The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by gmw

I use a File Explorer replacement called xplorer2 from Zabkat. It has a simple (primitive?) duplicate checker. You can find a link to a Youtube demo on this page (it's about halfway down). It's not a feature I had used until just now. There's not much control of the filtering, but there is a lot you can do with the results of your search.

It may not be a good match ... but it can run in portable mode which I find useful for programs you don't use that often.

Offered FWIW

Thanks folks

@gmw - I use xplorer² (a 2014 version) as my main file manager, but I won't be paying for another upgrade. I don't use it as a File Explorer replacement, that's where the dragons lurk. Zabkat's i-DeClone looks useful, but nikos wants $SAUD50 a license for that too.

@obc - I already looked as VisiPics, not my style. But AntiDupl looks more my cup of tea.

Oops - I think I confused VisiPics with something similar in name only, it had an iPhone like UI.

[Badcatalex]

I hate that my phone, a Samsung Galaxy A21, a phone from 2020... is gonna have its last major Android update this year. And I got it for Christmas last year.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Badcatalex

I hate that my phone, a Samsung Galaxy A21, a phone from 2020... is gonna have its last major Android update this year. And I got it for Christmas last year.

I've been doing some checking on phones via YouTube videos and they point out that one of the advantages of the iPhone is that they support updates much longer than Android so that even old iPhones remain updated. One of the selling points of the iPhone is that they will remain updated for years, thus they will retain their value much longer.

It does seem that 2 years is a very short time to end updates. I wonder if I will have the same issue with my phone (a Samsung Galaxy A11) in the near future. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I've had issues that have caused me to consider returning to a flip phone although, after long searches through the settings, I've managed to mitigate some of the issue I've had. While I still have some irritants with it, it is a little better.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

I've been doing some checking on phones via YouTube videos and they point out that one of the advantages of the iPhone is that they support updates much longer than Android so that even old iPhones remain updated. One of the selling points of the iPhone is that they will remain updated for years, thus they will retain their value much longer..

Can confirm that I just updated an iPhone 6S - seven years old - to iOS 15.6.1 (released this past week). But I couldn't update the iPad 4 (ten years old, 32-bit).

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by meeera

Can confirm that I just updated an iPhone 6S - seven years old - to iOS 15.6.1 (released this past week). But I couldn't update the iPad 4 (ten years old, 32-bit).

This brings forth a question: Why are so many updates needed?

It seems like we have a continually series of updates needed. It used to be that you had a program, and maybe one update (see Wordperfect 5.1 which was the only update for years) and that was it. I think that one factor is that smartphones have become so complicated and contain so much software that it leaves holes that must be fixed, holes that wouldn't be there if the phone wasn't so complicated.

I think one of the reasons that some people are returning to simpler phones, like the feature phones, is that they don't have the same requirement for updates and don't contain an excess of features. I have a Cingular Flip IV that has a total of 22 apps, and only seven of them are not related to phone/texting functions (although some are nice to have like YouTube, and a web browser).

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

This brings forth a question: Why are so many updates needed?

My experience with iDevices is that major OS updates offer better usability and improvements. My husband happily used an iPhone 6 until just a few months ago, because there were some apps he uses that would no longer run on the version of iOS the 6 was limited to. He was still getting security updates for that phone. So we got 8 years of solid use out of that phone. And it had more life, he just needed a newer device to run apps he needs.

I think Apple does a decent job of supporting older devices. As mentioned in another post, the 6S is able to run the current iOS. Not bad for a 7 year old phone.

We had plenty of flip phones over the years, none lasted anywhere near 8 years.

I can't speak to Android devices. We were not fans.

[binaryhermit]

And your husband could probably still use that device for something like a web browsing device, a remote for a media streamer, a mp3 player, something...

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

And your husband could probably still use that device for something like a web browsing device, a remote for a media streamer, a mp3 player, something...

We've thought about using it for a security camera in the garage, but haven't looked into apps yet. Most have monthly subscriptions, which we don't want.

[binaryhermit]

Man, 5G isnt worth it these days, LTE is "good enough" and 5G murders your battery, among other issues

[binaryhermit]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

We've thought about using it for a security camera in the garage, but haven't looked into apps yet. Most have monthly subscriptions, which we don't want.

Obviously my list wasn't meant as fully inclusive of your options. You should be able to use it with wifi however you'd use an iPod Touch with any limitations presented by the hardware and OS version.

But I'm honestly fundamentally opposed to the Apple ecosystem and their refusal to let users run arbitrary software of their choosing. If I were looking for an android version of an iPod Touch I'd look for a cheap phone and just not use the cellular part.

[cc_in_oh]

I use a prepaid cell phone with limited data. There's public wifi almost everywhere now but I don't want to use it with my "real" phone, so I factory-reset an old LG Destiny and carry that with me. Can't do any serious browsing with it or log on to accounts, but it's good enough for stuff like checking stocks or following game scores while playing cards or sitting around a doctor's office.

I also have an old Fire tablet that would be more useful, but I'm not that confident that deregistration would completely erase my Amazon account info.

[DiapDealer]

Flaky 300Mbps service is not really an "upgrade" from flaky 200Mbps. But thanks. I guess.

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Flaky 300Mbps service is not really an "upgrade" from flaky 200Mbps. But thanks. I guess.

Yeah, we just got that from Spectrum. Woo hoo.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

But I'm honestly fundamentally opposed to the Apple ecosystem and their refusal to let users run arbitrary software of their choosing. If I were looking for an android version of an iPod Touch I'd look for a cheap phone and just not use the cellular part.

For what it is worth, we had a mobile device ecosystem at work that was about 50/50 iOS and Android about 3 years ago. After multiple incidents over the years and a couple of fairly serious incidents in the last year, we no longer allow the corporate use of Android devices. Connect an Android device to the corporate network and you are blocked from accessing any internal resources which makes them pretty much useless.

Yes, the Apple walled garden can be a PITA. OTOH, the ability to install any piece of crap found on the Internet by an Android user is a security hole that we could not afford to allow to continue unchecked. Yes, Apple is not perfect but compared to Google's seeming inability to properly enforce security on the Play Store, Apple looks like a much better option. Something like 66% of apps removed from Google's Play Store compared to 8% from the Apple App Store are removed due to dangerous permissions. I won't even get into the third-party Android app stores which was where a good deal of our corporate issues came from.

[DMcCunney]

Apple vs Android

I see a lot of this discussion. but you need to understand root causes.

The key point with Apple is that they control the hardware as well as the software. iOS and MacOS run on Apple kit, and are useless if you don't have Apple devices. (Running other software on Apple devices might be possible, but not simple.)

Apple's Holy Grail is usability. They take pains to make Apple devices Just Work, and do so in the manner the user expects them to. If you aren't sure what will happen if you click an icon or make a menu choice, Apple will be unhappy.

This leads to the walled garden, and the need to jailbreak an Apple device to install third party stuff not vetted and approved by Apple. That sort of stuff is a support nightmare, and I believe Apple's attitude is "Do that at your own risk. If it breaks, it's your problem, and we won't try to fix it." Speaking as someone who has had to try to support all manner of nonsense in multi-vendor environments, I don't blame them a bit. (An employer of many years didn't have corporate standards for IT. It bit them hard.)

Android is not so lucky. It began as an open source effort to create an OS specific ally intended for smartphones. Google bought the company making it and continued development. But it's still open source. Any hardware vendor who wants to use Android can download the source and build an Android image customized for their hardware. No permission from Google is required, or can be.

It's modular, so the vendor can pick and choose. (My first Android device was a low end tablet from an Asian vendor. Android supports Bluetooth, but that tablet didn't have Bluetooth hardware, so Bluetooth support was not compiled into the image.)

So there are an enormous number of Android devices, whose only similarity is that all run Android. If you buy a low end device to try to save money, you are likely to find yourself with a lot of bloatware on the device, because the bloatware developers pay the vendor to install it. If you're lucky, the bloatware can be uninstalled like any other user application using Android's built-in installation routines, But chances are good the bloatware isn't installed as a user application, but is instead installed as a System app. Those cannot be uninstalled by the user, unless the user roots the device. That has become progressively harder to do. The best you can normally do is Freeze it so it can't be used or updated.

And one of the big differences between Android device vendors is support and Android updates. Will the vendor supply Android updates? (I have seen some that don't.) If they do, how long do they do so? (And one question might be whether your device can run recent updates. Older hardware may not.)

So my usual question on updates is why you might need them.

The first reason is likely "fixing security bugs" The second is access to potential new features. The third is simply a desire to stay current.

I have three currently used devices - a cell phone, and two tablets.

The cell phone is an Alcatel Fierce XL. It runs Android 5.21 Lollipop. It will not get Android updates. I don't *care*.

The first tablet is a Google Nexus 7, which was a pass along from a friend. When originally released, it ran Android 4.4 Kit-Kat. The second tranche ran Android 5.21 Lollipop. It killed performance. Its future involves unlocking the bootloader and flashing more recent firmware to it. (There is what looks like a decent release of Android 7 Nougat, rooted out of the box, available online.)

The second tablet is a new acquisition It's a Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite, running Android 11. That gets updates, and I got a new one while bringing up and configuring it.

How much I care about updates depends on device and use cases.

The cell phone, as mentioned, runs Lollipop and won't see an update. I don't care. In use, it's a cell phone, and a PDA with WiFi and a decent camera. It goes online via WiFi to check for app updates, from behind my secured network at home. I don't browse from it, and apps used for PDA functions like Calendar, Contacts, and To Do tend to be things that access locally stored data. I'm not worried about security fixes, because I don't normally go online with it, save to update apps. And Lollipop runs the stuff I normally use, so I don't need an OS update simply to run stuff. (There have been a couple of apps whose recent versions need a higher Android version. The versions I have do what I need, and I stay put.)

The Samsung Galaxy Tab A7's main purpose in life is media consumption. It will be my primary eBook viewer, but can also display pictures, show videos, and play music. Again, data is locally stored, on a 64GB MicroSD card. While I can go online with it and do stuff like browse the web, I normally won't. If I'm at home, web browsing is via Firefox with several levels of security on the host system. If I'm out and about, I am normally busy doing other things. Email and the like can simply wait till I'm back home.

So when folks complain about not getting Android updates, my question tends to be "Why do you care?" If the answer is security fixes, I start preaching the virtues of Safe Hex, and not doing stuff that needs the security fixes. (Yes. you do need security, but you need to understand why, and what kind of security you require. Too many folks don't know and don't want to. They just want to do stuff and not worry about it. I sympathize, but we aren't anywhere near that point unless you are in something like Apple's walled garden. Safety requires knowledge. Deal with it.)
_______
Dennis