Path: csiph.com!news.swapon.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Frank Slootweg Newsgroups: comp.mobile.android Subject: Re: Has Your Nexus Device Patch Showed Up? Date: 1 Sep 2015 20:40:30 GMT Organization: NOYB Lines: 57 Message-ID: References: <1EAyrUwVYW5VFAwS@perry.co.uk> X-Trace: individual.net kDPvNr2Og9EF7GpJJtVkyQuUpleFlzTjU7eY7oXKDwZq6KbU5c X-Orig-Path: not-for-mail Cancel-Lock: sha1:tRS/73zI8GuQcb/uTCSLVUpxi6c= User-Agent: tin/1.6.2-20030910 ("Pabbay") (UNIX) (CYGWIN_NT-6.2-WOW64/1.5.22(0.156/4/2) (i686)) Hamster/2.0.2.2 X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 150901-0, 09/01/2015), Outbound message X-Antivirus-Status: Clean Xref: csiph.com comp.mobile.android:22224 Roland Perry wrote: > In message , at 19:43:14 on Mon, 17 > Aug 2015, Frank Slootweg remarked: > > > It is highly unusual - to put it mildly - to tie the software > >distribution mechanism of an OS to the device manufacturer. There is > >also no valid reason to do that. Other OSes are perfectly capable of > >seperating the general - i.e. the OS itself - and device-specific parts. > >I.e. the OS supplier supplies updates for the OS and the device > >manufacturer supplies the device-specific updates. > > It's not unique to phones/tablets, the same happens with some laptops. No, it *is* unique to Android phones/tablets. What you're describing (below) is exactly what I said. With "Other OSes" I was implicitly and mainly referring to Windows on laptops/'desktops'. And those do *not* follow the Android model. Windows updates and new versions are *not* distributed by the device manfacturer, but by Microsoft. I.e. for Android, the updates and new versions should be distributed by the *OS* developer - i.e. *Google* -, not by (for example) Samsung. > The one I'm typing on at the moment has at least a dozen "extras", some > of them utilities and others "built-in" as device drivers. > > Obvious ones are drivers for the power management but there's also a > fan-speed control, another for its somewhat quirky touchpad. Altogether > there's over twenty separate files required to update the original Vista > to Windows 7, most of which are neither included with the generic > Windows 7 nor are available from normal "driver download" sites. Exactly: You get the OS from the OS developer (Microsoft) and the device-specific part from the computer/device manufacturer. So likewise you should get the OS from Google, *not* Samsung. > So while it can be updated with normal Microsoft security patches, if we > regard Win7 as a "patch" for Vista (in the same way Lollipop is a patch > for KitKat) then it's hard work to upgrade. The manufacturer produced > files for Win7, but you have to download and install them by hand. They > haven't developed files for Win8.0 and later. What you're describing for Windows - i.e. Vista to 8[.1] - are upgrades, not patches. And yes, *unlike* for Android, you get those upgrades from the *OS* developer, not from the *device* manufacturer. N.B. The issue of the device manufacturer not supporting newer OS versions on their hardware is (more or less) the same for Windows and Android, with the exception that the (software upgradability) lifetime of an Android device is much, much, shorter. Bottom line: The Android software distribution mechanism *is* highly unusual, if not unique, and, given the consequences for the users, broken-by-design.