Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source capacity over the last decade.

Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source nature over the last decade.

Originally published on The Lever, but that one asks you to sign up.

  • chaosCruiser@futurology.todayEnglish
    171·
    2 days ago

    But is it even slightly better? It’s debatable. Both are completely awful, but I guess iOS is just terrible in different ways.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 hours ago

      My last iPhone was a iPhone 5. Or 6, maybe?

      Fast forward, and I’ve been on Android until right now, when I got an iPhone 16 in a loss-leader sale.

      …And I am astounded by how much worse it is. My old jailbroken iPhone’s UI was both simpler and 100x times more customizable and useful than all these bizzare required gestures; I spent days trying to teach my Mom and grandpa how to use it, to no avail. At the same time, its as uncustomizable as ever.

      I had basically every feature the 16 has now, like the action button, and more. And it somehow feels slower in browsing than my SD845 Android 9 phone.

      It wasn’t perfect back then, but the App Store is flooded with garbage now.

      I literally want my iPhone 5 back. WTF has Apple been doing?

      • chaosCruiser@futurology.todayEnglish
        2·
        4 hours ago

        They’ve been busy reading the history books to find out what Android did 4 years ago so that they can start developing those same features today. Any remaining time and effort went into creating vacuous marketing hype.

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          4 hours ago

          Irony is Android felt way more intuitive, including to my non techy family, even in the worst case (EG Samsung devices with their spammy UI).