Quote:
Originally Posted by Fritzly
You answered your own question: MS needs to handle directly the OS updates and make them available to customers as they do for the Desktop OS.
What is happening is a classic example of poor industrial planning and, much worse, a denial attitude that does not want to acknowledge the problems in order to avoid criticisms.
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I don't disagree with this statement, but I think it goes deeper than that. The issue isn't just OS updates. It's that MS can't control the entire user experience the way Apple, Nokia and RIM can. They are dependent on their OEM/Carrier partners to do so, and because of this, the experience is different from one WM device to the next and often less than satisfactory. Too many times the OEMs have released underpowered devices with too little memory to run the OS.
Microsoft's model works in the PC world, because most hardware is generic, and there is a hardware abstraction layer in the OS that enables people to upgrade as necessary, provided a driver is available. This means end users can improve their experience without dependence upon MS, HP, Dell or whoever they bought the PC from. However, with WM, you have very little opportunity to fix things on your own. In my opinion the closed hardware/software model we see from Apple, etc. is superior. It makes it so much easeir for them to make sure everything works, and those things that don't can be addressed directly.
The trade off is in flexibility of the software, but for these devices, the market is speaking, and people are willing to give up software flexibility for an improved overall experience. Microsoft is going to continue hitting it's head against the wall until they wake up and realize that the entire experience needs to be better managed. Either by creating their own "Zune-phone" or implementing much tighter control over hardware/updates/add-ons. If they don't do either the brand will flounder.