Some updates are less important than others. When I picked up the iP3G back in the summer of 2008 it did NOT have cut/copy/paste, but sometime later Apple released an update that provided, for the first time, cut/copy/paste. This update was important and if Apple had said they would only provide this update only with the next iPhone release they would have caught holy hell -- and rightly so!
The orphan issue is one of the major problem with Android phones and the problem lies not with Google but with the phone makers. It would be nice if the phone makers worked along side Google when a new update is nearing completion so that when Google is ready the makers can be ready to go.
In truth, of course, the phone makers are more interested in selling NEW phones and only devote enough effort on older phones to avoid really pissing off there customers. The phone makers love the fact that so many users simply buy the newest phone when it come out.
I'm glad this issue is being raised and I hope this kind of dialog puts more pressure on the makers to support there products better.
Brian
aye.
This is the real problem with Android, and Jobs was dead on in some audio I was listening to the other night about this (some radio commentary--found through links on one of these threads--I'll go look for it).
Anyway, he made excellent points about how in many ways, Android
is a closed system (remember that Jobs markets to the average consumer and not tech junkies, so that is how he thinks) in that you have Android, and then on top of that you have the manufacturers, chiefly Motorolla, HTC, and Samsung (this was well before Samsung was dominant) that inject their own interface, locked app system and bootloaders or whatever.
On top of this, you have another round of device manufacturers that further complicate matters--even stock Android complicates things in this sense, as to the average consumer, it is simply another interface--that offer different hardware and device functionality that gives a very mixed and completely inaccurate impression of the OS. With iPhone--you absolutely know what you are getting, and anyone can identify to it. This is what Jobs has always done exceedingly well, and why he (and Apple, if they continue to follow his guidance) will always succeed. Jobs understood branding, and further--he understood personal identification with the device, whatever that device was.
think about it this way:
iPhone = Qtip. This can't really be denied. It is now, quite obviously, the de-facto name for "smartphone."
"Droid" = .... "not iPhone?" seriously. what do people mean when they say "droid?" the average consumer says that instantly. SOmething that motorola/Verizon created, obviously, to try and capture that branding object, but all they did was manage to further confuse the identification with Android. It is quite profound.
An example: on NPR the other day, they had the Jobs biographer dude (who spent some time detailing some hilariously inaccurate accounts of history, but I digress." At one point, Terry Gross is referencing the now infamous Jobs comments about his desire to "destroy Android if it takes every last penny that Apple owns." Except...Gross didn't say "Android," she said "Droid."
No Android fan seems to want to acknowledge this, but it's a terrible problem with the system. You have the clear benefits of Open source, of course (iOS more or less does this to some degree, anyway--a profound departure for Apple, of course), an incredibly potent system that will do anything and everything iOS could possibly hope to do, yet a terrible market confusion over
what it is.
The bright spot, then, is ICS--and it
has to be a sure winner. Finally, you have one version of Android, that the consumer can feel comfortable merging from phone to tablet, and with the apparent confirmation that Verizon will actually release an
untarnished Android handset, some hint that the service providers are warming up to the fact that Android needs, more than anything else, a multi-device, mult-platform,
singular identity. (Motorolla still seems to be the major asshole, of course).
I haven't seen too many people mention this wiht the ICS news, but Duarte made a rather poignant (and very Jobs-like) comment during his introduction to ICS : "We realized that people didn't
love Android--they did not identify with their devices."
I hope, hope, hope HOPE, that this is exactly what we will see with ICS and further--not the Apple cult concept of "love thy device"--but simply, a cross-platform, cross-carrier consumer identification with a single system.
It is probably way too late to expect "Droid" to disappear from the vernacular...though that would sure be nice. (granted, the DOA Bionic may just help in that regard. :hmm
:\
found the Jobs radio rant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxoAF0Jvhqc
it's indeed ranty and silly in the beginning, but be patient with it. He makes some great points.
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