Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
An Android tablet sold by B&N will continue to function if B&N went out of business tomorrow. I don't understand worrying about B&Ns longevity when discussing buying one of their devices. It's not like Android or the Google Play Store will stop functioning.
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It will continue to function exactly as it did when new, yes.
That is not always a good thing.
Android is a moving target, with regular OS updates every year or so and, unlike Windows, where Microsoft carries the burden, it is up to the hardware vendor to distribute the updates/upgrades. And in some cases create the patches if they relate to hardware-specific code.
B&N does that for their branded tablets, like the update they distributed when it came out that their seven inchers shipped with malware. Absent B&N it would've been up to the user to find a solution or not.
Curated platforms like Macs, Windows, Playstations, and yes, Fires, take flack for the varying degrees of restrictions and mandatory updates they carry, but for a lot of people those "annoyances" are welcome handholding. A value add feature, not a bug. And there are more of them than us.
To some people the long term viability of the vendor matters.