Comment by veselin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by veselin | Hacker News Reader

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The article is written by implying the wish of the author is the wish of the users. No, users don't want updates. They get annoyed.

I am on Android 10 and honestly I wish I didn't update. The update bricked by phone until I went in the bootloader to reset it to delete my data. Was it great to have it on day 1 (essential ph-1)? Maybe 5 years ago I would say yes, but now no. It wasted 2 hours of my time. Next time I will buy a phone with a good camera instead.

My experience with Android 9 was similar, but didn't break anything. The UI changes were just not good. I personally know the reason (worked with some of them) - all (unfortunately really all, no idea why this wasn't fixed) designers at Google are Apple users and have a bit if Apple envy. Apple can change the UX for everyone and make users get used to it (even if it is less efficient for everyone, which it is). Why wouldn't Google be able to do it? So Android had the best app switcher, but converged to the iOSish variant. I wish Google would just ignore Apple like Microsoft does it in their Windows.

In a similar way, most journalists are Apple users and there is one "right" way to do things. So we get this nonsense in articles and blogs.

You don't mention a big part of the puzzle : security updates.

Given the current state of infosec, any OS that has not received any security update for a year or two is doomed to become a sitting duck for malware. Device security is a whack-a-mole game where new vulnerabilities are found daily and security updates are the only way we have to keep our computers secure.

In a perfect world, UI-and-features-related updates would be optional while security updates would be seamless. Also in a perfect world, older OS releases would receive long term security support and you should not have to upgrade to a more recent release to be secure.

Alas, we do not live in a perfect world. Apple doesn't provide any easy way to accept security updates but refusing others. Android just doesn't seem to provide a seamless update experience, either for security updates or not.

So you should really apply security updates, and if it takes getting other updates for that, then so be it.

If you are Apple, you cannot ignore the security updates. If you are one of the 100 small vendors that sells some cheap Android phones, you offer no support and nobody will complain. If most of the Android phones have no updates, the entire market will not provide security updates, except a few flagship models where Samsung and a few more top manufacturers will have to do it to maintain the brand equity. This way you get to live in a world where "no updates" is the norm and there is no incentive to change that: the people buying $100 phones will not care about updates that they don't understand, but will increase the price by $10-20. When sub-$200 market is 80-90% of the market by volume the gold standard of no updates is set.

The Venn diagram of security updates and UI / UX updates has some intersection, but I agree that they should be as separate as possible.

If I were in control of the Android update release cycle I'd try to force this separation, but I'm sure it's more complex than it seems.

Still, the ideal, as ever, probably lies somewhere between the status quo and my over simplified dream!

This seems a particularly odd take.

You weren't forced to upgrade. It was offered and you accepted. You would have still got security upgrades on V9 (from Google) for some time. Many people don't get an upgrade, let along a choice of refusing it.

Re UX, you don't have to use gestures. You can opt into the "traditional" three-button system.

UX: no, you have to take the bad and non-intuitive UI.

the three buttons no longer work as before - e.g. long press no longer does split-screen. Furthermore, the UX before was cards one on top of each other, the open app is the topmost. The current "logic" is with cards sideways. Which is ugly, non-intuitive and copied from iOS. If you move left to take another card, suddenly your previous card does not remain on the right side. How is this intuitive? Even from business perspective this does not make sense, because once I got used to the new non-intuitive and less efficient UI, the switching costs to iOS for me will be lower.

Install "Split Screen Shortcut", turn it on in the accessibility settings.

When you say non-intuitive, you're not talking about intuition. Holding a button for split screen not intuitive, it's just something you've learnt. Rows vs piles of cards are essentially the same thing, each with slight benefits.

Reforging muscle memory is an inconvenience, but if Google thinks it has a better UX (copied or not) for non-indoctrinated users, maybe it's worth learning another way.

And the similar-UX business case works both directions.

We may keep arguing about what is better. But even if I accept your argument, we will conclude that there was a change for the sake of change. Not something that the users wanted.

I think very little macro design is driven by users. Somebody has an idea, they try it out and iterate.

We wouldn't have the things you're hanging onto without that sort of development.

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