Right. It also doesn't obligate insurance companies to honor your policy - there's other laws for that.

I'm not sure defeatist is quite the right word - after all there are four boxes guaranteed by the US constitution, though I doubt Marc is seriously advocating the last

Hey, we could always go back to the original laws: Streets are for people, there were no traffic laws, and any collisions were immediately presumed to be the fault of the larger vehicle.

Where in "to protect and serve" do you read "the public"? Really it's a beautiful bit of psyops - it says nothing, but garners widespread support by by encouraging everyone to read in their own hopes.

Spoken like someone who's never used a computer with a touch screen let alone a convertible tablet.
No job would not be done there. Windows 7 is borderline unusable in that scenario, a scenario that is becoming increasingly popular as schools and workplaces are rolling out tablet based devices.

Your entire point revolves around the idea that the UI has reached the pinnacle of usefulness. I disagree, but I understand why you may not. I assume you use your computer sitting down with a mouse and keyboard?

I use mine like that as well. I also fold my keyboard away and then touch the screen. Sometimes I write on it with a pen. Windows 7 was unusable in this scenario. Windows 8 was woeful. Windows 8.1 was a significant improvement.

Your car analogy assumes that the user will keep using the car the same way and that the vendor is changing the rules. That is not the case. How many motorcycles have you seen with a steering wheel and 3 pedals for control?

The idea of the computer is changing. That change is largely driven by touch screens. For touch screens the UI needs to change. A lot of elements of windows 7 make the UI difficult to use including small touch targets, no gestures, no ability to use it without a keyboard, the inability to detect if the screen was being touched with a tip of a pen or the hand holding the pen etc.

Have we reached some pinnacle now? Heck no, it's a major work in progress. But not everything is a case of change for change sake. This is Microsoft responding to users replacing PCs with tablets, not Microsoft driving (because lets face it they are pretty damn bad at that too).

The update HAS come from the OS vendor in the form of a point release. This isn't a case of not supporting windows XP. It's a case of complaining that you want a specific patch without installing a service pack.

The OS vendor has done their bit.

My device (Galaxy series) shipped with 4.2. I got an update to 4.3, 4.4.1, 4.4.2, and 4.4.4 with a promise that 5.0 is in the works.

And this is Samsung who are apparently bad at this.

You need to pick your vendors a bit more carefully if updates are what you care about.

Except when did Microsoft end support for Windows XP without a service pack?

Seriously 4.3 to 4.4 can be largely considered just like a service pack. A few new features, plenty of bug fixes and clearly some security issues were fixed too. Ever try and install Windows XP and apply all sorts of updates without a service pack? The updates refuse to work saying you need SP1.

This is no different except that in the PC world it would be like Dell preventing you from installing Service Pack 1.

I ask, what's the difference between Windows XP Service Pack 1 and the a point release upgrade for Android?

Looks like they fixed the bug in 4.3 by releasing 4.4. The fact that you can't get it ... well that is something to take up with the device vendor, and I'm sure you wouldn't be blaming Linus if Dell was blocking an upgrade of a point release for the Linux Kernel.

So Microsoft released a service pack for windows and Dell prevented you from installing it, do you attack Microsoft or Dell?

Google gets a nice pass because they are not requesting the end user to pay money, because they have systems in place for updates, because they fixed the problem along with providing some new features just like a service pack does all while providing a point release in version number.

The problem is solved from Google's end. They've even put systems in place so in the future they can resolve it without doing a point upgrade on Android. The problem now is that some asshats in the middle are preventing the updates from filtering down to the users.

Lame excuses like what? They have provided an update, the update changes the API somewhat. The bug is fixed and developers and vendors don't want to fix their end of the system, and now it's all Google's fault?

I'm not entirely sure who you're blaming for what.

Except it's not just the browser. Webview is used by MANY applications for various reasons. The attack surface is actually quite large.

They have fixed that, they have been fixing that for a while now. Best of all the more core components they move from the OS to the Play Store so they can control the upgrade path the more developers and open source fanatics moan something about evil and monopoly.