[mghackerlady]

OS design basically stagnated in the 90s. Sure, we had NT, but that was putting a dos flavoured suit on VMS. BeOS was promising, but fizzled out quickly. Everything else has either been research or for the embedded market.

[ahartmetz]

Android and iOS increased security, but at the cost of much flexibility and user agency. It's some kind of progress, but I certainly wouldn't want them for Real Computers.

[mghackerlady]

Android is just Linux running a Java VM and a funky userland. iOS is just MacOS apple decided you can't do real work on. Both are still unix clones (as contrast to a unix-like like plan9 or haiku)

[ahartmetz]

The kernel is obviously close to vanilla Linux, but one could also define the OS as "which lower-level services and interfaces the applications see and are programmed to use" - so the stuff on top of Linux matters.

There are more interesting, general, and lower level innovations out there - sure. But the mobile OSes do have improved security from some kind of permission system, VM (only partially because native components are common), one user account per app (IIRC) and such.

[mghackerlady]

Right but what I'm trying to say is that the core architecture hasn't really changed since the 90s. All the improvements you mentioned are non-applicable to my statements. One user account per app is just a hacky way to use unixes timesharing origins for increased security, VMs and containers slap a bandaid on the problems, and permission systems like android and iOS have are just a hack that works nicely since they use sandboxed software. Plus, these are all security based, which while the topic of the discussion overall, wasn't what I meant when it came to OS innovation in general (an important part, though)