allowed before.
> The Galaxy brand is arguably just as valuable as the Android brand, if you want to be real about it.
Wintel duopoly all over again. I wrote/maintain two Android apps. 20 years ago, I wrote/maintained some Windows desktop apps. It’s amazing to me how it’s all different, but yet feels so much the same.
Android is parallel to Windows, except on mobile and arguably worse because of the hardware disparities and non standard cryptic driver implementations.
About a decade ago. But most of the 40% of people who use Android in the US aren’t looking for “Android phones” they are looking for cheap phones.
The average selling price of an Android phone in the US is less than $300. The average Android buyer in the US is getting a less than optimal experience and don’t seem to care. They would buy any phone that could make phone calls, surf the web and watch YouTube and get on Facebook.
It's a portable mini computer with different radios, nice screens, audio/video, cameras etc etc etc. How much cheaper to you think a proper smartphone could be?
They actually already have this, except not with naming and trademarks but holding back access to the closed-source first-party Google apps (which I believe includes Chrome, as the AOSP browser was deprecated), most notably Google Play (the Store and Services, which are required to get and then use many apps... hell: even Signal, of all things, requires Google Play Services still afaik). To get access to these apps requires passing a complicated compliance process which includes a comprehensive test suite that limits the kinds of changes you can make to your fork of Android.
Signal doesn't require Play Services but if it's included in the base image you need to have it installed even if it's disabled for Signal to work.
Basically this:
__________________
| GMS Preinstalled |
Current |---------+--------|
GMS Status | Yes | No |
_____________|_________|________|
| Installed | OK | OK |
|-------------|---------+--------|
| Disabled | OK | OK |
|-------------|---------+--------|
| Uninstalled | NOT OK | OK |
+-------------+---------+--------+
Many of them will show "X requires Google Play Services" warnings and then... continue working fine anyway. It's always the same wording, so I assume it's just a thing that the app-side libraries do when it tries to talk to the service and it isn't there.
I think it's more likely to just crash because most software author simply don't care class not found exceptions (If you already being hosted on Google play, why would you?)
Maybe regulate the apps pre-installed and each of the OEM's Android flavor? You have tried Sony Xperia before right? Their UI hardly resembles any Android. Samsung flavor was worse back then too.
They did that, and I'm not sure they could have gone much further in the way of restricting OEMs, considering they were told to knock that shit off by the EU [0]. Few people that I recall so much as batted an eye - even XDA in the earlier days was stuffed full of people wondering how long until Google came down harder on OEMs for better update support, and many people were in favour of Google using Google Play Services as a stick.
I live in EU and pixel phones are not officially available to me. Even in countries where they are there is no sufficient stock for a long time after they are released. At this point mainstream Android devices are either Samsung or Chinese brands.
> Every OEM was just releasing different Android versions here and there every year. And Google did nothing. They just let every smartphone company do what they want
It's open source, what do you propose they do about that? Close source the OS?
> For me the deterioration of Android started after Jelly Bean. Jelly Bean for me is the best Android OS in history.
This is definitely where I lost you. That's a 10 year old OS, basically an OS that represents the the infancy of consumer smartphones. Anyone who actually goes back and uses an OS that old will quickly discover just how little "vital" functionality it has.
One that's particularly funny to me: Android added native printer support in 8.0. That's something we've had on desktop computers for decades!
We didn't even have fully fledged notification controls and do not disturb before Android 5, something that's considered a basic necessity now. Couldn't search the system settings. The list goes on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_version_history
> They just let every smartphone company do what they want
You might be romanticizing the situation. Before Jelly Bean, it was still completely a Wild West. If anything, custom skins from manufacturers were even worse back then.
I have used Jelly Bean both on S3 and Nexus 4. What I found is that Jelly Bean gets really slow after a while and you need to factory reset every couple of months. Newer versions of Android don't have this issue.
Factory reset on android can only reset the apps to the version of the app that came with the OS release. It doesn't revert any OS updates. Also all apps are updated by Google Play as long as you're logged in and haven't disabled auto-update.
But it isn't what regular people mean when you talk about Android. In the say way you could say that MacOS would be Open source if they had almost the same name with Darwin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)
Android seems to be growing inferior to iOS in almost every way, which I find sad. I prefer to root for the underdog.
* Privacy
* Security
* Efficiency
I have a personal Android S22+ and an iPhone 13 mini. The iPhone gets better with every update, whereas there's always something funky going on with my droid. Every update does something weird, fixing one thing and breaking something new, and managing to offer no significant privacy improvements.
In fact, today it is Samsung, the world's second largest phone vendor (outside of China), who is the one getting hit by data breaches, leaks, and hacks on an ongoing basis.
Apple has literally proposed using the phone you bought and paid for to spy on you and report you to the authorities if you do bad things. While they backed down from that plan, they went out of their way to make it clear that they were only backing down temporarily. To suggest that iOS is ahead in privacy is ludicrous.
I'll keep buying phones that only use cloud services that spy on me, instead of spying on me directly. At least that's somewhat defensible as it's not my hardware acting against me.
The photos were synced to Google Drive where we know it would be scanned...which is fine. Apple's proposal would report you as soon as you took the picture.
You're leaving out the detail that the CSAM scanning and detection would only occur if you upload your photos to iCloud. If you don't have iCloud photos turned on, the scanning wouldn't happen.
Additionally, scanning would happen on-device at time of upload and not on Apple's servers.
Not only that but Apple’s only matched hashes of known CSAM kept in the NCMEC database.
Google meanwhile scans for algorithmically determined new content and ruins people’s lives without any ability to appeal (even after national news coverage): https://stratechery.com/2022/rights-laws-and-google/
Also Apple was clearly doing this so they could enable e2e encryption on iCloud.
To be fair they were probably doing it as a disguise to the real goal: spy on everything you do on your phone and send it to the "authorities", no questions asked. Before the autists noticed it after it was implemented, Apple simply announced beforehand that it's devices would start spying on you, but it's to protect the kids you know...
ya thats BS argument, I dont need my cellphone os to protect me from terrorists I need them to protect my privacy from unnecessary overreach from govt. having a completely surveilled society will will protect you from most of the attacks but to most people the cost will be unbearable. I thought that was quite settled after snow-den disclosures.
> If you don't have iCloud photos turned on, the scanning wouldn't happen
At first. Then some legislator gets the bright idea mandate on-device scanning or someone adds a dark pattern to trick people into uploading to iCloud without realizing the ramifications. Having that capability is a threat to privacy even if it is initially configurable.
Apple’s proposal scanned for KNOWN abuse images. It didn’t try to identify NEW images the way Google did.
So in the same situation Apple’s proposal (which was designed with the input of many experts to avoid false positives and respect privacy) COULD NOT have flagged the father.
Yeah lots of cognitive dissonance. Some people keep comparing what Apple could be instead of what they actually are. Google as a privacy champion is not something that is supported by reality.
They're free to scan whatever they want on their computers. Not on mine. Especially not without my knowledge. I don't want anti-cheating and anti-malware software surveilling me either. Even the goddamn NSA has had data leaks because someone installed Kaspersky and it phoned home with a copy of some suspect data.
They were adding a hash of a photo as metadata that is unreadable by everyone except Apple after you upload an image and only if it matches the hash of a known csam image.
The whole OS is proprietary. You either trust apple to do what they say or you will have to run Android on a build you completely reviewed the source to.
If you want to act practically, scanning on your device is slightly better for privacy.
Everyone agrees that stopping CSAM in a way that respects everyone rights is a good thing. We aren't making a results oriented objection to the goal, but a methods oriented objection.
The courts at least all agree that a company can be compelled to scan content in their possession, the creator of the content has no significant privacy rights. This is known as the third party doctrine. All Google is doing is doing this kind of scanning.
Apple meanwhile, wants to take your device (something that they cannot be compelled to do, due to the 4th amendment restriction against seizures) and use it to scan the content on your device (something they cannot be compelled to do, due to the 4th amendment restriction against searches) to decide whether or not there is illegal content on it.
The company violating you worse is pretty obviously the one doing things to you that the government couldn't compel them to do, because (if compelled) it would violate your rights.
Apple isn’t compelled to proactively scan photos on iCloud.
The scanning on device was adding a hash to each photo only readable
- if it matched a known csam image
- multiple photos within the iCloud account match known csam images
- the image was uploaded to iCloud
Compare that to Google where only the last point needs to be true in order to have Google run any algorithm they please on your photos looking for violative images.
But they were not not going to do it if you chose to use iCloud Photos. It’s basically a condition in the ToS, just like Google has one saying they can scan stuff in Google Photos.
It seems like hair-splitting to me. In both cases your photos are getting checked if you want to use the cloud storage service. Why is it worse to do on device (where it’s private) instead of on Google’s server (where you have to give them a plaintext copy of the photo)?
“Oh but Apple could change that with any update”. Couldn’t Google do the same with any update to Android, or even a Google Play Services update?
>Why is it worse to do on device (where it’s private) instead of on Google’s server (where you have to give them a plaintext copy of the photo)?
Suppose you go to a public restroom and someone has installed a camera in there to perv on the people using it. That would be an invasion of your privacy, right? Now suppose someone installed a camera in your bathroom at your house. Would you say that's an equivalent invasion of your privacy?
First: this was all, quite literally, about Apple wanting to NOT have access to your unencrypted photos.
In Apple's proposed plan, we would only be talking about hashes of pictures, and the comparison would be done by your device.
A fitting analogy would be if the "public restroom camera" snapped a Polaroid of you and asked you to compare it to a binder of known child porn, except somehow did this in a way that did not expose you to child porn and would not inconvenience you in any way and was guaranteed not to transmit the Polaroid somewhere else, and you had opted in to the whole process and there was another bathroom right next to it that required no such participation.
It's important to understand that Apple's on-device scanning plan was in the service of allowing E2E encryption.
The idea was to create a path by which they could comply with various current and upcoming CSAM legislation while still maintaining an E2E encryption flow.
You're taking the analogy too literally. I was merely responding to the question posed by MBCook in general, not in this particular case. Performing an operation in the user's device is inherently more intrusive than performing the exact same operation in the server.
Incidentally, this scanning using hashes is indistinguishable from malware. Someone other than the user is instructing the device to perform operations that under no circumstances will benefit the user. Would this be tolerated if the list of hashes included copyrighted files, or prohibited books? I'm constantly disappointed by how effective "won't somebody please think of the children" is.
I certainly agree that "won't somebody please think of the children" has been exploited countless times in various shameful and downright evil ways.
(And tangentially, I'm not even sure that spotting traders of known CSAM is even a great way to combat the extremely real problem of pedophilia. Feels like another "war on drugs", where we target end users, as opposed to addressing the actual roots of the problem)
In a way, Apple is the victim of that here - they need to comply with laws based on "think of the children" rhetoric.
There are various current and proposed laws in various places around the world that compel Apple to share cloud content with various law enforcement agencies. Various current and future laws may compel Apple and other cloud hosts to actively scan for and report various things on behalf of government. This is... not great. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think we agree on that much?
We also agree that it is at best impractical for Apple to flaunt the law of nations, yes?
They are powerful, but they can't just defy federal law in a brazen and public way.
This is the context in which Apple's on-device image fingerprint scanning was conceived. They would like to enable E2E encryption for users for privacy's sake (because privacy is also a unique selling point vs. Google) while simultaneously complying with law.
If you want to argue that it sucks: sure. That's totally valid. The alternatives are certainly viable and even commendable: running your own "cloud", eschewing cloud storage, shunning smartphones entirely, etc.
However, it seems like most people like and want cloud storage.
Working within the constraints of "people want cloud storage" and "we can't openly defy multiple world governments", Apple's CSAM scanning proposal felt like clearly the best possible (least evil, if you prefer) cloud solution that doesn't involve exiting the market entirely or establishing their own offshore data centers and declaring them sovereign nations.
>(And tangentially, I'm not even sure that spotting traders of known CSAM is even a great way to combat the extremely real problem of pedophilia. Feels like another "war on drugs", where we target end users, as opposed to addressing the actual roots of the problem)
Agreed.
>We also agree that it is at best impractical for Apple to flaunt the law of nations, yes?
It's unclear to me what law would be violated by both storing encrypted data on their systems that they don't have the keys for and not scanning client devices.
Well, because that's what "intrusive" means. Your property is being intruded into in order to use it for the benefit of someone other than you. Your property is yours. It's in your possession because you paid for it. It should only do something because you tell it to or because it will help it to better respond to your commands later. It should never act against your interests. You would not buy a microphone that eavesdropped on you, right? It should be equally unacceptable that your computers read your files, perform some computation on them, and send the results to some remote location without your intervention.
On the other hand, when you transfer your data to someone else's computer, you're relinquishing some control over it. Just like how your computer should serve you, that computer will serve its operator, and that operator's interests may be adversarial to you.
> It should be equally unacceptable that your computers read your files, perform some computation on them, and send the results to some remote location without your intervention.
I hear you. I really do. The world you describe is the world I want to live in.
But it’s not the world we live in. Your device is so complex, does so many operations per second, has so many sensors, sends so much data, receives so much data, that it is functionally impossible for a person to consent to everything that their device does. For all intents and purposes, you own the device, but have very little control over it. This has been true since smartphones came into existence.
So to take a stance like yours — and all-or-nothing stance, a declaration of sovereignty from the The Way It Works — is, I’m sorry to say, delusional. Demanding that perfect be the enemy of the good is exactly how we will sleepwalk into the dystopian surveillance state.
You're looking at it the wrong way. You're saying that it's impractical to have perfect knowledge of everything the device is doing, but in fact that's not necessary. All it would take is to have laws that make it illegal to inspect data in a user's computer except by confiscating the device with a warrant. That would remove all incentive for LEO and companies acting on their behalf to pull stunts like these. It would also mean they would have to have very good tracking to prevent tainting of evidence (since it would otherwise be difficult to tell where a piece of data came from). Obviously this would not secure you from all attackers (e.g. imagine you want to keep some trade secrets, secret), but nothing other than good infosec would.
The problem is that a lot of people don't understand why privacy is important and why compromising it for what seems like good reasons is dangerous. Such people don't understand that some laws that make it easier to get away with crimes can still be good.
No, the analogy isn't perfect. It was just intended to show how both types of scanning are different. If someone agrees that installing a secret camera in a private bathroom is worse than in a public one, they should also agree that scanning files in someone's personal device is worse than scanning files in one's own server.
I think once you give someone else your unencrypted data, anything that happens to it afterwards is fair game. I assume at some point a human will snoop around my files.
The announcement was a little confusing, but Apple said they would scan photos being sent to iCloud but the scanning would occur on device (I suppose right before uploading).
I believe that was the plan, initially, however the scanning was still happening on device. That has many people rightfully concerned that the scanning could extend to local-only images next.
What a strange concern. Sending hashes of images as you take them to a remote server is very easy to do in any OS update, if they really wanted to betray their customer base's privacy expectations like that.
IMO the more logical guess as to the actual reason Apple wants to do this - to approach e2e encrypted iCloud photos in a LE-friendly way.
The thing is they never announced e2e iCloud photos with the new process. So we could presume, but I honestly believe they never intend to give it to us.
And I don’t think anyone was suggesting that Apple would secretly betray users. The concern is normalization of the notion of on-device scanning before (publicly) expanding the scope to all images.
I was not suggesting this either... And yes, iCloud backups if you choose to use them are mostly not e2e encrypted (some important bits like iCloud keychain etc aside).
In any case, I think this concern of yours is unfounded, as echoed by many in the other comments below, and you should rethink it before continuing to push it.
The amount of scanning has not changed since the invention of corporate image hosting on the internet; you still cannot use iCloud to host known illegal content - they just moved where the scanning takes place. I don't see how this makes it any more likely or normalized to scan your non-iCloud photos.
If are talking about the whole device backup, Most of it are encrypted with your phone unlock pin or recovery code. Only iMessages (iirc) are not e2ee.
Only if iCloud photos were e2e encrypted, which they are not. Then cloud scanning would necessarily mean removing the e2e encryption.
Since the photos are decryptable by keys in Apple’s possession, there is no real advantage to scanning on-device unless Apple/the government wanted to increase the scope of the scanning beyond iCloud.
iCloud photo are not e2ee, but encrypted at rest.
The key is encrypted with your password. Once you're logout, they are not supposed to be able to access them..
This isn't true at all FWIW, except for the "encrypted at rest" part. "At rest" just means Apple doesn't dump them onto hard drives somewhere in plaintext. Their security model is documented in detail and is worth understanding.
> That has many people rightfully concerned that the scanning could extend to local-only images next.
Apple didn’t propose this, and the scheme that Apple did propose was very inconvenient if they actually wanted to do this. They would have had to redesign how the system worked to do it, at which point most of the system would become completely useless. Nobody would come up with a system like Apple’s if they wanted to do what you describe. There are much simpler ways to do that which would have saved Apple a lot of time and effort. The only reason to design a system like Apple’s is to limit knowledge in all directions as much as possible.
Nobody was rightfully concerned about this, they got outraged because they would rather jump to conclusions over headlines than take the time to read about how the scheme worked.
> The only reason to design a system like Apple’s is so that it is impossible to opt out of once it is rolled out to non-iCloud photos.
This doesn’t make any sense because this system cannot be rolled out to non-iCloud photos. They would have to redesign how it worked. So the whole idea that Apple designed it this way for reasons that only kick in when it’s rolled out to non-iCloud photos is incoherent. If Apple were designing it for that purpose they would have picked a design that actually worked in those circumstances.
Well it’s quite clearly integrated into the iCloud system. Why would you think that it works for local photos without iCloud?
A known CSAM photo gets added to photos on an iPhone with iCloud disabled – what happens next? What do you think is the mechanism for that getting reported?
Apple’s proposal would have only worked against previously known pictures in the database maintained by the non-profit. The story we’re discussing here is due to machine learning deciding the pictures were CSAM.
As of now, Apple does nothing as they backed down from that plan.
And google reports you to authorities and never stopped and also never went public about letting you know they were doing it (at least apple published a freaking press release to announce it and ask for feedback!)
To be clear, Apples current actual activities is the same as Googles current actual activites. They scan files uploaded to their cloud services and report you to the authorities if they discover illegal material. Both companies are of course unable to detect CSAM in encrypted files, and Apple encrypts more files by default meaning that the impact of their current policy is somewhat less than Googles. Neither company has ever felt the need to make splashy press releases about this.
Apple additionally has said that they will (though have backed off on the timing to "some time in the future") said that they will use your hardware to scan your photos and have it report you to the authorities.
> To be clear, Apples current actual activities is the same as Googles current actual activites. They scan files uploaded to their cloud services and report you to the authorities if they discover illegal material
Actually, they don't, at least according to Hacker Factor. There's definitely not only 160 images of CSAM uploaded to iCloud Photos every year.
> Of all of the companies identified by NCMEC, I only saw one that had an unexpected decrease in reporting: Apple. According to NMEC, Apple submitted 205 reports in 2019 (a third my my reporting volume). Apple increased a little, to 265 in 2020, but then dropped in 2021 to only 160 reports. That's nearly a 22% decrease over two years!
Interesting, Apples privacy policy says that they can scan data you upload for illegal content and report it, news articles from when this blew up in the news said that Apple did for services like iMail (that upload in an unencrypted form). I can't speak towards what they actually currently do.
My understanding of iCloud photos is that they're encrypted, as in Apple can't scan them on the server, but I'd imagine across they're cloud services they ought to be seeing more unencrypted content than that.
I also don't care nearly as much about their servers scanning content that they are in possession of, as my device scanning content that I am in possession of... so I probably should have stayed out of this part of the argument a bit better. Oh well.
> My understanding of iCloud photos is that they're encrypted, as in Apple can't scan them on the server
iCloud Photos currently aren't encrypted this way, just "in transit and on server" [1].
> iCloud secures your information by encrypting it when it’s in transit, storing it in an encrypted format, and securing your encryption keys in Apple data centers. Both Apple and third-party data centers may be used to store and process your data.
This contrasts with services marked "end-to-end" where Apple doesn't have the key.
With a court order, Apple will hand over the contents of an iCloud drive without any encryption to law enforcement. So they could do Google style preemptive scanning of everything uploaded.
Adding an encrypted hash to every photo instead seems way better than having access to every photo on iCloud without any encryption.
Apple devices are worse because they makes you use Apple services. Android devices let you use your own services. Google has to build its apps using the same APIs as everybody else.
It does if you select Google Backup, which is exactly the same situation with Apple.
It’s something of a tradeoff as encrypting backups on device runs into issues if you lose the device. However, if companies have unencrypted data the US government and possibly others will require them to check for specific things.
This comment is pretty incoherent but I assume you're talking about CSAM.
In which case, (a) you are not required to use iCloud Photos and (b) it is not out of the ordinary for US-based photo hosting services to scan for CSAM.
There is no evidence otherwise that Apple is "spying on you" whatever that specifically means.
> spy on you and report you to the authorities if you do bad things
Pedantic correction: while the phone would spy on you to pre-calculate + embed "you are a bad guy doing a bad thing" metadata into photos, the phone wouldn't then report you to the authorities. You had to choose to sync your photos into iCloud Photos (i.e. expose them in cleartext to Apple), for Apple to then discover the embedded "you are a bad guy" metadata out of them, and use it to report you to the authorities.
This comment has predictably spawned a back-and-forth about which shitty privacy violating phone is 10% less shitty, but if you care about privacy the discussion you should be having is how to eliminate smartphone usage as much as possible.
Eliminating computer usage isn't a valid solution. Computers are too useful to simply stop using them. Maybe computers were a mistake that will eventually destroy society but for now they're here to stay especially mobile computers with built in archaic telephony.
So the question is how to improve privacy and control while using computers.
The solution is easy. You purchase a general purpose computer and use it. A smartphone is not a general computer, it's more of an appliance, and correspondingly Android and iOS have a variety of limitations.
A smartphone is also not something you really need to use a lot to get by in life -- sure, it adds a lot of convenience, but almost everything it does can be replaced by a dumbphone and a general purpose computer. Personally I still use one but if I find myself using it for anything other than calls, texts or food delivery apps I usually set it down and walk over to my Linux PC where I can do it equally well.
>> how to eliminate smartphone usage as much as possible.
>Eliminating computer usage isn't a valid solution.
Computer's promise is to be bicycle for mind. Computer usage does not deserve to be eliminated. Smartphone is something different. For me it feels that the promise of smartphone is to gather all your personal data which is possible.
As I'm sure you are aware, the proposed change was for files synced to iCloud. This puts it in the same boat as the recent Google Photos incident which you appear to be ok with.
But, as you noted, Apple backed down on the proposal, so assuming that you still hold that cloud scanning is ok, Apple's approach, at least in this regard is at worst equal.
Google used AI to try to find CSAM, thus it flagged the father’s picture taken to send to a doctor.
Apple’s solution was to check against a database of known abuse images. It would not be capable of flagging a new photo someone took.
Of the two solutions Google’s may find more offenders, but it would clearly find FAR more false positives.
The only way for a false positive in the Apple system is for two unrelated images to have identical perceptual hashes (with multiple algorithms?). Plus there was no reporting until a threshold of multiple (10+) matches were found, so one false positive wouldn’t do it.
> Plus there was no reporting until a threshold of multiple (10+) matches were found, so one false positive wouldn’t do it
Not even that, the photos were not visible to some trusted human party until 10+ matches were found. That is, photos were not auto reported, they were only decryptable after the threshold was crossed and then they are reported after being reviewed by a human
Apple doesn't seem to do any cloud CSAM scanning of iCloud Photos, at least according to Hacker Factor:
> Of all of the companies identified by NCMEC, I only saw one that had an unexpected decrease in reporting: Apple. According to NMEC, Apple submitted 205 reports in 2019 (a third my my reporting volume). Apple increased a little, to 265 in 2020, but then dropped in 2021 to only 160 reports. That's nearly a 22% decrease over two years!
note: later on they say:
> Granted, Apple only rolled out this new functionality in mid-December 2021. However, based on their volume of traffic, I would expect them to (at minimum) submit a few hundred reports to NCMEC each week. I cannot fathom any legal or technical reason why Apple is not submitting more reports to NCMEC. It's as if these laws apply to everyone except Apple.
I'm fundamentally not ok with my device acting against my interests.
This doesn't happen with Google, my android phone does not act against my interests. Meanwhile Google's servers do act against my interests (as do Apples servers - though not as effectively since more content is encrypted), but I don't own them, so what can I really expect?
Apple only backed down temporarily, their communication has been "we still plan to do this, but later". Given the nature of OS updates, that means you can't buy an IPhone today and be confident that it won't decide to start spying on you tomorrow.
While I don’t agree with their plan, the only reason it was proposed is a tradeoff between allowing e2e encrypted cloud backups and upholding the law regarding no child porn on their servers. If you have a better idea then I’m sure they are happy to hear it!
If they're only going to scan photos that will sync to iCloud Photos, why wouldn't they just keep doing it server-side? As far as it's publicly known, no one asked Apple to do this.
Apple is very pro-privacy and probably doesn’t like having access to unencrypted customer photos. But if they just encrypted everything it would be a child abuser’s dream because suddenly they’d be safe on iOS, and when people found out Apple started protecting them it would be a disaster for PR and law enforcement.
After much consultation their solution was to scan for known abuse images on device so they could be kept in the cloud in an encrypted form without providing abusers a safe haven.
> why wouldn't they just keep doing it server-side
Because they want to scan files that will be encrypted on your device and not transferred to the server as plaintext. No doubt they'll continue to scan unencrypted files server side.
> no one asked Apple to do this.
If someone asked them to it would turn it into a warrantless search with Apple acting as the state agents to search your possessions. It would almost certainly result in the evidence being tossed by any US court. This kind of warrantless search only works if Apple does it of their own accord, instead of on the governments behalf.
Note that this doesn't apply to searches done on Apples servers to data you uploaded, there it's their possessions that they're searching, not yours.
>However I only like stock android, Samsung, or the million other IOS clones from Chinese companies almost all suck.
I used to like stock android but since 12 it's been going down the drain in terms of looks and feel. Now I prefer the Samsung UI since they're at least consistent with previous versions and don't make huge changes for the sake of changes like Google does.
So this is one of the main advantages of android: vendors can rejected Google's ästhetisc choices and just keep the under the hood improvements.
Samsung is better than the rest, but still I prefer stock android, especially with zero bloat and ads.
Even a stock Pixel is more private, because there is no third parties or bloat to track you other than Google services(which are on every phone anyway).
You didn't ask my main question which was: What do you mean by "safely" here?
> 99% of the users do not know what is actually trusted or not.
Before it was only 0.01% of users know what they're doing and now it's 99% of the users do not know if it's actually trusted or not, that's a 100x difference, I don't suppose you have a source on any of these numbers?
Your arguments are all hypothetical, yet we don't have to be as people literally download much of their software on PCs today outside of the Microsoft store and most users manage fine. Other mechanisms have been put in place at multiple levels (the search engine, the browser, and the OS) to make it safer for users, and the majority of those users don't get confused about trusted sources.
> You didn't ask my main question which was: What do you mean by "safely" here?
I thought I made it clear at least on the last phrase. ”Safely” simply means that software is what it is supposed to be.
My arguments are no hypothetical. Android used to be like that in early days, if you followed infosec in that time. It was common to downlod .apks from third parties and phones were full of malwares.
Android does not have same mechanisms like PC. It does not make signature checks for trusted sources or have Windows Defender build-in. Two primary reasons why it is safer to download arbitrary files in these days. MacOS has similar checks.
I've been an Android guy for a long time and I briefly switched to an iPhone from 2020-2022 but went back to Android. The reason? Being forced to use Safari or a re-badged Safari because Apple refuses to let other browser engines on the platform.
On Android I can run proper Firefox and get uBlock Origin.
Does uBlock Origin do a better job than the Ad Blocker extension on iPhone’s Safari? I use uBlock Origin on my desktop and Ad Blocker on my iPhone. Honestly, I can’t tell any difference. They both seem to block everything.
You can’t use ad blocker apps if you use any browser other than Safari. I use Firefox because I want to sync it with my desktop, which is not a Mac, so I have to choose between syncing and ad blocking.
You can even install Firefox Focus and use it's ad-blocking in Safari. Focus installs their ad-blocking as a system-level blocker (I assume due to iOS rules/requirements) which allows you to just toggle it on for "all browsers" (aka Safari and the Safari based browsers, which is all of them).
It's not precisely manifest v3, but it has similar limitations. Safari went from not supporting ad blockers at all to supporting limited ad blockers, so there wasn't exactly a change to get mad at.
I will not buy an iPhone until I can put uBlock Origin on it. My iPad is nearly unusable as a web browsing device, although it's outstanding in every other respect.
I completely agree, having Firefox with uBlock on Android is really great! I wish more Android users knew and cared about personal security so they'd take advantage of this awesome capability.
Apple's entire platform is so locked down, it definitely comes off as somewhat user-hostile to me. That said, my mom doesn't care about this aspect in the slightest.
you can actually use ublock origin through the Orion browser! it’s still relatively new, but it’s a nice browser. it’s also available on macos and supports syncing. you can use chrome and firefox extensions with it
It's getting more locked down too. It used to be great for hackers, we could root the phone and do all sorts of things. Now there's stuff like hardware remote attestation getting in the way.
I'm thinking there's no point in owning an Android phone anymore. They aren't trustworthy devices, they offer increasingly less user freedom at the cost of a less refined experience. It seems like they're just gonna become worse iPhones, all the problems and none of the benefits.
OTOH these is a wodespread sense that people who can afford iStuff will get that, and only the poor will get Android. In that sense I don't think it's crazy to call Android the underdog.
Is that an American thing? It's definitely not generically widespread, and there are non-iPhone devices that are premium and even sometimes cost more (check any of the Fold designs).
That sounds pretty American. In my country there's lots of people that will gladly spend for a Galaxy S22+ whatever and never turn to see the iPhone even expensive Xiaomi phones have a lot of customers.
I have a cheap-ish Pixel 4a bought at launch. Never had a complaint with it, went through all the updates, I use it for mapping and listening to music daily as well as reading RSS.
Never a slow down or any glitch, except for connecting some Bluetooth devices.
As with all software, YMMV. At least Google is not throttling its CPU behind my back.
Also, Snowden has outed Apple as one of the corps complying with any government for customer data so don't get too high on your horse.
I think it’s more about what makes a substantive comment
while it may be an outstanding pun, commenting that it is doesn’t really add to the discussion. it feels rather like a reddit comment chain, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but also isn’t really the culture on HN
> Zerodium this week announced that it will not be purchasing any iOS exploits for the next two to three months due to a high number of submissions. In other words, the company has so many security vulnerabilities at its disposal that it does not need any more.
Android FCP zero-click has been keeping higher price than iOS for a few years now.
iOS iMessage RCE+LPE has been lower price than SMS RCE+LPE on android for a few years.
In almost every comparison, iOS has the same bounty as android or cheaper.
This, despite the fact that iOS bugs have more demand because of more premium targets.
There could be loads of reasons for this price difference other than supply. Android's higher market share, the ease of further exploiting any priv esc, the fact any zero day will patched much slower for a majority of devices...
I don't buy the privacy advantage. Security wise also it seems it's the other way round as long as you can have your device up to date. That is, even though iOS gets regular updates there seem to be more zero day vulnerabilities in it.
Efficiency, esp when it comes to UI animation not stuttering is where iOS has done a tremendous job.
I find the supposed iphone simplicity argument fascinating.
I had to help a family member open a PDF file of a ticket sent via email on an iphone.
It was opened via webmail in safari, it just downloaded the file, that was it. No way to open it. No way to find the downloads from Safari.
Eventually I figured out how to drag down from the home screen, search for downloads, scroll down a bit, then found the downloads folder with the file inside it to open it.
Contrast to android where it downloads the file, then offers to open it.
The whole "iphone is easier to use" seems like a bit of a myth.
You open Files and you see Downloads folder. Consistent across OS and devices. Explain to your family member how they have to learn new patterns because Samsung has different file manager than Pixel. Also explain Linux directory structure to them, while you’re at it.
You don't need to go to the file manager on a Samsung, it just opens in the default PDF viewer if you have selected one, or pops up list of PDF viewing apps if you have more than one installed and haven't chosen a default.
I don't disagree that iOS handles downloaded files terribly (Safari does notify you when your file is downloading/finished, but in a very subtle way by adding a download icon navigation bar).
However, using an anecdote of an uncommon use case being bad hardly supports the conclusion of your last sentence.
Almost any kind of file management where you need to do something other than use a file created within the app itself is a pain in iOS compared to Android. At least, it was historically, I know more recently iOS has gotten better with exposing the file system to consumers.
I really don't think this is an "uncommon use case", people do download files and stuff all the time, people wanna move their files around too.
iOS Safari opens PDFs directly. It's a file format with native support. I don't know why the OP had to do those steps, as that never happened to me... maybe the site hosting the PDF informed the wrong MIME Content type, so the file was downloaded as a generic "binary" file.
Maybe if you look at uncommon use cases collectively, but not when you just take a single uncommon example (a pdf file with forced download via Content-Disposition: attachment) and extrapolate it to the entire OS.
I hesitantly disagree; the only thing better about Android in my experience is the Samsung Camera AI makes pictures pop in a way which is unrealistic yet pleasing to the eye.
Apple is the one pioneering features at this point, especially in the privacy space. Does Gartner cover this? If not, I wish they would do a quarterly feature matrix analysis.
The Apple pics might not look as good, but the Apple camera app is far smoother than flagship Android and the Apple pictures look more realistic.
But Apple is basically only their devices, and the iphone the biggest one from all of them.
Google is a myriad of services and their money is made from advertising and cloud. Android is just a very small part.
So when you compare smartphones then Google is the smaller player, it‘s only a small fraction of the company while the rest is doing totally different things.
> Android seems to be growing inferior to iOS in almost every way
Crazy statement. I have iPhone for work and it is horrible to use. I haven't met a single thing from UX point of view in iOS that is better than whatever is in Android. It's a complete downgrade IME.
It’s possible to view any OS as horrible to use really. Usually it comes from a mindset of “anything that isn’t how I’m used to is bad”. Which is especially likely if it’s only used a bit for work.
I could argue the same. The UX experience on android is horrible and about the only valid point that people have with android is that is more customisable.
No offense to the two of you but I recently switched to iOS for my personal phone and still have an Android phone at work. The UX of both are now basically the same and they keep copying each other every time one of them does something good. I was actually shocked by how close they are.
If you say so. Swiping left goes back on the two of them in a way I have trouble distinguishing. I lament the absence of intent on iOS but the integration with the rest of the Apple ecosystems is nice. Apart from that, well, can’t say I have seen much of a difference personally.
I tried to go to iOS just for curiosity since 2 years but I think the next device will be an Android again for these reason:
- you cannot simply install applications outside the AppStore
- developing applications even for personal use requires macOS, an Apple developer account, etc
- it lacks of decent applications, such as an email client that works, thanks to limitations imposed by Apple on what the applications can do in background
- it comes with stupid limitations. Such as you can't to a software update on a mobile network (why? To this day with cheap plans that gives you 50G or even unlimited data for 10 euros at month a lot of people no longer even have a landline internet connection and thus Wi-Fi at home, and have to use another phone in hotspot mode to download an update, this is pure insanity of Apple!)
- it works well if you are all-in in the Apple ecosystem, for example you have also a Mac, but it doesn't integrate with Windows (the Windows phone companion that lets you to receive notifications on the PC and other stuff is only available for Android, since iOS doesn't have APIs to do that stuff such as read notifications).
- the only browser allowed is basically Safari and this to me is very wrong for the open web (it's true that in Android you have Chrome, but you can install whatever browser you want, such as Firefox). Safari doesn't support progressive web apps for example for no reason, so you are forced to install an app while you could have used its PWA enabled website.
- you are forced to use Apple services, while in Android using Google services is an option (you can have an Android OS without Google Apps, even if it can be impractical I like having this possibility at least in theory). For example the only way that I found to backup my photos was to pay iCloud, since Google Photos (that did give you unlimited space back then) didn't work in background and thus you have to open it to sync (something that is pretty useless for a backup tool that you want to be always running...)
- it's less user friendly, there are things that are complicated for no reason. This was confirmed by a lot of people that transitioned to iOS and find it more difficult to use
- to this day it's practically impossible to mod (jailbreak) an iPhone to overcome its limitations. In the past there was jailbreak that really did solve many of the issues, but this day it's nearly impossible
- lack of support for open standards, such as the usage of the proprietary lightning connector instead of USB-C (something that is now a requirement in the European union by the way)
From the hardware perspective, it's well built for sure, but I find it too expensive for what it offers. The iPhone that I actually have (an iPhone XS bought new for 600 euros) it seemed expensive when I bought, now to get an iPhone of a similar range (that is an iPhone Pro) you have to spend at least than double that price! A decent Android that is enough to me for my daily tasks can be bought for 200 euros, a top spec one for 600. To me the added cost of an iPhone is not justified.
Over the years, my family has had a mix of iOS and Android devices and even though the Android device was generally less expensive up front, the iOS device ended up being less expensive overall because after a few years the resale value was still pretty good. Generally, they all were decent devices.
All of your points about installing software outside of the app store are valid and if that's what you need, iOS is not for you and I think that's okay. Choosing the platform that best supports the software you need to run has always been how you decide what to buy. The other way around doesn't make any sense. It would be like buying an PS5 and then saying it sucks because you can't run Excel on it.
The resale value is not that great either. My phone, bought for 600 euros 2 years ago (it was already an older mode, by the way) now has a value of 200 euros if we see the price if sold used to a person through an online used items announcement marketplace, if sold to a store it has zero value.
Anyway I don't usually sell phones, when I change a phone (that is not often, till now I only has 3 smartphones, two Androids and the iPhone that I currently have, on average I keep a phone 5 years, especially my first Android was born with Android 4.0 and I stopped using it with Android 7, changing trying out all the custom roms that were available) I usually end up giving it to somebody in my family anyway that upgrades its old phone.
> All of your points about installing software outside of the app store are valid and if that's what you need, iOS is not for you and I think that's okay. Choosing the platform that best supports the software you need to run has always been how you decide what to buy. The other way around doesn't make any sense. It would be like buying an PS5 and then saying it sucks because you can't run Excel on it.
I think it's not only that. I think that Apple practice should be considered illegal (and I think the European commission will need to take an action like they did with Microsoft and Google) since it's abuse of dominant position. You are forcing the developers to pass trough the App Store, and thus be forced to support payment trough Apple Pay and thus give a percentage (that is not small, by the way) of your profit to Apple. This to me is not right.
Having the possibility to install third-party "app stores" on Apple devices should be a requirement by law. I don't said that it should be simple, a user may do something difficult to do that (if the reason is to protect unaware users that would otherwise install malware on their phones) but it should be possible.
Yes, this law should apply to any operating system in a general purpose device, such as a PC, smartphone or tablet. In reality the only vendor that doesn't allow the installation of software from sources that are not the official store (as far as I'm aware of) is Apple. I'm not saying that it should be easy, in Android you have to go trough the settings and enable an option, this is correct since you don't want people installing .apk that are received via email with one click, but it should be possible to do.
Done forget about the Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony game consoles! Those are what I'm most excited for being opened. I would love to be able to run stuff I write on my PS5.
To me that is (to this day) less important, since modern consoles are actually PCs with a custom form factor, that you can build with mostly off the shelf parts. In the past it was different, but consoles were always modded (except the modern ones, but I would say for a lack of interest).
the exact opposite is true, Apple iPhones have never been worse than now.
1. almost every generation has some kind of hardware defect that you only find out later that lots of people report in enthusiast forums. Be it the loading cable, display bending, weird issues around refresh rate straining your eyes.. it never ends. And no, the hardware doesn't even feel better than the competition anymore. I had the iphone 13 in my hands and it felt like any cheap plastic phone.
2. The UI is horrible, the false perception of iOS being "simple" is perhaps the biggest marketing success in human history. I had an iPhone 13 for a few hours and there were already countless things I found incomprehensible. E.g Undiscoverable gestures or extremely hard to achieve gesture to swipe up to remove an opened app.
For one ui menu on the right middle side I had to press part of the hardware button on the right (what on earth, a hardware button to activate a touch ui!). Since when is the point of using a touch device to: ignore the touch interface and instead use a hardware button. Not even considering yet the weird annoying popup ui in the first place, why would you ever put something like that on the middle of your screen.
3. scrolling is slower, they have some kind of terrible human-like algorithm where you have to gear up the scroll speed as if you're manually accelerating a dial every time you want to scroll down. This is why they had to invent all these little tricks to scroll back up to the top of a page with a shortcut. Scrolling is just too slow, on huge pages it's fingerhurting work to get to the bottom.
4. The notch is objectively terrible, it was never good, it was never acceptable to put camera holes or notches into the display but the notch is the worst, most biggest affront to visual consistency. It almost has comical qualities, "oh yes, please put a huge black block directly into my visual field and make it so I am forced to look at it, I can't even install an app to hide it".
5. The amount of popups when I open any kind of app or the appstore is incredible. I think I had at least 4 consecutive popups before it lets me do anything.
6. The prices are a riot, it's a designer luxury item. I guess in the US the prices seem somewhat acceptable but anywhere else in the world the value for this phone does not match the money you pay for it.
7. [insert here every other criticism, e.g about iTunes being required or any other of the dozens and dozens of legitimate problems]
This list is nowhere near complete. Meanwhile when I use my Android, my only complaint is that Samsung installed some default apps I don't want. That's literally it. Everything else works fine for me. I had an iphone 5s for years, while I was using it I liked it but nowadays when I have a comparison with a fluid, new android phone it cannot compete. To me it is clear that the success of Apple is a psychological success of two things mixed together: speed and beauty. The ui is always fast, therefore there is a false impression that it's simple and good. Beauty likewise gives a false impression that the ui is good in a general sense when in reality it's not better.
What the fuck are you talking about? Almost all of your points are either blatantly false, or so subjective they clearly show how biased you are regarding iPhones. Like for example « scrolling is slower » what the hell is that? I spent 10 years on Android and have switched to an iPhone 2 years ago and this is just not true.
> The prices are a riot, it's a designer luxury item
Yeah they’re expensive. You’re not entitled to buy everything that exists. An iPhone is not a need. Plus, price is not an issue since you hate them anyway.
> The amount of popups when I open any kind of app or the appstore is incredible.
I have no idea what you’re even talking about. There are things that suck in the App Store (the sponsored apps that appear before the searched results for example) but popups? The only time there are popups is on install when you try to install an app and your iCloud account is not linked. FYI it’s the same on the Play Store.
> The notch is objectively terrible
Subjectively. It doesn’t even lose screen real estate since the space around the not h is used for icons and clock.
> You’re not entitled to buy everything that exists.
Interesting how do you came to the conclusion, that they cannot afford it. It's possible to have money and still believe that something has poor value for its cost.
I would argue that is true for the iPhone, given for eg Pixel or other flagships are easy to buy at half of the cost of the iPhone.
I’m not sure I follow. GP is talking about slow scroll on iOS, I don’t understand how it relates to scrolling on Firefox with uBlock? It’s faster than scrolling on iOS?
Not sure what it has to do with adtech either. Or how scroll speed is a limiting factor in a day to day workflow.
I agree with many of these points. To me, the iTunes requirement is probably the worst. The idea that I'd be forced to use what is effectively a shopping application just to load files on my phone is pretty abhorrent.
Regarding the Samsung default apps, I agree that there are too many of them and they can be annoying. But they're easy to deal with. My favorite approach is to use "pm uninstall" in adb. I have most of the package names saved in my notes anyway, so it's just a copy and paste job.
Alternatively, for less technical people, they could either uninstall the apps manually or just disable them if I uninstalling an app is disabled.
The Android does get more use, but there's no denying the camera lag has been there since day one with the S22+.
Previously I used (and still adore) the S10e. It's camera lag actually seemed slightly better than with the S22+, but still inferior to any recent iPhone (10x or newer).
What's the android security flaw? As far as I've read pegasus has 0 click exploits on iOS that has successfully infiltrated hundreds of people. I couldn't find documented android examples.
I've read android has some malware that you need to click "allow from web" and manually install.
I have some sensitive stuff on my phone so security is my number 1 reason for getting an Android.
I mean, Private, Security, and Efficiency may not be so orthogonal if you consider what sort of data collection is desired for ad targeting, its basically everything. What apps are installed, which are used most, when? where? Which bluetooth and wifi devices are nearby?
Truly the data scraping could be enormous, needing resources and lots of them.
I thought I remembered that some vendor sort of hacked some big feature in for their first phone, but maybe it wasn’t folding screens. Could it have been the dual screen phones?
It's kind of insane to me that my phone (Android or iOS) requires 2GB of ram and 16GB of storage given that in 1995 my WindowsNT 4.0 PC with 128Meg of ram and maybe 2gb HD ran 3DStudio Max to render 3D effects and movies and and ran Photoshop and MS Office (Word/Excel/Powerpoint) and now it takes 2GB to just write messages, and share photos :P
Yes, but your 1995 Windows NT 4.0 PC ran a 640x480 display at 60Hz and graphics compositing had, at best, one-bit transparency. It took 3 minutes to boot. Websites could bluescreen it with `<img src="con">`. A malicious attachment could trick your email client into deleting your whole hard drive.
I think the interesting question is what how much we're "paying" computationally for each of those things.
The "img src=con", and to a lesser extent, the "malicious attachment" thing could be solved on the same PC by running something not-Windows. 1995 might have been a bit in the teething era for Linux and BSDs but maybe some commercial Unix would have been viable?
The "3 minutes to boot" would be largely ameliorated by using a SSD and by the fact the phone is largely a fixed hardware tree that doesn't require significant probing and dynamically selecting drivers at boot time.
Getting to a higher resolution and colour depth-- okay, maybe you need to advance to say the specs of a decent 2005 PC (1Gb memory, early x86-64 CPU, DirectX 9 class GPU) to get there.
But beyond that, I think we're paying mostly for poor software design. How many apps are loading big full-featured browser engines when all they need is libcurl and some minimal optimized rich-text system? How many apps are relying on dynamically loading content that could have been permanently baked into the bundle (i. e. a shopping app's category tree?)
Yes we're all collectively paying for poor software design by having to compensate with excellent hardware. That should tell you that "good" software is really hard to make but "good enough" software is not if you have sufficient hardware.
If you think that's bad or it makes you think that most developers can't write good software, that's the price we have to pay for innovation. As an analogy, it'd be great if manufacturing was always priced at mass manufacturing injection molded costs, but someone has to 3D print and hand assemble prototypes to prove that the idea is possible and worth making. In software, we just stop at the prototyping stage and make that the product hoping eventually we have enough time and money to redesign for mass manufacturing scale.
My NT machine ran 1280x1024 which is about 2/3 of what my phone does. More Hz is the job of the GPU and doesn't take more memory. And I'm pretty sure it took under a minute, and the boot speed would compete very well with my phone if the drive was migrated to a $25 SSD.
The security was different, but I don't think that's one of the major factors here.
It is, but its also an indication of how users are accepting to use software which is unnecessarily demanding on hardware. At some point, RAM got cheap enough for developers to stop caring about optimization.
The sad thing is that even with 2GB an Android device can't reliably multitask without forcing background apps to sleep and purge data. Devs only testing on flagship phones means that a lesser pocket supercomputer results in unnecessarily poor performance.
A lot of the issues related to multitask actually comes from OEM customizations. Many Android OEMs, especially Samsung, would make killing background apps more aggressive.
iOS does much better here because it started with apps only running while in the foreground and limited background processing has been added over time in specific cases. On the other hand, Android originally let apps do whatever, whenever, and has tried to rein that in over time, through 3rd party tools, manufacturer tools and changes to the OS; but it's so fragile, because apps don't always cleanly separate... And a lot of apps will try their hardest to wakeup and do something that's not really important whenever they can.
I run AOSP and can confirm the claims of the parent comment. It's not just OEM customizations, Android itself got way more memory hungry in the past years.
Regularly I can't even have two apps running at once without one of them being force unloaded and that's with all the "battery optimizations" disabled, because without it's even worse.
I have an Android One phone and it behaves just as badly. This is a fundamental systemic problem with core Android development. I dread system updates because I know some of the key apps (maps in particular) are going to have a worse experience than before.
I have been developing software for over a decade. I wanted to give Android apps a try too. But when I tried to install the tooling, it was all so heavy and bloated and clunky that I gave up and never tried again.
Compare that to writing web apps. You open an empty text file in a text editor and are ready to go.
> I have been developing software for over a decade. I wanted to give Android apps a try too. But when I tried to install the tooling, it was all so heavy and bloated and clunky that I gave up and never tried again
At least it's cross-platform and it doesn't require you to buy special hardware like the main mobile competitor does.
Are there countries where there is another main competitor? iOS is at like 30% global market share isn’t it (a bit higher in North America, uk, and some Asian countries like japan, lower elsewhere)
I’m not aware of anywhere having a larger competitor to android though.
I had a complete opposite experience a few weeks ago. It took me about an hour max to install Android Studio in Manjaro, install SDKs, spin up Android VM, pull open source Android keyboard app and add my own customised layout, then test it in VM and install to my phone. There were no errors at all. Just clicking buttons and waiting.
Had you been through the trouble of installing it, and tried the NDK, you would have found a primitive development experience requiring devs to manually copy code from GitHub to use NDK frameworks.
How after 10 years Google thinks that is a good development experience baffles me.
That's one of the most commonly heard complaints about native Android development from newcomers: "why does Android Studio is such a resource/memory hog bla bla bla..."
About a decade ago, when Eclipse was the default IDE for Android development, the situation was less worse. 2 GB RAM was fine.
One of the quick solutions is to use VSCode and install the required Android SDKs manually.
Android Studio and the NDK experience is so bad that in order to get game developers on board, Google had to come up with the AGK and Visual Studio plug-ins.
Even then, it is like a construction yard experience versus iDevices, Windows or game consoles.
Android has been a mess for awhile and it isn’t getting better. A lot of bullshit is being done for “security” which will just end up recreating some of the sandboxed nightmares from iOS. The enforcement of Scoped Storage with Android 13 it going to essentially recreate the nightmare of file management that is iOS.
It’s really frustrating how Google has to slowly screw up damn near everything they create.
2GB is also the minimum RAM for Windows 10 (64-bit x86) and that's a full fledged desktop OS with much more capability than a smartphone OS. I think what people are wondering is how the much more constrained application environment on a phone has become that demanding of system resources?
> Windows 10 (64-bit x86) and that's a full fledged desktop OS with much more capability than a smartphone OS
Given all the fancy things phones can do nowaydays, talk to satellites, crash detection, gyroscopes, GPS, all in a tiny form factor while managing battery life and a massively powerful camera, I'd argue desktop has maybe less capability than a smartphone OS
All of those things are implemented as dedicated hardware, though. There is no GPS process looping and reading individual bits out of the air to assemble them into GPS packets. People regularly do all of these things on tiny microcontrollers with no OS.
I really don’t believe the statement that Windows is much more advanced than Android and iOS.
And the experience of using windows with 2GB ram is absolutely abysmal. Really 8gb is the minimum for anything acceptable. Microsoft just cares a lot less about user satisfaction so the windows minimum is the absolute minimum possible to boot on while the android minimum is the minimum required to not hate using the phone.
It wouldn't make sense for the operating system alone to consume 2GB RAM/16GB storage, but an Android version number also represents a compatibility level for apps and handsets.
If an app developer tests their app on Android 13 but doesn't test it on older Android versions, they probably aren't testing on low-RAM devices, either. And if a consumer buys a handset after checking only the Android version number, and doesn't check details like the RAM and storage, they'll probably be find out that apps which they expected to work don't work, and be quite unhappy.
Android version number for a app developer is only for API compatibility. It doesn't ensure memory or storage. The above minimum memory and storage is for OEM's so they can ensure new version of Android can run properly on their devices.
Oh no they want phones made in 2022 to have a whole 2GB of RAM! So that consumers can expect a certain baseline level of responsiveness and performance on any Android phone unlike the fragmented mess now. so evil omg fuck google!!111 i hate technology take me back to Nokia 3300!!!!! I used to be young and free and hot :( :( :(
Pretty accurate satire on most of the threads on this site. People just see “Google” in the headline and start frothing with rage. Anything but the latest Rust encrypted notes app gets strangely hate filled threads.
These Apple vs Google conversations on HN remind me of console wars on old forums or even the modern US political discourse. Everyone picks their team and relentlessly defends or attacks the other team whenever possible, when both teams want all of your money and to lock you in perpetually.
I was rummaging through my things and found two Samsung S3's. One wouldn't charge and one had a missing screen. The one that didn't charge was mine and it has Cyanogen Mod, likely a nightly build. I may have modified the partitions as well but alas couldn't use it. So I swapped out the boards and boom, a working phone from 2013-2014. Batteries still held a decent charge. Point is, I remembered that custom mod and it was great. I believe for everyday use, the battery didn't last but all in all, it was an amazing phone and OS build. I really miss those days.
I don't get what's wrong with this at all. At some point you have to up the specs. And 2GB RAM + 16GB storage doesn't feel out of place at all. Rather low for any phone from the past 5 to 10 years.
This is Android Go, which is a stripped down version of Android with more limited Google Apps. iOS 16 will work fully (and smoothly) on devices with 2GB of RAM like the iPhone 8.
I think maybe they only think it works well because the iOS crash reporter won't even keep your forms filled out if you switch back to the other app to check on the error and have only 2GB of RAM. Each app has to persist its state when backgrounded and they didn't even bother for the crash reporter/feedback app.
What in the world provoked Android to forcefeed a feature that auto-predicts a reply and make it pop up as a notification quick reply? Example: do you want to hang out later? someone sends me. Android offers: "Sure" and "I don't think so". I'm much more likely to hit the wrong thing by accident - when I never use either of these "shortcuts."
My google-foo is awful: I spent time looking for ways to turn it off for Signal but all the search results don't seem to apply to my version of Android and Signal (all the latest, and a Pixel). I had trouble even figuring out what's that called (eventually I discovered it's called Smart Reply).
And typing is awful. It seems easier to type on the iPhone. And the battery life in ALL my pixels is always almost exactly 12 months before massive denigration, without fail. I leave it plugged in overnight every day, so that could be why.
Someone please give me an excuse to move to an iPhony.
Title appears wrong. The past two year requirememt was 1GB and that has been raised to 2GB. Not more than.
There's some decent bints about how to use the platform effectively here. onTrimMemory is something most apps probably just dont do. Knowing when and how to use mmap to access resources is obvious to folks with some systems backgrounds, but we'd be lucky if that's half of mobile developers.
In general it's just really easy to build badly behaved apps anywhere, on any platform. Seeing the magnitude of resources we're using & seeing problems develop is something mentioned in the article, but so often requires fairly expensive paid observability tools & a team that knows & has capacity & backing to care & spend the time. Most orgs care way too much about shipping features that pad their resume; few get promoted for keeping software in good shape.
Except that this article is about Android Go, which is a stripped down version of Android (with special, stripped down Google apps as well). iOS 16 on iPhone 8 would be the full experience (and would run much more smoothly than those 2GB Android Go phones).
Also for reference: They used to make Android phones with 512MB of storage and the capabilities at that point were pretty damn similar to today's phones, just with a bad screen.
it used to be Intel giveth and Microsoft taketh away now it is Qualcomm giveth and Google taketh away. Seriously tho we even had palmOS and WindowsCE running on 2 decades old arm cores and now we cannot run linux properly on multi-billion transistor gigahertz cores!
I mean, with 2 GB of memory you'll only be able to use the phone as an ebook reader anyway—and I don't mean PDF because scrolling is gonna be a bitch, what with incessant garbage collection in the background. As for storage, for me Android 11 occupies 17 GB of it.
My phone is about 5 years old, not getting cool updates any more. I'm about 95% sure there are many moments when the OS inserts a fake pause in various places to make me think the phone is getting slow and it's time to upgrade.
In 2017 Apple introduced the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X. All three still get updates this year. That’s five years of support. They may get updated next year+, we don’t know yet.
You know what the iPhone 8 had? 2GB of RAM. Same as Google is calling for now.
And people have been through this over and over. Apple does not insert fake delays to make phones feel slower. If you could prove that you could make a mint.
They add features, which takes extra CPU. Though not all are on every phone for that exact reason.
How many Android phones from 5 years ago got 5 years of updates? How about 2 years?
Apple does throttle your phone when your battery degrades. They do it by default because it helps avoid situations where the phones would shut down completely before the battery empties. There was a class action on this, and now they allow you to toggle this feature off:
Right. That was a real reason due to hardware issues, though the way they went about it was obviously received negatively (no notification and no option at first).
It wasn’t fake delays just to push hardware sales, which is what people have been accusing them of for 10+ years.
It must be insane being a manager at these megacorps. Imagine fixing a bug at work and accidentally kicking off a decade of bad press, memes, and legal issues because the fix was not communicated perfectly.
I agree they should have explained to the user better, but imagine how many minor behind the scenes fixes they have to fix and can’t possibly bother the user with them all. I can see how these things slipped through.
A normal user had better not see flash degradation. With the massive price per TB manufacturers charge for extra capacity, I expect ultra platinum quality.
It's funny I've been down voted for speaking my mind about observations I've made over years of using my current phone and the trend is true for my past android phones. I've had 3 other android phones.
The last one, Nexus 6, I dropped and the gorilla glass cracked really bad, figured it was a loss and got my current LG phone and it has been great except for the suspicious slow downs which cannot be attributed to wear of the storage. I say that as someone who has been a technological person for 5 decades and a paid software engineer for almost 3 decades.
The one before that, Nexus 4, the thing was charging on my desk, I looked over and saw it bulging like it was going to explode.
The one before that, Nexus One, I still have, had to stop using it when the hard wired paltry amount of system space and increasing OS size made it unusable. Glad they stopped that practice of forcing the OS into a tiny space.
I like my LG so it's too bad they got out of or announced they are leaving the phone business.
I've traded several thousand of my dollars to Google for their phones since they started making them. I never owned iPhone, have no plans to either.
Is that a lot? Smartphones were in their infancy until very recently. I think 2GB is entirely reasonable, especially because the Android ecosystem doesn't require the latest OS version to be a commercially viable and usable phone.
Windows 98 required 16MB of RAM, Windows XP required 4x more (64MB) and it was released just 3 years later.
I can see some Android phones with 2GB of RAM that cost under $100.
It is well accepted that GC-based runtimes greatly increase memory footprint. A tracing GC might need upto several times the memory to match manual memory management. Nothing interesting about the "viewpoint".
Then I remember KitKat OS came and it was all hell broke loose. Every OEM was just releasing different Android versions here and there every year. And Google did nothing. They just let every smartphone company do what they want
In my history of ~11 years of Android development, it's just hard to purchase a Google phone. I bought a Nexus tablet but I have to ask my sister in the US to ship it to me. The shipping fee is ridiculous high I remember. Then they introduced Pixel and Go editions but still I couldn't purchase officially from Google. I have to ask favor from someone in the US/EU to ship it to me.