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Android, iPhone OS d/b/a iOS, and William Henry Gates III

January 3, 2024 at 5:32 P.M. Eastern Time

Have you called your favorite operating system for 2024 yet? I don't mention mine.

It doesn't seem like we use most of the features of mobile operating systems anymore. The app store economy from Apple that promised to employ dozens and then millions faltered, leaving users that invested in it waiting for updates from free-to-start apps with no career path, while the mobile web starts to be destroyed with delays and lethargy via the same bad coders that built up the app store delivery models.

Now that the mobile-everywhere fad is returning from where it came, back into Apple by way of complex complacency and bad software updates (I hear there's an iPhone OS 17.3 beta release after iPhone OS 17.2.1 that wrecks the boot sequence so you can't log in to your telephone because someone forgot to include a recovery prompt — duh), and back into Google by way of bad network services, stolen content, predatory 'bankrupt-by-design' cloud storage development strategies, and government lawsuits, it may be time to think back to the future and try a personal computer again.

If you find yourself dealing with a disorganized e-mail system (Android) or a cramped and unenlightened calendar (iOS), and you just can't resolve all the competing automation failures, task swapper crashes, non-standard indicators, and junk-bin icons, along with the "just trust the automated patcher, it's its first read" technical support that goes along with it, consider your ergonomics situation and give the mobile devices a rest! They weren't made for productivity, they were made for companies to sell you access to on-the-go communication services that the company intelligently placed somewhere else so people were sad.

In much the same way as I wouldn't recommend walking ten to twenty miles a day to visit a local attraction, or taking an automobile trip from your front door to that of your friend across the street or around the corner, I can't recommend the current set of operating systems after trying what used to be available with the more-supported art systems (Windows 9x series, Windows Millennium Edition, Mac OS X, older GNOME releases) that weren't hellbent on de-motivating society as the most recent Android releases do. See if you can put the Go-ogle sabotage set away for a while by sitting at a desk with a full keyboard. Maybe you're doing that already. If you think that's all you need to enjoy an operating system..

Have you heard of operating system companies locking paid users out of old software so you need to be current? Product activation systems and downgrade lockouts are illegal; such schemes also destroy the reputation of the companies that implement them, as well as making users wary of the act of computing, which should be concerning due to how much we have all invested in data processing and desk compliance by way of the school system. Beware of accepting proprietary DRM from an operating system platform into what may affect your health, unless you think you can tilt it to prove a point that works in your favor. Internet mobile is a trillion-dollar industry that doesn't pay anyone who isn't a network provider, unless you consider compromised software with negligible organizational results to be pay. So, again, we're at the problem of why would you want to use a computer just to mess with a bunch of proprietary widgets that break or need fine-tuning when maybe all you wanted was to do something to escape boredom, or to write out a letter to put in the mailbox? Futility beat the current Mac OS, an overburdened product running on a very sad lineup of proprietary chips, for some reason. Futility won. It's not Linux that broke it, blame Apple and blame Microsoft chasing Google's debug logs.

Operating systems have always been controversial. Nobody wants to have to depend on a product that is continuously sold defective, such as iOS or Android, with no support available for the release paid for. They are the modern equivalent of a digital gambling machine you'd find at a casino, with the money taker and security systems to match. A modern controversy in design, as I mentioned, is that mobile system graphics are abstract, weird, devoid of definition, or overbranded and maliciously colored. The companies that provide the hardware-software-interlock ($) are happy just piling on with awful design choices and mis-trained employees, hidden behind a double-dare bootloader that's just waiting for you to be smacked or demoralized if you want to compute your own way.

The operating system is the politicized weapon that companies used in previous eras, including this era, to deny the user access to the best resolution of the user's complaint that the user wants to run a program. Computers used to run programs at boot when possible. But when someone wanted to add a large disk system to the personal computer, a decision was made to make a 'program-reprogramming program', so your program got what it wanted one development cycle later on the terms of the dominant program from the other program company.

Today, past the years of simplicity in design, layers of cruft and wrecked or forced dependencies have been built up in legacy code made modern, straining to keep up under all the bad decisions and political fat of a 'not-invented-here, however..' partitioning system that always guarantees that another money pit will end up on your filesystem if you upgrade your software in this expensive inflation-bound 'government-supports-the-computer-so-go-away' economy.

Within Microsoft, this used to be known as "DLL Hell", the 'just-keep-patching-over-it' mentality that you don't need good organization if you have good intentions and know where to aim. Mobile platforms have optimized the delivery method for the dependency files, but, sadly, mobile telephone data service providers are tight with some of the most offending mobile app developers to have gigabytes of worthless updates available on app stores that are built to assume that Wi-Fi is not only configured, but also speedy, free, unlocked, and unlimited. They are bound-determined to get users to spend that double data dollar.

Are you too restricted by mobile to be yourself? Some people use mobile devices as wheelchairs for the mind, because of disabilities or other reasons. It's my view, as I posted on the Twitter network, that the personal computer is going to again attempt to cost-reduce into the mobile form factor at least once in the next ten years, probably to finish off the Chromebook now that the iPad can't keep up with it, before Google Glass's competitors once again become the lead-up to the next earphone or headset of all peace. Again. Of course. 2011 all over again, of course.

Some day in the future, someone will have the entire history of the app store to sell you on a memory card, and it will probably work. You know it's probably going to be the other place after 'you-know-what' again happens in the 'numbers-versus-health' division of the current place, so maybe wait for true virtual machining support to arrive so the lottery phone companies of Apple and Google can stop needing to build hardware to support their software. It's happened every time before. (Camera will be out of the iPhone within 100 years.)

<machine name="iphone2g" sourcefile="apple/iphone2g.cpp">
	<description>iPhone (A1203)</description>
	<year>2007</year>
	<manufacturer>Apple</manufacturer>
	<rom name="s5l8900-bootrom.bin" size="65536" crc="beb15cd1" sha1="079a3acab577eb52cc349ea811af3cbd5d01b8f5" region="bios" offset="0"/>
	<device_ref name="arm1176jzf_s"/>
	<device_ref name="vic_pl192"/>
	<device_ref name="iphone2g_spi"/>
	<device_ref name="iphone2g_spi"/>
	<device_ref name="iphone2g_spi"/>
	<device_ref name="iphone2g_timer"/>
	<device_ref name="vic_pl192"/>
	<device_ref name="screen"/>
	<chip type="cpu" tag="maincpu" name="ARM1176JZF-S" clock="412000000"/>
	<display tag="screen" type="raster" rotate="0" width="320" height="480" refresh="78.125000" pixclock="12000000" htotal="320" hbend="0" hbstart="320" vtotal="480" vbend="0" vbstart="480" />
	<sound channels="0"/>
	<input players="0">
	</input>
	<driver status="preliminary" emulation="preliminary" savestate="unsupported"/>
	<feature type="sound" status="unemulated"/>
</machine>


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