On Jan 19, 4:57 pm, Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]> wrote: > It mattered in the early days but now that both iOS and Android are > stabilizing, the OS version number you're running is a non issue for most > non power users.
At least on the iOS side, the minor releases after iOS 4 last June brought in new features: 4.1 - GameCenter (Xbox Live clone), 4.2 - AirView, AirPrint; in 4.3 they supposedly include support for newspaper subscription payment and downloads. I think either in 4.1 or 4.2 Apple added the ability to open email attachments in different applications and to accept email invitations. And then there were the bug fixes (less memory usage to make 4.x usable on iPhone 3G, bluetooth and proximity sensor bugs - iOS 4.0 was probably the most buggy iOS / iPhone OS Apple ever shipped). And look at the SMS bugs in Android - it seems it needs an OS update to fix (http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/22/nexus-one-gets-tiny-update- to-android-2-2-2-probably-fixes-sms, http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/21/nexus-s-ota-2-3-2-update-rolling-out-now-your-sms-relations-wil/). Apart from that bugs like this should have never made it through Google / vendor / carrier QA, what do you do with an Android handset now that doesn't get firmware upgrades anymore? Stop texting? And don't get me started on the iOS alarm clock failure - twice in a row (daylight saving, New Year) - shame on Apple for not fixing this! Or browsers - HTML 5 is complex, evolving spec, so you can probably ship quarterly fixes / additions at least (remember the PDF exploit in iOS that allowed you to jailbreak the device). It seems that recently the Android browser hasn't got much attention (http:// www.mobilexweb.com/blog/android-2-3-gingerbread-the-browser) but I'm sure Google will beef it up in Honeycomb (I assume this will be a universal release). So I think consumers may not care to much about upgrades, but they should. Would you buy a PC that will never get OS updates anymore? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
