How Google killed my excitement in operating system upgrades

As someone born in the first half of the 1990s, I vaguely remember Windows 98 and vividly remember using Windows XP at school, Vista on my first laptop, and later Windows 7 which I reinstalled many times on another laptop which I used to experiment with Linux distributions on.

Each version had been launched years apart with pretty big changes and it was a time before really good web apps so desktop apps were way more important than they are today. For me, each new release was hotly anticipated and I was genuinely excited with new features.

Things took a funny turn towards the end of the 2000s when Google announced Chrome OS. I have never used it as my primary operating system to this day, but its ethos, coupled with the shift to mobile and improvements with web technologies, has pretty much killed my excitement in new operating system updates.

ChromeOS was built on the idea that updates were to be incremental, background affairs that the user didn’t need to worry about. At the time, I found this quite an interesting and exciting concept, but had no idea that it would diminish my excitement for new major operating system updates.

Alongside the maturation of ChromeOS, we’ve seen the maturation of Google’s mobile operating system, Android. Gone are the days when Android was defined by its Tron-inspired theme and big Android updates were important. Google, and users, have gotten fed up with slow upgrades from OEMs and the search giant made Android more modular.

Another big piece of the puzzle that was starting to form around the end of the 2000s was HTML5, this essentially made web apps available that worked as well as regular apps, diminishing the role of the operating system further.

In this editorial, I want to take a deeper dive into these items and explore how they made me much less interested in the major operating system updates from companies like Apple and Microsoft, and even upgrades of Linux distributions.

ChromeOS

The first time I heard about ChromeOS was back in 2009 when Sundar Pichai showed off an early version of the operating system. At the time, I remember thinking that you could get away with using that system for some tasks but it would limit you in terms of desktop apps, what I did really like about it though were all the security features Google had built in.

As outlined in the video below, which was released around the time of Pichai’s keynote, Chrome tabs were sandboxed to reduce exploits, and the underlying operating system had security measures in place such as atomic updates and verified boot to ensure it hadn’t been tampered with. Building it from the ground up, Google was able to make sure ChromeOS systems were very secure.

Some other niceties of ChromeOS that I remember being pretty excited about were the promised quick boot times and the fact that you would just log in with your Google account credentials; essentially, you wouldn’t need to worry about backups, all your data was there waiting for you when you logged in.

ChromeOS was promising something much different from what Apple, Microsoft and major Linux distributions were offering at the time, for example, I can still remember upgrading my iMac at the time to Snow Leopard using a physical disc. At the time, ChromeOS didn’t feel quite complete, but after 15 years of maturation, it looks great, fast internet speed allows for quick updates, and web apps have diminished the need for desktop software.

Around 2010, Google Chrome got a new release cycle which saw major updates drop every six weeks, in the time since, this has fallen to every four weeks. ChromeOS gets upgrades alongside the Chrome web browser, making it a rolling release operating system, similar to Arch Linux-based distributions.

Rather than adding lots of new features in one giant update event, Google introduces a handful of smaller updates with each new version, updating the system iteratively so that users don’t notice the changes as much. The quicker releases also mean that Google can push out security updates faster, so users stay protected.

This rolling release update model has also rubbed off onto other operating systems including Microsoft Windows. While Microsoft still releases major Windows versions, since Windows 10 it has been iteratively improving its systems via updates a few times per year.

In recent years, the Fedora project has started releasing a collection of atomic desktops, like Fedora Silverblue, built around rpm-ostree that gives you image-based upgrades, making rollbacks much easier and giving you a more stable operating system overall. While these get big updates a few times per year like Fedora Workstation, the security benefits are reminiscent of what ChromeOS delivers.

The lack of new major versions of operating systems, largely popularized by ChromeOS, for me, has significantly diminished the importance and excitement of new releases that do land, because there is not usually too much that’s changed or necessary.

If you were using a computer during the Windows XP era and then saw the releases of Windows Vista and eventually Windows 7, I bet you can name many of the new features between them, I know I can. Nowadays, can you remember what new features were introduced in each of the Moment updates or H updates for Windows, I can’t. They just seem to be kind of there one day without much fanfare.

This continuous evolution is actually really good for most people because it reduces the learning curve and people can focus on productivity instead of trying to work out how to use their computer again. However, it sucks a bit in terms of excitement because the updates aren’t too big.

Android

My memories of the early days of Android and when I got on board are pretty fuzzy. My first experience with a smartphone operating system was iOS on the iPod Touch. Being an Apple device, that got new updates like clockwork via iTunes. As these were the early days, Apple was busy adding plenty of new, important features such as search and being able to set custom wallpapers.

The first Android phone was the awful HTC Tattoo which had a tiny resistive touch screen. That was soon swapped out for a Motorola Milestone (pretty much the same as the Motorola Droid), which I actually really liked. Android updates at this time were awful so I ended up loading custom ROMs to get access to new Android versions, although I had to give up with anything higher than Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” as later versions were far too heavy for that phone.

An interesting thing to note about the upgrades back then were the drastic user interface overhauls. I remember looking forward to Android 2.3 with its dark notification bar that blended better into the phone and Android 4 which was heavily inspired by Android 3.0 which only launched on tablets and borrowed design elements from Tron.

Nowadays, ever since Android 5 really, Google has settled for a more mature Material design. It has received pretty subtle updates since then, but nothing too groundbreaking like we saw in the early days of Android.

Ever since Android launched, upgrades for devices have always been few and far between, largely due to the amount of work OEMs have to put in for each device to get new Android versions working on existing phones. Google launched its own line of smartphones with the Nexus devices which has good update support and in later years has made other efforts to update pieces of Android even if your OEM has abandoned your device.

Almost 20 years since Android launched, the Android upgrade issue is still there. I am currently rocking a Poco X5 5G from Xiaomi. It arrived with the last version of MIUI, got HyperOS 1.0, and is reportedly going to get HyperOS 2.0 with the rollout beginning in December 2024. Have I received this update yet? Nope. Android updates suck, but I’m past caring because it doesn’t really matter.

I’m not really sure when it was, probably around the time of Android 5 or 6, but I just stopped caring about Android upgrades. I knew they were very bad, but as long as my apps kept working, I didn’t care. Google’s inability to sort this out has fostered in me a bit of apathy about Android upgrades. I never expect my phones to get them, I just expect to hand over more money for a new phone if I expect to see a new OS.

Over the years, OEMs have started to get their acts together a little bit, sometimes offering two OS upgrades and three years of security updates, as is the case with my Poco X5 (I think). In recent years, Samsung has committed to supporting its premium devices for seven years to match Apple with its iPhones.

To give credit to Google, it has recognized this as a serious issue and has taken steps to improve updates. In 2017 it announced Project Treble to facilitate faster Android updates and since Android 10, Google has been offering Mainline which modularizes some Android components letting them get updated outside of the usual Android update cycle, giving users a better experience if their OEM has left them high and dry.

The Google Play system updates, delivered via Mainline, updates various components in Android including Android OS modules, Google Play Store, Google Play services, Android System WebView, Android System Intelligence, Google Wallet, Device Connections, Utilities (such as autofill, contact syncing, and backup/restore), Safety and Emergency, Account Management, and Games.

The Web

The third and final aspect that, for me, has made operating system upgrades boring is the maturation of the web thanks to web technologies like HTML5 that make web apps much more useful and, in some cases, replace desktop apps. Think Google Docs or Microsoft 365; I can run both of these in Google Chrome on my Lubuntu installation. I can keep notes quickly in Google Keep or save events via Google Calendar. For me, the operating system is only there to facilitate the opening of my web browser; I don’t really care what’s new between versions.

It wasn’t like this so much in the 2000s when the web was less feature rich and people were socializing on desktop apps like Windows Live Messenger or writing documents in Microsoft Office 2007. Today, the desktop just plays less of a role because the web is so much more powerful.

Circling back to ChromeOS briefly, the advancements in web technologies is what has made ChromeOS a more viable option compared to when it was introduced in 2009. Pichai said in the video earlier that internally they joke that Chrome is ChromeOS. According to this informal definition, I basically use ChromeOS everyday except for the odd occasion when I need to edit an image with GIMP.

The empowering of the web has essentially turned the operating system into a piece of the underlying infrastructure that manages resources and basic functionality. It’s not something I proactively engage with too much, and for that reason, I’m not as bothered about updates to it.

It’s a bit like the Linux kernel, it’s nice when new features and hardware support are added but I don’t get excited about it like I did with operating system updates in the past.

Looking Ahead

While the old paradigm is quite nostalgic for me personally, I do not believe that we need to go back to a world where big OS upgrades come out every five years or whatever. The steady stream of updates that users do not have to think about is ultimately a more seamless experience and it benefits a wider number of people.

The launch of intelligent artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT have spiced up operating systems a bit with baked-in tools like Gemini on Android, Apple Intelligence on iPhone, and features like Recall in Windows 11. If you’re enthusiastic about AI, features like Recall are quite exciting and reignites some interest in operating systems getting tools like this.

Despite this, I don’t think we will ever get back to big OS updates like XP, Vista, and 7. I think the correct approach is to double down on making small updates frequently, even if they are not exciting. I think there is plenty of other stuff to get interested about in consumer tech today rather than operating systems. For example, on mobile we have loads of new and interesting apps which weren’t really a thing in the 2000s and now we are hearing all the time about new AI versions bringing new and interesting features.

Conclusion

Google with the development of its ChromeOS and Android operating systems, as well as its major part in the development of web technologies, I believe, has played a major role in making operating system updates boring. While I don’t find much interest in new OS updates, I don’t think the new paradigm is bad, in fact, I think companies should double down and get the operating system, and all the updates, as out of the way as possible so that users can focus on the things they actually care about.

Let us know in the comments, are you still excited about operating system upgrades or do you, like me, think they’ve gotten a bit boring over the last decade with the switch to more of a rolling release style?

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