This the kind of comment that only portrays one side and the readers think "Google BAAAAAD".
You know what happened when background services were allowed completely, battery issues, crashes, just a complete shitshow. One one hand HN raves about the iOS quality, OTOH blames Android for trying to do the same thing.
It should up to user to decide what to do with their devices. Operating system should just ask for permissions to perform tasks with potentially harmful effects, and notify on high energy drain. If a user is fine with that, he shouldn't be handcuffed by OS vendor from doing what he needs.
> One one hand HN raves about the iOS quality, OTOH blames Android for trying to do the same thing.
Oh, good old straw man argument? Actually, Android started out as an almost completely free GNU/Linux computer, and is slowly morphing into the same almost fully locked clone of iOS. And in my mind it's NOT a good thing. And yes, Apple's monopoly on sending push notifications on iOS is as harmful, as is Google's on Android.
Also, most users want their devices to work not have to constantly fiddle and make decisions. You can put AOSP and even a different app store and do whatever you want.
You can put a different appstore, right, but you still have to rely on some external push notification service, because the OS became crippled and less capable than it was.
I repeat, you could easily run background tasks in Android 1.5, no problems, and you can't now. Only with persistent icons, and even that looks likely to change. So AOSP doesn't really help here because the OS itself becomes more restricted.
Also, 'most users' argument is not valid. It's like suggesting, "people can cut themselves with knives, so let's ban knives and everything with a blade. If some people NEED to cut other people, like surgeons, well, whatever, they shouldn't, because most users don't do that"
Well, that phone from a different company will have to run another OS, because no Android vendor will help with the kind of problems I'm describing.
Also, do you _really_ suggest that running a persistent ssh session in a terminal or a VPN connection is a 'hacker' activity that should require flashing a phone with a custom build of an OS? Uh-oh.
And how do you suggest working with restricted background running, given that AOSP still has precisely the same policy regarding background tasks? And you can't even rely on push notifications, because as I understand you suggest getting rid of Google Apps too - and Push notifications come only with Google Apps.
And guess what Windows does suffer from shitty apps giving you blue screens. Battery isn't as much of a concern on PC but it's absolutely critical on mobile.
You know what happened when background services were allowed completely, battery issues, crashes, just a complete shitshow. One one hand HN raves about the iOS quality, OTOH blames Android for trying to do the same thing.