Memes @lemmy.ml

2y ago

Android compatibility is insane!

108 comments

Lemmy is a clean slate. Let’s leave the Android/iOS butthurt shit on Reddit for as long as we can.
- Please, I’m iOS user but I enjoy reading advances of android because both systems push each other to be better. We don’t need toxic BS here too.
  
  Exactly. I use both along with macOS, Windows, Linux. All have their pros and cons and all work well. Most of the rant comments are just BS.
  
  I've had bot android and iOS over the years. Love them both for their own reasons. Currently rocking a pixel 7.
- Interesting, so windows vs mac os didn't cause a flame war but Android vs IOS does.
  
  Possibly because the cost for entry to macOS is higher than with iOS. Most people are able to run a Windows computer at very little cost, and will never have any interaction with a Mac. Meanwhile, iPhones and Android phones are (broadly) on a par in terms of cost.
  I will say though, speaking as someone who's used Macs since 2007, as much as I'm no fan of how Windows works, I won't give anyone shit for doing so. But I used to get quite a bit of vitriol for my choice of computer.
  
  Many people just have phones now.
  
  I was gonna comment that this exact post was made a few days ago with the only difference being Mac vs Windows instead. Seems you're already aware, and you're just farming. Nice.
  
  Because nobody has windows user as a core part of their identity.
  
  the windows vs mac shit is also toxic nonsense and you know it.

my partner uses an iPhone, and i'll never understand how. there's so many hoops you have to jump through to find or do anything on there... the UI is a complete shitshow. it's the least intuitive interface i have ever had the misfortune to use. Macs are somehow even worse. if you love someone, find them an Android replacement and set it on baby/elderly mode with all the buttons huge and in one spot. a fucking Jitterbug would be an upgrade.
- Not sure if it's changed since I had an iPhone, but the camera settings are located in the system settings app.
  You have to exit the camera app, open system settings, find camera, just to change basic things.
  On Android you just.. change the settings in the damn camera app..
  
  That is intentional. All non-app-specific settings are stored at the OS level. The camera settings impact every piece of software that uses the camera, not just the “Camera” app. That’s how all settings in iOS works and it’s only odd if you’re not familiar with it. Once you are familiar with Android AND iOS you see each systems way of doing things.
- The main advantage ios has over Android is its lack of support for virtualization (like java). This makes their apps much less resource hungry, faster, and the phone does not slow down as much over time. Given the fact that idiotic apps like Instagram and Facebook need supercomputers to run on Android the difference for the end user is a huge gulf performancewise. It must be a nightmare for developers though.
  For people who know what they are doing it is very easy to maintain the software health on android and keep it running fast over time. If you don't though usage of apps like the ones mentioned above will make it run like a commodore in months.
  
  That virtualization thing hasn't really been true for quite a while. Android compiles the Java-ish code ahead of time (the .oat file is a playful acronym for "ahead of time") to native code. There's still overhead with exceptions and other java-isms, but that still very much exists in objective-c.
  I'd bed that iPhones only seem faster because it's normal to have more powerful and expensive new iPhones. Android has auto-suspended apps in the background for longer than iphone, and it doesn't require any maintenance to keep running smoothly (it doesn't even require "closing" apps from the app drawer).
- It's always interesting to see this perspective as I basically feel the exact opposite. I use an iPhone, and have an Android phone as a test device for work. Generally, my iPhone and Mac are so much easier to use together than an Android phone and Windows or Linux PC.
  Universal clipboard and AirDrop are built into the OS and way better than KDE Connect. Shortcuts is also much easier and more powerful than Tasker. Plus excellent apps like Prologue, NetNewsWire, Ivory, or Elastic Drums have no parallels on Android.
  For whatever reason, iOS users are more willing to pay for software and that makes the software available on iOS significantly better.
  
  I use Android and I hate drastic change, my brother switched to the apple ecosystem and is constantly showing me cool things. I'll give Apple one thing, they know how to make their devices just work together with basically no effort. It's something I wish Android did even half as well.
- I had to use a Macbook Pro for some years (for work) and I hated it. The Apple UI is horrible and the whole system was too sluggish. Routine updates could break your system (IT had to reimage my system once).

Can you install this IPA?
Apple: Noooo! You have to install apps from my App Store!
- Unless of course, you pay $100 and call yourself a developer

I love it. I made an Android app in 2011 and I still sometimes load up the .apk for nostalgia.
It was the first app I ever made and although some functions no longer work (due to 3rd party SDKs and APIs that no longer exist), it's mostly still pretty flawless.
According to my Google Play dashboard, there are even some people that still use it!

Android and iOS have different philosophies regarding updates.
Android phones often only receive OS updates for a short time and are then used for many years more.
iOS devices usually receive OS updates for a much longer time.
This means, Android app devs have to make their apps more compatible, because otherwise they will exclude most users.
iOS devs on the other hand often only support the newest version of iOS, so if your device doesn’t get new OS updates any more, you can toss it.
- Except the devs who made games for kids. Those guys still support iOS 10 because kids often receive hand-me-downs from their parents.
- iOS devs on the other hand often only support the newest version of iOS, so if your device doesn’t get new OS updates any more, you can toss it.
  And the newest versions of iOS only run smoothly on the newest iPhone hardware, so if you want your phone to keep running quickly and smoothly you have to keep updating to the newest hardware. Planned obsolescence in action.

Lots of games in Google Play Store are no longer possible to purchase because they are "incompatible with newer versions of Android".
- That's probably because the Play Store has policies on what apps need to do to keep being downloadable - if you acquire an APK, there's a really good chance that it might still be installable.
- Yeah, that's the Play Store though, not Android itself.
  I made some Android apps back in the day, so I know what's happening behind the scenes. Mostly it's that Google updates requirements for the apps. Every once in a while, the requirements go up (e.g. "must be targeted for at least Android Version/API Level X", or "Must follow design guideline Y"). The main point for this is that they don't want abandoned apps cluttering the Play Store.
  Old apps tend to not support newer features, e.g. the user being able to allow/deny single permissions. On older Android versions you could either allow all permissions or not use the app, while nowadays you can just pick and choose which permissions to allow.
  If you install an older app, it won't support this pick and chose system. Stuff like that.
  But all that is just Google/Play Store. If you download the APK from somewhere else (e.g. F-Droid) you can totally run apps from 2010 on a modern phone.

Android removed 32 bit support in the newest version. Maybe see what the compatibility is after that releases
- For most apps, this doesn't matter at all. The vast majority of Android apps are fully Java/Kotlin, which is architecture-agnostic.
  It's only when you need to use C libraries where architecture matters, and most things using C libraries are games, which already target 64-bit.
  
  This man APKs.
- Hopefully they it's like Windows with 64bit and 32bit support
  
  I mean Android de facto is the Windows of mobile phones

This is funny considering Android 14 may be sunsetting support for 32-bit apps in favor of exclusive 64-bit apps, which will likely break a lot of backward compatability. Whoopsie doodles.

Your only compatibility wall is the play store. If you've got the apk you're installing 9/10 times. Apk repos are great.

Although Android is made by Google, it is after all cousin-brother of Linux with the same advantages
- If it wasn't for locked devices and proprietary drivers, it would be a nice experience, very close to linux.
  
  If you have root access it isn't a problem, then you can use alternatives, like GrapheneOS, Ubuntu Touch, CalyxOS or similar. The only problem is if you need an official app, since they are usually only available for Android or iOS. Then the only are Replicant or LinageOS, these are "degoogled" Android forks

reminds me of that time i installed a really old version of opera on my android tablet

What ever happened to initiatives such as project Treble? Do you guys think updates have gotten better on Android?
I remember when I used to be excited about Android OS updates and kept watching videos about new features (that I was not gonna get anytime soon because I was stuck in an old version of Android)... It's been years since I've been excited about an Android update.
Little side note rant:
My biggest annoyance with Android is the share menu. I hate how it's different for different apps (Firefox is vastly different from other apps for instance). I can notice at least 3 different sharing menus with the apps I frequently use. Makes it hard to build muscle memory.... And I cannot pin the apps I actually use frequently for sharing stuff. Also the direct share thing never worked for me. I think it's only for sharing via SMS or Email neither of which I use for sharing content, so it ended up being just a waste of space for me.
Hope they fix the share menu one day..... But then I'd have to wait to change my phone to get the updates.
- Android updates have become both less exciting and less meaningful because so many of the core apps are updated through the Play Store, and features just come out when they are ready. If Google held off updating their apps for a year everytime, each update would feel like a much bigger deal
  
  But holding them makes zero sense, like, why wait for an improvement if you can ship it already?
- Oh, Project Treble is in full swing, which is one of the main reasons you now frequently see Android phones with 3+ years of software support, often even with multiple Android OS version updates.
  Project Mainline is the other thing that caused OS updates to be rather lame. Since increasingly many former Android components are now just apps updated over the Play Store, there are less features in each Android update. For example, back in the day, even the Android browser was part of the OS and would only be updated when the OS was updated.
  Now Google is even throwing apps like the dialer and the messages SMS app out of AOSP.
  With so little of what used to be Android remaining inside Android and these outsourced components following a different release schedule, Android OS updates are mostly limited to UI refreshes or under-the-hood improvements.
  But while this makes OS updates less exciting, it also means that you get improvements faster (because components don't have to wait for the next OS update) and longer (because you get component updates when your device manufacturer dropped support for your phone).
  Regarding the share menu:
  There is actually only one OS share menu, but different apps sometimes implement their own share menus, which is dumb, but not really Android's fault. But yeah, the product managers at Firefox for Android are peculiar, to say the least.

And than there is netflix, which refuses to run on android phones with an unlocked bootloader, not even using a custom ROM, just an unlocked bootloader
- Works on my phone.
  You just need Universal SafetyNet Fix and all is fine.

Apps that haven’t been updated in 10 years are often incompatible on just about any platform.
- depends on the app
  you have something to access some cloud-api-stuff? yeah, probably all calls fail
  some game that uses hardware-specific things? might break too
  your average clock app or document viewer? that got a decent chance it'll still run.
  It's a question of how fast your OS changes and how mature APIs have gotten. Android is a lot more stable now, than it was 12 years ago.
  And if you look at truly mature OSes, like Linux or Windows, you probably can still run most apps that are multiple decades old. (For Win that means pretty much anything that was written for Win32(s) and newer - so even stuff that was around on Win 3.11)
- That's when it's between the line of "You have to buy the hardware" and "Emulate it". Something too old for modern devices, and too new for emulators to have been made.
  I still want to fucking play the original Infinity Blade. I WAS SO JEALOUS of my brother because he had his fancy Iphone 4 and could play. But by the time I got a phone it was already old news and taken off the app store.
- I can still play 15+ old games on my Linux laptop with wine. It just works.
  
  I was more referring to running things natively. But yeah, if I throw an emulator on something, I can run ancient stuff on a newer OS.

Fake News, actually. Too many times werethere apps that failed to install because they were too old, even though there were some that worked. There's the opposite problem though, with some old phones that have old android versions, some apps are too new to install. iOS gets frequent updates so this isn't much of an issue, except if your device is way, way too old. I'm an avid android supporter, and I've never had an iOS device myself cause I detest it for other reasons, but I've gotta say both platforms are equally problematic on this regard. iOS has no backwards compatibility, android has no forwards compatibility.

I love being able to just spinn up a simple app for a niche problem that nobody else will ever experience.

I have an app that was made like 11 years ago that hasn't been updated once that I still use daily lol. It's a time clock with postal time on it. We go by clicks instead of minutes on a 24 hour clock. So 7:49 pm would be 19:82, hundredths. It's a pain to convert sometimes. We use scanners to clock in/out and move functions and the scanners are in minutes... it's fuxking dumb but...
The app still works like a charm :D lololol
- I kinda like that system!

Okay - who left the keyboard open to the kids?
Seriously, can we just stop the brand warefare? Just buy what you want. I’ve plenty of old apps that just work. The only real barrier was moving from 32 bits to 64, and that was like what…iOS 6 or 7?
If the devs update the app, then there’s no company issues. If they abandon it, that’s on them. Not sure what it is you’re actually arguing for.
- I once bought a load of Lego games on my iPhone 3GS, mostly for my kid to play, but with a mind to play them myself when I got a chance.
  Then iPhone switched over to 64 bit, and those games didn't. Then the games got re-released in 64 bit, as a free download for the first level, with an in-app purchase to unlock the rest of the game. A game I'd already paid for on that platform, that I could no longer play.
  That still pisses me off.
  
  That's on the game devs, not Apple. I've gotten plenty of updates from 32-to-64 bits.
- Yes, please, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! I can’t hack this brand war shit anymore.

I used an apple phone for the first time at work, they gave us apple phones.
I was blown away when I realized you can't just dump any old file on it, because I'm used to plugging in my android phone and throwing on some files like it's any other removable storage. Not so with apple phones, incredibly limited.
See, I used to flash firmware for copy machines from my phone. Like if I went out to a site and didn't prepare firmware before going I could just download it on my phone and flash from that.
 
The apple phone couldn't do a bunch of stuff that I always thought was standard smartphone things. Also couldn't display cell and wifi reception in decibels, and I used to do informal site surveys with my phone. Nope, apple can't do that either, "bars" aren't a good metric to wrote down.
That thing was about damn useless except to be used as a phone and an mp3 player.

I've been using Swype since it came out even though they completely stopped updating it
- I assume you know Gboard copied the swype functionality?
  
  It's not as good. Swype was magic. Gboard is crqp. It always thinks I mean "amd" instead of "and" among a multitude of other sins.

I recently decided to jailbreak my ipod touch. The options are so fucking sketch it felt extremely gross. And thats coming from an android user. You know you are in best hands if the jailbreaking software link their mixtape.

Just installed the original flappy bird last week on my A54 and it's working great.
- The original flappy bird doesn't exist in the playstores anymore since 2014. How could you install it?
  
  APK Mirror that's what I usually use for apps that are gone from the play store, like Stranger Things: 1984, and Kung Fury games.
  
  Ohh i remember. Didnt the dev decide that he wasnt gonna support their users becoming addicted or sth?
  
  Probably found the apk somewhere online.
  
  Here's the APK. https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/gears-studios/flappy-bird/flappy-bird-1-3-release/flappy-bird-1-3-android-apk-download/

Backwards compatibility is a double-edged sword. It's cool that you can run an apk from 10 years ago but there should be a point where you say that's enough and drop support from them. Looking at Windows.
- I think the idea that dropping compatibility helps forward improvement is oversold. To quote "Things you should never do" https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ . There's no guarantee that the new version will be any better than the old version, because the people who actually learned things from the old version have moved on, conversely, the old version has all the cruft, which are otherwise known as "fixes" and which guarantee that it works reliably in all kinds of environments, something your new fancy version won't have until it too becomes old.
- I learned the other day that thats the reason you cannot make a folder named CON on windows. Dates back to pre DOS era.

most of the time? yes.
some apps do actually break with newer android versions though. It's gotten a little better and happened less often after the big step to Android 4 (okay… that is itself more than 10 years ago)
but it can and does still happen sometimes

Yeah Android CAN run the app if you have the APK. But also the play store won't let you if the dev hasn't updated the app in a couple of years. Older games are especially bad.
- Who said anything about using playstore?

This just isn't true; Android absolutely has version limits.
- The Google play store has version limits. A sideloaded app will almost always work

Android and iOS are both abysmal.
- Damn right!
  Sent from Jerboa on Blackberry

Everybody used a blackberry once... Being loyal to a brand gets you left behind.
- I hate typing on touchscreens.....
  But i also like my phone beeing a smartphone

I use both. IOS on my iPad and Android on my Phone

but, muh securitah!

@snixyz my friend who has always used iOS says the compatibility is the same as Android.

but this leads to greater attack surface and lowers the security
- Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. ;)
- God, what an insufferable attitude.
  If it wasn't for people intentionally breaking security of their things and fiddling around with their devices, we wouldn't be where we are today in terms of features and security. A huge chunk of the features on smartphones these days stemmed from jailbreaking and root modifications.
  
  It just memes. Chill

108 comments