On: Tablet shipments decline 10.1% in 2015

[pixl97]

If you cannot install a native program you wrote for the device without hacking the firmware on the device, you do not have a 'real' operating system. I mean, of course you have an operating system, it's just one that Apple, Microsoft, or Google controls in the strict sense what you can do with it.

[derefr → pixl97]

You can do that on iOS, insofar as you can attach any arbitrary iOS (or tvOS, or watchOS) device to Xcode running on a Mac, and pressing Run in Xcode will launch the "native program" you wrote on the iOS device (and keep it installed afterward.)

It's distributing binaries to others that's the hard part of these mobile ecosystems. Running your own code on your own device has never been restricted.

[digi_owl → pixl97]

And what would native be in the case of Android?

Flip the "unknown sources" setting and you can dump any random APK onto it.

The tablet market neither begins nor ends with iPad.

[pixl97 → digi_owl]

Being that endymi0n was talking about an iPad, it certainly relates to the conversation.

[digi_owl → pixl97]

And dismissing the whole product category after having encountered only the most restrictive entry seems hasty.

I will admit that Android has issues as well, but running arbitrary code is not one of them.