Google confirms Android attacks; no fix for most Samsung users

>But in reality, Samsung (and the other Android OEMs) cannot compete with Google and its unique control over hardware and software.

Yes, they can. We are talking about applying provided security patches to source code, and then releasing a new version of their OS. For patches that have existed for months. The time from patch to release should be on the order l of days from receiving the patches to having a validated OS release with the fix being sent to users. It's not the control of Android which makes Google possible to patch their Pixel branch of AOSP faster than Samsung can patch their own. It's that Samsung doesn't care about prompt security fixes so they don't allocate engineers to do the work.

The problem is that each OEM releases 50 different models per year, vs Google (or Apple) that release 3 or 4 models.

If that truly is an issue then Android is a fundamentally broken OS.

How many different models of PCs get released? How hard is it to patch any of their OSs?

>How many different models of PCs get released?

If you want to go that route, each manufacturer is responsible for their own drivers for windows, linux, and possibly Mac (though if it’s novel enough, they will do it). Then think about the components that make up a PC. Motherboard, CPU, Memory Control, IO, OS, Audio, Video. Each of those needs to release patches. So its orders of magnitude more than any Android OS. It’s just pure laziness on the hardware manufacturers that don’t want to invest in software/support. They want Google to do that.

The big difference with PC hardware is that the OS will get most driver updates for the individual components directly from the OEM. A driver update for, say, a sound card will directly be available to every machine with that sound card installed. The PC vendor doesn't have to be involved in any way.

It's the other way around with Android. Google does a new core release, and each individual manufacturer is responsible for modifying it for their devices. If you don't bother to upstream your drivers to mainline Linux and use a skin which heavily modifies core Android, backporting those fixes can quickly become a nightmare.

Again, no sympathy as that’s the route they chose. Rely on Google for everything OS and make a phone whereas Apple made a phone and supplied an OS.

Apple made a product. Google made a software revenue stream. Entirely different things and now the Android makers are crying foul that they too have to do product engineering support. Nah. This is what you get when you rely on out of house innovation. I hope they all close shop. Not because I like Apple, but because they aren’t in the business of making products, only selling you hardware with bolt on software that it vaguely supports. Like buying a raspberry pi that can make phone calls. Google has them all by the balls.

Yeah, and I also hope that all the PC makers close up shop as well. They rely on Microsoft for everything OS. Listen, you can just enjoy your iPhone in peace. Let other people make things, even if you feel they don't meet your standards.