Matisyahu's Blog

Quite a busy week so far in the technology industry – Google released Android 16 beta 4 (link) and it appears that the kernel version has also been updated (not a major version update) and I’ve read reports regarding the Pixel 9 Pro XL showing performance improvements. The expected release is around the middle of the year but I’m in no hurry to upgrade but from what I have heard the days of the big leaps forward have come to an end and the focus is on evolutionary and under the hood improvements, refining the platform so that the features that exist work a lot better. A summary of the Android 16 features can be found on this page (link) and many of those improvements have been back ported to Android 12 such as the improvement to the Android Runtime (ART) along with a switch to 16KB page size.

The switch to 16KB page size brings the following benefits (link)

Switching to 16KB page sizes on Android offers performance benefits by reducing fragmentation, improving memory allocation efficiency, and potentially leading to faster app launch times and improved system boot times. This approach allows for smoother user experiences, particularly for large applications.

There is also scheduled is a second update to Android 16, the platform itself (the APIs) are stabilised but additional features will be made available. It’ll be interesting to see what is bought to the table.

WWDC 2025 is set for June 9-13, 2025 so I am looking at how much leave I have available and if I do have sufficient leave I’ll take the week off so I can enjoy keeping up with the latest sessions that Apple will make available online. Although I do watch the keynote I much prefer the ‘Platforms State of the Union’ where it is still a high level overview but it is more geared towards the technically inclined who want to know more about the under the hood changes.

On a side note, I dived down a rabbit hole of learning about Chrome, the underlying technology called Skia and the work being done called Graphite which has a backend called Dawn which will make use of DirectX 11 and 12. Long story short there is a lot of behind the scenes work that goes on when it comes to developing Chrome and it is quite the adventure looking into what will appear in the future. The benefit of such a development will mean every part of Chrome (including the UI of the application itself) will make use of Dawn and the DirectX 11 and 12 on Windows not to mention Metal on macOS which should translate to a better overall experience in terms of responsiveness, font rendering quality etc.

I know this is a bit late but Windows App SDK 1.8.x development series has been launched (link) – as features are added then mature we’re seeing Microsoft starting to slowly make use of them. I think long term their goal is to replacement for the classic win32 API. It’ll be interesting to see long term how they tackle the challenge of moving the platform forward, provide a reasonable level of backwards compatibility and then how they will schedule the removal of features from the operating system – all while they focus on prioritising security above all (link). The big question is whether, when faced with the choice of backwards compatibility or security whether they choose security given Microsoft’s reputation for prioritising backwards compatibility above all else – I’d like to he proven wrong but if the past is anything to go by then I wouldn’t be too confident. With all that being said, Microsoft is working on ‘Administrator protection on Windows 11’ (link) there isn’t a date set but I am hoping that we’ll see it in Windows 11 25H2 which will go a long way to securing Windows.

Tonight I went for a 10km walk after work – it’s good to get some fresh air after being stuck inside all day not to mention getting some exercise since I’ve been sitting all day. I’m going to head off to bed beecause I’ve got work on Saturday and Sunday then my weekend is Monday and Tuesday – I haven’t got anything planned for my days off but whatever it is I’ll be taking it easy.