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Why Android Is the New Windows 424

Posted by CmdrTaco from the waiting-for-clippy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Windows' dominance of the PC market has been good in many ways: reduced hardware costs, increased IT literacy and a standard development platform to name a few. Perhaps Android will bring similar benefits. But unless Google are very careful, it is likely to bring some of the same problems, too."
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Why Android Is the New Windows More

Why Android Is the New Windows

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  • mobile platform (Score:4, Insightful)

    by devxo ( 1963088 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @12:19PM (#34630280)
    The biggest problem with Android is that from a developers point of view, it's a horrible platform. It's not just Android - this goes way back to early Symbian versions, Windows Mobile and other early mobile OS versions.

    Basically, you have tons of different devices you need to support, all with different hardware, resolution and features. They might or might not have changes made by the phone manufacturer and/or telcos. They might have physical keyboards or only touchscreen. Maybe multitouch on some. Camera on the back, maybe front too, or not at all? Different API's supported by different versions of Android.. It's a nightmare.

    This may now a days work okay for computers because they have a lot more power and space and you don't need to worry about batteries so much. But as for mobile developers, that's not true yet and it means you have to create and test your applications and games for every device and most likely make some changes and bugfixes to some of them. Take for example the popular Angry Birds game - the developers have outright said they just cannot support all the different Android devices.

    As much as I dislike Apple, iPhones are a solid platform. They have a few different versions of the OS (there needs to be progress, right?), but that's it. Much better for developers and for users. While Windows Phone 7 has definitely taken a better approach than before, they also haven't considered this issue.

    • I don't know about that. Microsoft is being pretty strict on the hardware requirements for WP7. While they aren't controlling the actual hardware like Apple they are dictating things like the screen size. That alone is a huge improvement over the Android ecosphere. Here [windowsmobile7.com] is a list of minimum specs.

      Seems to me that WP7 is taking a good middle ground, though I'm not sure about its reliance on Silverlight. I'd rather see a straight C# API (other than XNA for game development that is)

    • Re:mobile platform (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Microlith ( 54737 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @12:44PM (#34630676)

      Basically, you have tons of different devices you need to support, all with different hardware, resolution and features. [...] It's a nightmare.

      Sort of like developing for the PC, right? I know, we should all move to vendor-locked consoles.

      As much as I dislike Apple, iPhones are a solid platform. They have a few different versions of the OS (there needs to be progress, right?), but that's it. Much better for developers and for users.

      Well, when you've got such a tight-fisted control freak attitude it's not hard to ram everyone into a few boxes.

      While Windows Phone 7 has definitely taken a better approach than before, they also haven't considered this issue.

      Microsoft basically dictated every bit of hardware used at the level of the OS. There are some minor differentiating features, but they're all basically the exact same hardware with different attachments (displays, speakers,) plastic cases and vendor logos.

      • Re:mobile platform (Score:4, Insightful)

        by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @01:42PM (#34631760)

        Basically, you have tons of different devices you need to support, all with different hardware, resolution and features. [...] It's a nightmare.

        Sort of like developing for the PC, right? I know, we should all move to vendor-locked consoles.

        As the previous poster mentioned if you'd bother to quote them in their entirety, PC's don't have to worry about severely limited cpu power and battery life. Running Flash on a Mac can be annoying and will drain your laptop's battery and use way more processor cycles than any other plugin. Port the same thing to an iPhone or other Mobile and you have people with mobile devices that are unresponsive, crashy, and don't even last a whole day on a battery. When resources are limited by the size and portability, problems get magnified sometimes to the point where they are game changers.

        No one is proposing that we all move to consoles for the laptop/desktop market... but you're conflating that market with the mobile market where there are different needs and limitations.

        • No, they are proposing that we would have been better off if we had gone that route in the first place. I remember when the complaints people have about Android were the complaints they had about the PC market. It was why the Mac was better and why everybody should have bought a Mac.

          • Re:mobile platform (Score:4, Interesting)

            by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @03:51PM (#34633800) Homepage

            ...which is a real hoot because I have this "fragmentation" problem with my Macs. Some are older than others but none are terribly old. Yet some of them are capable of playing big studio games and others aren't. It's not like I am trying to play some high detail fast past shooter on these boxes. I am just interested in relatively mundane strategy games. Even these don't support the "lesser" GPUs that slightly older Macs have.

            Unless the platform is entirely castrated, there will be "fragmentation" issues.

            Then instead of "fragmentation" you will have the problem of n+1 completely incompatible platforms or some monster monopoly.

        • Re:mobile platform (Score:4, Insightful)

          by zeroshade ( 1801584 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @02:22PM (#34632412)

          No one is proposing that we all move to consoles for the laptop/desktop market... but you're conflating that market with the mobile market where there are different needs and limitations.

          Just because there are different needs and limitations doesn't remove the analogy. On a desktop or laptop you have all the same differences: different hardware, monitor, resolution, mouse/touchpad/trackball, joystick or no joystick, discrete or onboard graphics, discrete or onboard audio, drivers out the wazoo, varying amounts of ram, cpu, and disk space, built in camera or USB connected, or no camera at all, etc. etc. etc. Just because the environment's needs are different doesn't eliminate the fact that it's a similar situation. You have a system with a large amount of variation in the type and amount of hardware and specs. If developers can write applications for windows and linux that successfully run on hundreds if not thousands of variations of hardware for desktops, laptops, netbooks, etc. Then developers can write applications for Android. This type of variation is new in the mobile space which is the only reason why it keeps getting this much attention, it's not a new development for software developers and should stop being treated as such. It's just simply FUD.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • really, you had to throw the fragmentation argument again? is that the best you can do?

      android is nothing like windows. it's everything like linux, because it is linux. Linux doesn't have fragmentation issues either, unless you're goin for the fud route.

      way to troll there.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by medcalf ( 68293 )
        Which of course explains why there are so many commercial applications available for Linux. Thanks for pointing that out.

        • really?

          ever heard of red hat? That's not commercial? ever heard of android? that's not commercial?

          How many servers run linux versus windows? Do I need to pull up that cite again?

          thanks for pointing out you have no idea what you're talking about.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Sancho ( 17056 ) *

          There really are a lot of commercial apps for Linux--they're just mostly Enterprisey. And they do suffer from fragmentation, to a degree. Usually one or two versions of one or two distros will be supported. Need to update due to security reasons? Hopefully you've got a support contract, but even then they may not provide an update for a newer version of the distro.

          Every OS has fragmentation to a certain degree.

      • really, you had to throw the fragmentation argument again? is that the best you can do?

        android is nothing like windows. it's everything like linux, because it is linux. Linux doesn't have fragmentation issues either, unless you're goin for the fud route.

        way to troll there.

        Yeah Linux also doesnt have the "brand new version x won't ever run on hardware y because maker of hardware y neglects to give a shit about now six month old hardware y anymore now that hardware z is out."

        Honestly, take a look around the Android developer community and for every 1 person happy making games or fart apps there are 10 user/developers trying in vain to hack new open source code onto new-ish handsets, because the hardware manufacturers don't give a shit about fragmentation either... They only wo

      • Re:mobile platform (Score:4, Informative)

        by paeanblack ( 191171 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @02:08PM (#34632168)

        Linux doesn't have fragmentation issues either, unless you're goin for the fud route.

        The commercial Linux companies don't have a strong financial incentive to fragment the market. They rely on app developers to directly support their product, and if they stray too far from OSS principles, they lose the dev support. There is not enough money to be made locking in customers to overcome the losses on the development side.

        Phone companies do have a strong incentive to fragment the Android market. Their business model relies on making it as difficult as possible to switch providers and to provide incentives for unnecessary hardware upgrades by artificially restricting software upgrades to newer models. They don't care about openness. They don't have to. They are the phone company.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "The biggest problem with Android is that from a developers point of view, it's a horrible platform."

      Which developer? I'm guessing you're not one?

      Android is probably the easiest mobile platform to develop for bar perhaps Windows Mobile.

      "Basically, you have tons of different devices you need to support, all with different hardware, resolution and features. They might or might not have changes made by the phone manufacturer and/or telcos. They might have physical keyboards or only touchscreen. Maybe multitouc

    • A lot of people prefer to have a device that is tailored to their needs than going with a one-size-fits-all solution. Things like having different sized screens, or physical keypads, are important to some people.

    • As much as I dislike Apple, iPhones are a solid platform. They have a few different versions of the OS (there needs to be progress, right?), but that's it. Much better for developers and for users. While Windows Phone 7 has definitely taken a better approach than before, they also haven't considered this issue.

      Basically you babbled about how there's approximately 1 iPhone. I mean face it, Linux runs on SPARC and PPC and x86 and x86-64; Windows has gone through multiple API versions and even just Vista has 40 different versions and runs on computers with one or two or six processor cores, sometimes shared, sometimes with different memory access models (flat, NUMA, single-processor-multi-core vs multi-processor vs multi-multicore and memory/cache sharing and access models) that affect performance, some with a scr

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lundse ( 1036754 )

      All these complaints are really about fragmentation. Your criticism is not about Android, but about whether we should have more than a handful of different phones to develop on. I say we should. Apple is showing us very clearly what the alternative is.

      The question then is, whether Android is good for such a fragmented market. Technically, I have no idea. And its ecosystem of development could be more open - but I am sure that the basic openness of the platform is doing/will do a lot of good.

      • All these complaints are really about fragmentation. Your criticism is not about Android, but about whether we should have more than a handful of different phones to develop on. I say we should. Apple is showing us very clearly what the alternative is.

        Yes, curse Apple. Curse them for their mass appeal and constantly growing popularity. How dare they be successful in the midst of people who don't like their development process...

        Android is withering on the vine. Sure there are new handsets coming out all the time, but anyone with a handset from just six months ago is lumped in with the "legacy old-timers" and they get infrequent/unstable software updates while the handset makers and carriers chase new customers with brand new handsets. This business m

    • The real problem (lol, "listen to me", right?) is that handset makers and carriers have no motivation to improve the situation. People don't buy more of an old phone because the software got revved and has new features. They buy *brand*new*phones* so the handset makers and carriers are constantly chasing the bleeding edge and if your handset is just SIX MONTHS OLD you can count on infrequent or non-existent updates.

      Google will lose to Apple in this space because they have the reins on the software/hardwar

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by kakris ( 126307 )

      I've done some development on Android and I don't think I'd agree that it's a horrible platform. There are plenty of things to pick apart, and it can be tiring figuring out the way Google wants you to do certain things, but it doesn't seem any worse than learning any new API. Generally my code works on 80+% of the devices out there the first time I test it after debugging. From there it's usually small tweaks, and the bugs generally stem from me not doing things according to best practice. It's not unli

    • Multitouch doesn't work right. Even single touch is fidgety and glitchy. Interactivity is rough... lots of hitches in animations, complete multi-second freezes for no apparent reason, allowing of apps to take over and drag everything down. I have a few different Android devices, and on every one of them I have to yank the battery every couple of weeks to get them un-stuck.

      It's nowhere close to as polished as iOS. For a techy user that knows how to deal with these issues and enjoys the openness, it's fin

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ash Vince ( 602485 ) *

      As much as I dislike Apple, iPhones are a solid platform. They have a few different versions of the OS (there needs to be progress, right?), but that's it.

      Is it? Or are you completely ignoring the 4 different physical devices with vastly differing hardware and capabilities. Whilst this doesn't hold a candle to Android it is still a case of having differing devices to choose to support or not. This is an inescapable fact of any platform that is upgraded regularly.

      Most developers are probably choosing to not support the iphone2 by now but ignoring the iphone3 is still a very big market to ignore since many of the people who adopted it under contract are still s

  • Increased IT literacy??? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SpaghettiPattern ( 609814 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @12:23PM (#34630342)

    Window's dominance of the PC market has been good in many ways ... increased IT literacy

    What?! That's like saying McDonald's did anything for fine cuisine. Gimme a break!

    • Re:Increased IT literacy??? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Migala77 ( 1179151 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @12:31PM (#34630476)

      Window's dominance of the PC market has been good in many ways ... increased IT literacy

      What?! That's like saying McDonald's did anything for fine cuisine. Gimme a break!

      Like McD has given us something with which to compare fine cuisine, Windows has given us a way to differentiate between those who are and aren't IT literate.

    • What?! That's like saying McDonald's did anything for fine cuisine. Gimme a break!

      Well, it may have driven people back to fine cuisine and real food ... but, that might not be what you meant. ;-)

    • Window's dominance of the PC market has been good in many ways ... increased IT literacy

      What?! That's like saying McDonald's did anything for fine cuisine. Gimme a break!

      Clearly you've never eaten a McPizza.

      It was, without a doubt, the finest piece of cullinary art that this world has ever known and they pulled it from their menu just like that. I'm pretty sure they sold the recipe to Gordon Ramsay for something like a quarter of a million dollars. Gordon didn't know however that Pizza was not a popular pick in fancy restaurants where the entrees go for over 50 dollars. That's why he always seems pissed off on TV, he got a raw deal.

      • Clearly you've never eaten a McPizza.

        *shudder* That stuff was nasty. Good riddance, I say. (Of course, I've not eaten McD's in over a decade).

        Though, I seem to recall having some fond memories of the McDLT when I was much younger.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gtall ( 79522 )

          Actually, I quite liked their seaweed burger, it wasn't a fat-fest in your mouth so I could eat it without my heart threatening for divorce.

    • Certainly. We have an entire generation schooled to a standard. The menu standard of: Click on File, then Open or Help/About or Tools/Options and....oh thats right, Microsoft changed all that.... Never mind...

    • Re:Increased IT literacy??? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @12:47PM (#34630738)
      McDonald gave us a restaurant in every city in America. That would be a better comparison. I'm guessing you weren't around in the 80's when the ONLY home PC was an Apple. DOS was hard to use for your average non-techie and Apple was ridiculously expensive. A similar quantity of ram for an apple was easily 10x the price of that for a PC. Almost all software written for Apples was also prohibitively expensive. Apple really did themselves in back then, had they priced their stuff reasonably, they would have crushed Microsoft.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by lluBdeR ( 466879 )

        I'm guessing you weren't around in the 80's when the ONLY home PC was an Apple.

        I'm guessing you weren't either [wikipedia.org].

      • Re:Increased IT literacy??? (Score:5, Informative)

        by BlueStraggler ( 765543 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @01:43PM (#34631774)

        Dude, please. You're getting your anti-Apple memes all mixed up.

        Facts: In 1979 the Apple II+ cost $1195 with 48K of RAM. In 1981, the IBM PC cost $1565 with 16K of RAM. Apple had cheaper hardware and software for years. And furthermore Microsoft was a key supplier to both companies, so why on earth would anyone have wanted to crush them?

        The cheap PC clones vs. expensive Apple meme had real legs for about 10 years (early 1990s to early 2000's). It has been false for quite a bit longer than it was true.

        • lol, your quoting the price of the first IBM PC ever made, and probably the most expensive. Dell was selling IBM PC clones in 1985 for under $800 (although they weren't called dell yet) I know because I bought one. True IBMs were selling for around the same price as apples ($1200-$1300) and running at about 4Mhz compared to apples Apple IIc at 1Mhz or the Macintosh that was almost $2600 but at least had the nifty graphics.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

        guessing you weren't around in the 80's when the ONLY home PC was an Apple.

        I'm guessing you weren't; most home PCs were TSR-80s and came from Radio Shack. The ones that weren't were TI99-As, Commodore 64s, etc. As you say, Apples were insanely expensive, while those machines were a few hundred bucks compared to Apple's few thousand bucks.

    • I was thinking the same.

      If Windows accomplished anything, it is to make people LESS computer literate and MORE dependent on GUIs. Don't get me wrong, they're great to give people who have little time and even less interest to dig deeply into the "how to"s a quick way to do what they want to accomplish, and Windows certainly lowered the "entrance bar" to using the computer, but it certainly did NOT increase the computer literacy of the average person.

      I'd even dare to say it lowered the computer literacy of a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        Knowing a CLI doesn't make you computer literate or anything like an administrator. Knowing only a gui doesn't make you computer illiterate either. Lemme, guess, you think computer science is computer programming?

        • No, ok, allow me to elaborate.

          CLIs tend to be more "bare boned", but at the same time more versatile, or rather, you get to see more options immediately because they're all part of the CLI command. Often, when learning how to deal with the CLI, you will have to look up those options and at the very least you will know they exist. GUIs are often separated into different layers that first show you what you'll need 9 out of 10 times and hence the chance that you'll even find out about those "odd" options is qu

      • If Windows accomplished anything, it is to make people LESS computer literate and MORE dependent on GUIs.

        You seem to believe that a GUI is always a worse interface choice than a CLI.

        Memorizing arcane keyboard commands doesn't inherently indicate you're more computer literate nor that you understand more about what's going on.

        I mean, I was an anti-mouse bigot myself twenty years ago, but then I grew up.

        • Re:Increased IT literacy??? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @02:18PM (#34632340)

          Would you please read again?

          It's not a WORSE interface. It depends on what's your goal. If you want someone to accomplish something fast without a steep learning curve, then yes, a GUI is the way to go. But that does not make the person more "computer literate". It allows him to get something done, and get it done without having to dig into the matter deeply before he can actually accomplish anything.

          Now, if someone can accomplish something by knowing less, do you really think that makes him more literate?

    • Window's dominance of the PC market has been good in many ways ... increased IT literacy

      What?! That's like saying McDonald's did anything for fine cuisine. Gimme a break!

      No, it's like saying owning a piece of crap car make you a better mechanic...

  • Systems Integration (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rjstanford ( 69735 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @12:30PM (#34630470) Homepage Journal

    Looks like I'm sticking with the iPhone for a while then. I've gotten to the point where I'll happily sacrifice a small amount of money and a little flexibility in exchange for a well-vetted, vertically integrated solution rather than an assembly kit that I can use - if I wish - to build something great. With the increased power to do your own thing all to frequently comes the need to do your own thing, with your own time and your own money. Not on my phone, thanks - I'll leave tinkering to the hobbies I choose rather than a useful accessory for my life. And yes, I'm a developer.

    • Re:Systems Integration (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Microlith ( 54737 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @12:36PM (#34630562)

      if I wish

      Ah, there's the lynchpin. If you hadn't noticed, there's been a concerted effort in the mobile industry to make sure that even "if [you] wish", you can't. The point is to make you dependent on them, even when you could easily solve the problem yourself.

      • if I wish

        Ah, there's the lynchpin. If you hadn't noticed, there's been a concerted effort in the mobile industry to make sure that even "if [you] wish", you can't. The point is to make you dependent on them, even when you could easily solve the problem yourself.

        The vast majority (+99%?) of mobile phone users don't have the skill set or desire do it themselves. Same goes for desktop/laptop users. What seems natural, accessible or even easy to /. readers isn't really fathomable to most. Most people don't know how their cars work and even less can work on them (fewer still can fix the damage done by those who think they can but can't).

        There isn't enough of a demand - based on the consumer base - to make a DIY platform available. Why would a phone manufacturer spen

        • The vast majority (+99%?) of mobile phone users don't have the skill set or desire do it themselves.

          Which is irrelevant when they have to go out of their way to lock the devices down. Using user ignorance as a justification could be easily turned against you to take away all control you have.

          Why would a phone manufacturer spend all the extra time and money to develop a platform with this level of accessibility for such a small segment of sales?

          They don't. They just have to make it possible for me to load wh

    • In what way is a Windows PC or Android phone an 'assembly kit' ?

    • I'm actually straining to really grasp your situation here.

      So you've got a phone that's well built from top to bottom that's stable but doesn't let you try anything new. We'll call it an iPhone.

      And you've got a phone that will work as a phone, and handle the basic smartphone functionalities like email/text/weather/music pretty much as well as an iPhone. We'll call it a Droid.

      So I understand that you might get frustrated with certain things on the droid, with fragmentation being the first problem to pop up i

      • Well "Doesn't let you try anything new" might have been exagerating iPhone's closed situation. Sure you CAN develop new things for it, but not with the same amount of freedom...

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by rjstanford ( 69735 )

        But your assembly kit analogy is was really kind of throws me off. 80% of what you use your droid for will be built into it, no assembly required. Particularily the line "With the increased power to do your own thing all to frequently comes the need to do your own thing" - I honestly have no idea where thats coming from or what you mean by it. So your phone is more flexible... so you feel pressured to use its flexibility? Can you elaborate on the situation where you felt the need to "Do your own thing" - what that thing was and how an iPhone got you around that problem? This is what is absolutely perplexing me.

        Frequently, with flexibility comes the absolution of design. Standard keyboard doesn't work quite right? No worries, the user can install one that they really like, and most apps will even respect that decision! Can't make up your mind as a developer on the right way to solve a problem? Add a checkbox and let/force the user to decide. Crap at making GUIs? Make a completely skinnable app and let the user sort though them all, or make their own! Not everything scrolls smoothly? Don't worry, truly high

  • This line from the article.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GPLDAN ( 732269 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @12:33PM (#34630512)
    "The entire phenomenon of viruses and malware is a result of the proliferation of Windows, the people behind malware take advantage of that same standard development platform."

    This sentence is so stupid that it invalidates the arguments contained within the entire article. Who thinks that if Apple and their marriage of hardware and software were to have only existed in some anti-Capra Steve Jobs as Mister Potter world of computing, that viruses and malware would have not existed? Because there are no viruses for MAC OS? By that logic, wouldn't NeXT Step have been the most secure UNIX ever? To lay the existence of malware at Redmond's feet is to be so ignorant of computing and O/S design as to make anything said about Android totally and completely moot.

    • Re:This line from the article.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @12:47PM (#34630748) Homepage Journal

      Also those of us who were using Macs back in the day remember that it was horribly common to get a virus, or at least to be exposed to them. It's not until we got that program that detected suspicious behavior... Gatekeeper? And then later, Disinfectant, a recognition-based AV, that it became possible to get a handle on things.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Nadaka ( 224565 )

      Try reading a few more sentences. He states the windows virus problem is mostly resulting from its dominance as a monoculture. That mac or linux would have much more malware than they do now if they had 90% market share.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by 0123456 ( 636235 )

        Try reading a few more sentences. He states the windows virus problem is mostly resulting from its dominance as a monoculture. That mac or linux would have much more malware than they do now if they had 90% market share.

        More than basically nothing, yes. There are sure to be some security holes which would be exploited on unpatched machines.

        But Windows has always been insecure by default, whereas Unix has at least tried to be secure by default. Most obviously that any Flash exploit on Windows could own your entire system because you were almost certainly logged in as an admin user, whereas on Unix you need a Flash exploit _and_ a local priviledge exploit to do the same thing.

        We could add minor little issues like loading DLL

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by w_dragon ( 1802458 )
          Several years ago, in the early 2000s, I went to a tech-heavy university. Maybe things have gotten better, but at the time a default install of Debian on the school network would be rooted within a couple weeks. Linux isn't secure by default, if you don't know what you're doing it will be open to attack, just like Windows. The difference being that most people who use Linux are either in an environment where there is no local threat, or they actually know what they're doing.
    • Yes you are correct, but the point the article is making is that the situation has been made a hell of a lot worse. Microsoft refused to make a decent multi-user OS for years with abstraction between user and administrative functions, until they were forced into remedying the situation because they had to. Running scripts by default in a web client also wasn't the smartest of choices to have made.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Belial6 ( 794905 )
      Bingo. The fact that viruses existed long before Windows pretty much invalidates the argument that Widows is responsible for viruses.

  • Window's dominance of the PC market has been good in many ways, reduced hardware costs

    [citation needed]

  • Maemo/Meego (Score:5, Funny)

    by jspenguin1 ( 883588 ) <jspenguin@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @12:56PM (#34630920) Homepage

    So if Android is Windows, iOS is MacOS, does that make Maemo/Meego the Linux of the mobile world?

    "My N900 runs Linux."
    "So does my Android phone."
    "But the N900 runs GNU/Linux!"

    I still get to feel superior.

  • There are a couple of things that make this useless. Both Apple and Android run only signed code unless the user makes an effort to do otherwise. Google makes it a checkbox (which some carriers then remove). Browser exploits for either platform are equally likely.

  • The Register ran an article which said much the same thing (albeit worded rather differently) last month:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/19/mobile_phone_platforms/page2.html [theregister.co.uk]

  • android suffers from Java Stigma, not malware (Score:3)

    by bl8n8r ( 649187 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @01:13PM (#34631212)
    I don't find the android platform any harder to code for than anything else; younger programmers do not want to learn Java and that is creating far more problems for the platform than malware.
  • If Android is the new Windows, who will be the new Bill Gates?

    You know, someone manipulative with whom the dark forces of FUD are strong, but yet nerdy enough that one could develop a love-hate relationship.

  • Unix grew up in a multiuser university setting with hundreds of accounts and every freshman dreaming of hacking into the registrar's computer and hacking his (not "or her" here sadly) grades. Any application that needed to be root had to jump through so many hoops and permissions to get installed most developers assumed that the application will run without root privilege. That is the root of security in Unix

    Windows grew up as a personal machine used by one user, in a corporate setting. Early PC administr

  • Fragmentation is necessary (Score:3)

    by salesgeek ( 263995 ) on Tuesday December 21, 2010 @06:21PM (#34635636) Homepage

    If you are creating an operating system that can be extended to support new devices with different hardware, it is a given that fragmentation will occur. In the end, fragmentation abates as hardware manufacturers start seeing software publishers ignore devices because of compatibility. This process is not working well with cell phones because of the 1 and 2 year contract models the carriers use to sell phones. People often don't know the device they are buying has issues or isn't going to get any software maintenance or upgrades until after the return period expires on their smartphone purchase, so they have to wait until the contract is up.

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