On the one hand: I don’t see a reason for Google to keep supporting old versions.
On the other hand: pushing an update to an old device and sabotaging it by showing an “install updates” popup (as if that’s even possible for devices still running Android 7, that’s bullshit) is just dickish.
The old version of Android Auto works perfectly fine. Show a popup once if you want (“your device will no longer receive Android Auto updates, third party apps may stop working”) but don’t actually disable anything that’s working perfectly fine.
Google pulled that shit before. I would understand if they had a customer support department that’d get flooded when newer hardware stopped working, but all Google has is a forum that no Google employees ever pay any attention to.
The issue is they probably want to change serverside stuff without caring about the old stuff and the alternative to the update and it’s prompt is that it will simply crash, show errors, hang or whatever…
I don’t really see what server side stuff an app on the dashboard of a car would need. Their Google Maps API works all the way back to the one installed with Android 2, and failing that users can install a number of navigation apps. Same with their music app (they already killed Play Music anyway).
The only thing I can think of is that they’d be killing Google Assistant on old phones, but that wouldn’t mean the rest of Android Auto couldn’t still work.
On the one hand: I don’t see a reason for Google to keep supporting old versions.
On the other hand: pushing an update to an old device and sabotaging it by showing an “install updates” popup (as if that’s even possible for devices still running Android 7, that’s bullshit) is just dickish.
The old version of Android Auto works perfectly fine. Show a popup once if you want (“your device will no longer receive Android Auto updates, third party apps may stop working”) but don’t actually disable anything that’s working perfectly fine.
Google pulled that shit before. I would understand if they had a customer support department that’d get flooded when newer hardware stopped working, but all Google has is a forum that no Google employees ever pay any attention to.
The issue is they probably want to change serverside stuff without caring about the old stuff and the alternative to the update and it’s prompt is that it will simply crash, show errors, hang or whatever…
I don’t really see what server side stuff an app on the dashboard of a car would need. Their Google Maps API works all the way back to the one installed with Android 2, and failing that users can install a number of navigation apps. Same with their music app (they already killed Play Music anyway).
The only thing I can think of is that they’d be killing Google Assistant on old phones, but that wouldn’t mean the rest of Android Auto couldn’t still work.
No idea but I don’t see why would bother with that if it isn’t because it breaks in nasty ways (maybe with possible legal consequences?).