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Comment by julianpye | Hacker News Reader

One more argument: When I turn on the Xbox and the PS4, all they seem to do is download gigabytes of updates that I missed over the last months. I don't play often, so that annoys me. The Switch does not do this. It turns on and off right away and the updates are always optionally executed and have already been downloaded.

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This is almost my single favourite thing with the Switch. Not played Mario for almost week, I pick it up and bang, I'm right back where I left off in less than a second. Even my wife commented how great this was after seeing endless load bars on other platforms - download/update system firmware.... download/update game.... watch logos / intro videos... find/load save point... loading screen...

Nothing epitomizes this more than Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5. The game was shipped unfinished and more than half the game is a 7.5G "patch."

I was really happy to find this too, as the update experience (and system software in general) has been pretty terrible on previous Nintendo home consoles.

I wonder how much of Android they are using at the low levels? Android has recently gotten much, much better at applying system updates, adopting ideas from Chrome OS. Building on Android would be a really low friction way for them to get started on the system software, since they're using a Tegra chip, and it could also explain the improvement in general system software quality in Switch over Wii/Wii U.

The Switch runs a modified form of BSD.

It runs a modified form of 3DS firmware with BSD bits in it. It's not as clear cut as the PS4.

It's looking more and more like it's a modified-but-largely-intact BSD kernel with a 3ds api (not abi?) compatible userspace. Time will probably prove me wrong.

Nintendo investigated using Android, but the CyanogenMod CEO told them off. https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/21/android-software-company-...

This is not really the case tho - games are now shipping half on the cartridge and then you have to download another few tens of GB - LA Noire for example.

my PS4 is set to auto update. I only use it about once every 2 or 3 months but I've never had to wait. I just get 20 notifications when I turn it on about all the updates that happened.

my switch acts about the same.

My PS4 is set to auto update/rest mode as well. It still does updates every time I turn it on for a good few minutes.

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