ClintonFitch.com

If there is one thing that I genuinely miss about the iOS ecosystem it is family sharing.  Back in the day when I was running around with an iPhone and iPad, the ability to share apps and music purchases with my family and regulate what apps my kids were buying was a huge help.  It is one of the things I wish Google had with the Google Play Store and indications are my wish is about to get answered.

Several sites have done a tear down of the latest APK for Google Play Store for Android and indications are that Family Sharing is coming to Android.

The all new Blackberry Priv has landed and Blackberry seems to be seriously focused on seeing their flagship Android device to success.  Part of that effort is keeping it up-to-date and in a blog post today the company is aiming to do just that and to do it frequently.  Blackberry has announced that the Blackberry Priv will be receiving monthly security updates, much like the Google Nexus devices do today.  This commitment is similar to that of HTC who has promised their new One A9 will receive security updates 15 days after Google releases them each month.

One of the biggest perceptions – correct or otherwise – of Android is that it is less secure than other platforms.  Google, after the Stage Fright security challenge, has doubled-down on getting updates out to their devices but that hasn’t been the case with other manufactures.  Blackberry for their part, want to be on top of it and that is nothing but a good thing for users who are getting or considering getting the Priv.

Android Marshmallow has made it into the Android platform versions report from Google for the first time, just a little less than a month after its public release.  The new report can be found on the Android developer website and while the number for Marshmallow is low, .3%, it is expected to jump up pretty fast given the number of device manufactures who have started rolling out their updates or have committed to do so in short order.

For those who aren’t familiar with this report, Google published monthly a report that indicates which versions of Android are being used on devices that access the Google Play Store over the previous seven days.  This month’s report ended on November 2nd, well within the 30 day window since the release of Android Marshmallow to the public (October 5, 2015).  While it is aimed to help developers know what versions they need to continue to develop for in their apps, it is a good indicator to everyone of how a particular build of Android is doing – or not doing.  The report often serves as a prime resource for those who are concerned about Android fragmentation but that isn’t really the intent of it nor does that completely show itself in this report.

While much digital ink has been spilled this week on the changes coming to Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage service, there is one element of this announcement that I haven’t seen much discussion on in the course of these writings.  That’s not to say it isn’t out there, just not much of it.  That element is the view that the announcement was nothing short of a victory of Google and the Google Drive service.  It is a victory without them having to “dive to the bottom” on pricing to win.  They simply stayed the course and let Microsoft figure out that giving away unlimited storage is unsustainable.

For those who somehow missed what I’m talking about, earlier this week Microsoft announced big changes coming to OneDrive:

• The Free account goes down from 15GB of storage to 5GB and the 15GB “Camera Roll” bonus (you got it when you sync’d your photos with OneDrive) is eliminated
• Office 365 subscribers now get 1TB of storage, not unlimited
• the 100GB and 200GB storage accounts are going away to for new subscribers (if you have one of these you can keep it) and is replaced with a $1.99/month 50GB account.

These changes fly in the face of the much hyped “unlimited” storage offer that Microsoft made just last year and has angered plenty of people because, until this change, OneDrive was really the best value out there when it came to cloud storage.

That has now changed and Google Drive is certainly looking to be one of the more attractive mainstream cloud storage offers out in the market.