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Comment by deadmutex | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps. Though I wonder if every musician afford Macbooks or iPads. These things are not cheap, especially if you consider earnings of non-US based musicians, etc.

Disclaimer: Googler, but opinions are my own.

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This is where Apple's far superior product lifecycle comes in: Buying a four year old Apple product is affordable, still runs the current OS, unlike Androids that old, and has the audio performance down.

This is a valid point, but it’s hard to place the blame on Google/Android. I think the challenge is less of Android itself but a refusal of the OEMs to support newer OS versions. This makes business sense, but sucks for consumers.

I think Google is doing a better job with their Pixel devices. I honestly hope they try to lead the Android industry more with them.

Blame, here, can't be squarely placed on any one entity. But it is shared between both Google and the OEMs. Google created the Android product, and permitted people to sell devices utilizing Android and to brand/advertise their devices with Google's Android branding.

It absolutely does, in part at least, fall on Google to establish how the Android label can be used. Their decision has (apparently) been that it can be used by anyone even if their devices become (practically) obsolete in just a year or two from various perspectives (not in an absolutely obsolete sense, but a lack of many/most/any updates is a crucial element of currency for mobile devices and hastens obsolescence). That's on Google, not the OEMs who take advantage of it.

I'd like to say the OEMs should do better, but the market has clearly convinced them that they can be profitable and sell soon-to-be-obsolete devices.

A four year old Android is years out of support to Googlew. You get two, maybe three, years from them at best and then security patches until they get bored.

Every Pixel phone so far stopped getting updates after 2 years.

Not true actually. Google now updates these devices for 3 years now and not just security updates

Tell that to my Pixel 1, still stuck on an ancient version without security updates.

That's an old device. Notice I said now(as of 2017). Google announced 3 year OS updates a year after the Pixel was released(which they specifically stated at launch would get 2 years of updates) The Pixel 2 got updates for 3 years. I know because I have one sitting next me right now.

Honestly, I don’t care. I was forced to buy a Pixel 1 because the Nexus 5X didn’t get updates anymore, and by the time the Pixel 1 stopped getting updates, I just gave up.

I won't support Android 11 and later in any of my apps. If someone has an issue with that, they're free to send me a device getting the Android Preview releases for the version they want me to support. I treat Android just like iOS now: Want support? buy me a devkit.

In the past it was possible for me to just build AOSP master from source and test with that, but 3.0 was the first release breaking that assumption and after 5.0 the assumption was broken entirely. Now I just won't support it anymore.

Musical instruments aren’t too cheap either. Drummers and guitar players can get good stuff secondhand, but most synthesizers will run you way more than a mid-range MacBook and a copy of Logic. God help you if you need a piano...

Pirated copies of FL Studio on cheap windows PCs/Laptops have been the lifeline for a lot of third-world musicians for more than a decade.

I like FL studio, but.... if you're going piracy, why not add Live, Reason, Bitwig, Pro Tools, CuBase, and a stack of premium VSTs... ;-)

Reaper (free during COVID, $60 discounted license otherwise) + free plugins is pretty great though without going the unlicensed route.

Reaper also runs on Linux, natively and in WINE.

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