Chinese KitKat

[E.S. Rosenberg]

2014/1/6 Oleg Goldshmidt <pub at goldshmidt.org>:
> geoffrey mendelson <geoffreymendelson at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> So all Android 2 devices, almost all 2 year old cell phones, can no
>> longer buy or update an app.
>
> <snip>
>
>> So yes, the phones become less useful, and eventually no use at all.
>
> I discern two patterns:
>
> 1. App is absolutely critical for me, way more important than making
>    calls or looking up addresses (may be, on tablets). Hence, the device
>    is literally useless without it. The app developers want to be as
>    famous as Linus Torvalds (just trying to stay on topic here), but
>    their way to imitate him is to mess up interfaces or protocols on
>    occasion (they heard of kernel ABIs but thought of APIs), thus
>    breaking client code and screwing up their user base without a second
>    thought. Ergo, the original version of X no longer works and the
>    earliest working version is not backported to the original firmware
>    since the latter is deemed irrelevant to newer HW "everyone" has
>    already blown a paycheck on. Bummer.
>
> 2. The device is a bloody phone with benefits. As such it is my primary
>    means of communicating with others, and hence is a part of my life
>    support infrastructure. I should not need to fiddle with it. I should
>    do what I can to avoid fiddling with it. It should just keep working,
>    I'd say at least for 5-6 years.
>
>    [Just like any part of critical infrastucture, I might say. Hell,
>    it's Linux-IL: people used to brag about uptimes here... ;-)]
>
> In practice, my Galaxy S is way older than 2 years. It suffered through
> one unintended upgrade. Something (I don't recall what) caused a serious
> problem and the solution was to reflash it, obviously with the firmware
> version current at the time. Thus it is on 2.3.3/Gingerbread now, and
> were it not for that reason it would still be on 2.1 or 2.2 or whatever
> the original version was. It is just as useful now, with everything
> working just as it did when I got it. Whenever I have a look at the
> newest shiny toy someone shows off I see zero noticeable difference with
> mine (not to say there are no differences, but apparently those are
> quite irrelevant to me since I don't notice them). I have not seen any
> compelling reason to upgrade yet, I want to avoid upgrades as long as I
> can, and I probably won't change anything in the next 2-3 years or until
> I encounter a HW problem. The phone nags incessantly about app upgrades,
> too (so much for claims they don't exist), mostly for stuff I never use.
>
> My pattern is very firmly #2. If yours is #1, fine. I might be curious
> about specific examples of functionality for which you absolutely must
> have the latest incompatible version to keep a device and not throw it
> away as useless. The curiosity is not just a sociological survey but a
> source of potential hints whose SW I should avoid in the future.
>
> The original statement didn't qualify anything though, thus I thought it
> was too harsh.
Even if your pattern is #2 (I'm somewhere in between, I have never
felt lacking for applications, but I mainly use the phone/browser and
terminal and some wifi tools), you would still want your phone to be
patched, after all if it is "part of your life support infrastructure"
you don't want it to be unavailable at the most critical time due to a
software flaw...
>
> --
> Oleg Goldshmidt | pub at goldshmidt.org
>
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