Ben Bajarin:
> There is no single unified Android codebase which is dominating the world. There is no single Android app store, there is no single Android ecosystem. What does exist is a vast array of different platforms and different ecosystem running this underlying kernel called Android.
> Fans of the fledgling cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin got quite a shock in recent days as some clever thieves worked out yet another method to swipe virtual cash from unsuspecting users. The source of the theft was traced to a bug in Android, and now Google has acknowledged the flaw exists.
Another day, another Android flaw.
Farhad Manjoo for Slate:
> It’s hard to call Android anything other than a resounding success.
> Well, except for one small thing: Most Android phones are crap. As part of a New Year’s resolution, I promised to trade in my beloved iPhone 5 for an Android phone sometime in 2013. I reasoned that, as a tech writer, I should spend more time with the world’s most popular operating system. Phone makers and carriers have regularly sent me Android phones to test out in the past, but I’d never given most of them more than a passing look—I’d open them up, turn them on, get aggravated by their bad keyboards or poor touchscreens or frustrating add-on software, and I immediately package them up and send them back.
Pretty damning article for Android.
Daniel Eran Dilger:
> Open Source enthusiasts love to tell you Android is winning, and that it is winning because it is open. But they’re wrong on both counts. The history of computing makes that abundantly clear, as do the current leaders in profitability.
Some great points in this article.
> * Less than a tenth of Android users care that it’s open
> * The number of people who care that Android is open is about the same as the number of people who run Linux
This was a fascinating read.