Ah, I see what you're saying. In all of those cases, I'd say Google shifted to working on a component that integrates with other Google services. It does happen that the service-integrated component largely duplicates the features of an existing OSS component, plus adds a lot, but I don't think that's because of any move to close Android.

At this point there's really no need for Google to maintain generic apps for all of those things; there are plenty out there in every category you mentioned. I'm less sure that there are open source apps in all of those categories... but anyone who wants is free to pick up that ball. I suppose it would be nice if Google were to do it, but that's no longer necessary for the success of the platform.

I reiterate that the above represents only my personal opinions. Google pays me to write code, not define platform strategy (except in my narrow area) and certainly not to act as a proper corporate spokesperson. When I say stupid stuff it reflects on me.

It wouldn't be hard to do something nicer, but my Tasker profile is a pretty crude hack. Since I never connect anything that doesn't have its own volume control, I just have a profile that runs every minute and turns the volume up to max. So if anything turns the volume down, it quickly gets turned back up.

The volume thing annoys me, too. I fix it with a Tasker profile.

As for navigation, try using voice to start the navigation. It's zero-click. I don't know that the maps team intentionally increased the number of taps in the non-voice case, but I think it may actually be a good thing for safety if it encourages more people to use voice rather than taking attention to poke at their screen.

Mass extinctions which are, most likely, also the biggest driver of speciation and diversity :-)

I think the Holocene Extinction may be the exception to that trend, though.

Could be yours is malfunctioning? Mine works.

Um, no. The proximity sensor shouldn't depend on how you're holding it. I'm suggesting hardware defect, not user error.

By "officially supported" do you mean officially-supported by CM, or by device vendors?

From within Android, I see no such movement. In the short term security concerns have motivated the movement of more stuff into GMS, where it can be updated by Google. Eventually I think the larger update problem will be resolved and that movement will be reversed.

Flourish.

Your example just demonstrates that Google really did allow Motorola to operate as a separate OEM, not directly influenced by the Android team. It's also possible that Motorola didn't have the option of releasing the specs because of agreements with the camera manufacturer. (Note that I don't know anything about that specific incident, and hadn't even heard of it until you mentioned it. I do know that Google would like its Nexus devices to be much more open than they are, but can't get there without becoming a hardware manufacturer.)

If that were an even remotely-likely outcome, it would have happened. Life is extraordinarily good at surviving and evolving new equilibria.

Meh, the history of life on this planet is one long series of massive, unexpected perturbations, ranging from ice ages so severe that the equatorial seas are covered with several meters of ice, to massive volcanic eruptions that block most global insolation for years, to massive meteor strikes. In addition, the ice core records show that the planet has undergone radical climate change (much faster and more extreme than what we're currently seeing) without any cause at all as far as we can detect, as recent as 60K years ago.

Certainly. Equally, we shouldn't ignore the fact that doing nothing at all (assuming we could) will also have disastrous consequences on our own habitat. Earth changes all the time, in all sorts of ways. If we want stability we need to learn to actively engineer the planet.

Okay, but the issue you're complaining about (pocket muting or hanging up) should be impossible on proper hardware regardless of the screen lock status. So with that out of the way, you just disagree with the screen lock behavior. That's your prerogative, but I don't think it's clearly wrong.

Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification. Yes, there are good reasons that stock Android doesn't use swap, and I can see that people who change that could cause themselves lots of problems :-)

As I recall it was about not making it easy for users to download copies of videos. I could be wrong.

The proximity sensor should make that impossible. Normally the proximity sensor detects when the phone is close you your head and turns off the touchscreen so you don't hang up or mute or whatever with your cheek. It should work equally well in a pocket... no need to muck about with locking. If your Android phone didn't do this, that's the fault of the hardware, not the OS.

That isn't true of Android. Sure, if you're writing in Java the *nix-ness is all abstracted away behind the JVM, but if you choose to write native code, you find yourself right back in Linux-land. There are some oddities, of course, like the assignment of UIDs to apps, rather than users. And starting with Lollipop, SELinux is used to block app native code access to many parts of the system (e.g. you can't go looking around in /proc to find out what else is running). But it's definitely still Linux.

It's not true of OS X, either. Again, there are lots of new APIs layered on top, but it's still very clearly Unix. Maybe you meant iOS, not OS X. In that case, I don't know if you're right or not because I've never worked in iOS.