Apple obviously has economic interest in spurring further applications for the iPhone platform, since applications **must** be bought/downloaded from the app store. This is the upside of that continual economic benefit to Apple - they have a vested interest in keeping the platform as capable as ever so that more and more customers buy more and more diverse applications. So paying to get apps from the app store, is in essence funding OS upgrades.
Microsoft is not in this position. They make money from selling licenses; no residual income is derived from devices once that license is sold. So once they established market share doing the EUU updates, etc., became less important than doing what licensee's wanted - and hence the drought of updates.
Of course the architecture of WM isn't necessarily update friendly either - and that's because, IMHO, they didn't do a good job thinking about how to do it, given their economic interests (and frankly, if I were in the same shoes, I'd probably do the same ting.)
Hopefully, the execs at MSFT are watching this, and since we know WM7 won't be seen until sometime next year, they have plenty of time to figure out a "better way" to serve the market and make money. Kudos to Apple for the way they are handling this particular thorn; I don't often agree with their tactics, but this is one where they win (more consistent APIs for broader development) and the customer wins by not having a outdated phone in 1 year's time.
Talking about updates, not complete OS upgrades, this can be done. Going back awhile to when I was an MVP, I asked this question at a summit, and was informed that even back then MS had the ability to flash ROMs at the file level. Thereby killing the need to reformat a device. I was told that the problem was in getting the carriers to do so....take it for what it's worth.
Comparing the iPhone upgrade process to Windows Mobile is far from comparing apples to apples. There is basically one iPhone made under the control of Apple and sold to carriers. For Windows Mobile there are something like 75 OEMs selling dozens and dozens of different devices, each with there own specific ROM. Microsoft simply sell licenses to the OEMs. The OEMs are Microsoft's customers, and although they work rather closely with carriers they really aren't their customers, making it a bit difficult for Microsoft to make many demands on how they interact with their customers. Especially when Microsoft's business model is to sell those licenses. I think if we should be banging on anyone's door it should be the carriers. However as a carrier, they aren't in the business to sell software, firmware, or for that matter not even hardware. They only sell hardware to better enable them to sell what their real product is......AIRTIME.
As much as I would love to see this all change, I just don't see it happening. We've bitched and complained for several years and have made zero headway.
Don't forget about all those cooked ROMs out there. Most nowadays are very stable, with many more features built in then stock ROMs, and they have dozens of free upgrades.
Don't you think Apple is able to accomplish this largely because they control the hardware *and* the software??
Yes, absolutely - and there's also the fact that Apple really only has one hardware design (with two radio variations). That gives them a *huge* advantage. But Microsoft has has had about 8 years to figure this puzzle out from their end, and there's been ZERO improvements thus far.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SassKwatch
What has puzzled me at times is why MS seems so reticent to the idea of developing their own hardware. And I've pretty much reached the conclusion it's out of fear of another MAJOR lawsuit.
Microsoft builds platforms and ecosystems - that's what they're good at. With enough tenacity and money, they can make a success out of their own hardware (Xbox 360), but in general that's not what they're good at.
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But Microsoft has has had about 8 years to figure this puzzle out from their end, and there's been ZERO improvements thus far.
I couldn't agree more Jason! We can dissect the situation and make excuses all we want, but users have complained since the "beginning" and Microsoft still doesn't have a workable solution. I remember one of the "cool" aspects of the iPaq 5455 that I bought was that it had more ROM than the OS needed - we were told (not officially mind you) by Compaq and Microsoft that the added ROM would ease upgrades and wasn't just for the FileStore feature Compaq sold it as. Yeah, whatever! Even though MSFT had extra room to play with they never used it!
I place 99.8% of the problem squarely on Microsoft's shoulders here. When they had a chance to work with hardware manufacturers they didn't. Now they say hardware gets in the way! Whatever - get over it and make something workable for a change!
Last edited by Bob Anderson; 03-19-2009 at 10:32 PM..
WM started on tiny screens, serial port comms, very little memory, and certainly not much room to load updates.
Right. But as times changed, Microsoft didn't adapt their model. They stuck with the same "release code to OEMs/carriers, hope they want to release it to cusomters" approach. They got lazy. They didn't invest.
And, even if you take the update availability out of the equation, you're still left with the methodology for the updates - Microsoft has yet to put any effort into making device updates remotely pleasant for customers lucky enough to get them in the first place.
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Apple obviously has economic interest in spurring further applications for the iPhone platform, since applications **must** be bought/downloaded from the app store...Microsoft is not in this position. They make money from selling licenses; no residual income is derived from devices once that license is sold.
That's a really interesting point Bob - one that I hadn't considered. It's a no-brainer to me that if you have a poor device update story, the customer won't be happy, and that translates into lost future sales of your partner's devices. It also means your operating system will get slagged by everyone for having such a bad experience...but some people at Microsoft evidently didn't think/care about that years back, so perhaps that's exactly how we ended up where we are today.
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I've come to the conclusion that the "Windows Update" feature that comes with WM 6/6.1 is for decoration purposes only.
Yeah, the Windows Update function is laughable. It was added in so Microsoft would have a mechanism by which they could distribute emergency security fixes - but to my knowledge, they've only done that once (for a Messenger bug). They didn't even use it to push out DST fixes!
Quote:
Originally Posted by emuelle1
It's as useless as the HP update utility for my printer that has to run 3 times a week and NEVER finds an update.
Ah, I have that software too - if you start it up manually then click on SETTINGS, you should be able to tell it to check once every 90 days.
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I visit sometimes out of nostalgia (just like I've kept my old 1st gen palm, my commodore vic20 etc.) and to see if I should have any regrets in having jumped to the iPhone...
I appreciate you coming back here, but I haven't seen you over on Apple Thoughts - there's where you should be!
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Abstraction. The 3 end-user updates (EUUs) released after Pocket PC 2002 were identical across devices, and they applied just fine. Why did they go backwards instead of forwards? Of course, they can't update hardware-related things or the phone stack, but pure software items like IE should be upgradeable.
Believe me, I'm not entirely comfortable sounding like I'm defending MS. WM, and MS's treatment of it, have been an enigma to me for quite some time. And I'm just trying to understand how they might mimic the simplicity for the end user that Apple has achieved......w/o starting over from square one.
As to the above, I'm inclined to think at least some of that is due to the carriers, no? I can't believe the amount of crap installed on the AT&T Tilt that I'll never use, but seemingly have no ability to remove w/o resorting to some unsupported ROM hack.
In a way, it almost seems as though MS has painted themselves into a corner with the current model. If they change it drastically, they'll probably p.o. a goodly number of carriers who just might dump anything with WM on it.....or at least threaten to do so. If they don't, they're probably in danger of becoming little more than a footnote in mobile device history.
As to the above, I'm inclined to think at least some of that is due to the carriers, no?
Oh yeah, absolutely - the carriers are a HUGE barrier to Microsoft being able to do what they want to do with these devices. Only Apple has thus far had the power to make AT&T bend over and...well, you know. Apple tells AT&T what to do with the iPhone, and they do it. Microsoft probably doesn't need to go QUITE that far, but they do need to flex some muscles and take more ownership of the operating system on the phone. It says WINDOWS, so people have some concept of what that means...and being ignored from an update perspective isn't one of them.
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