Link: the understatement: Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support
The announcement that Nexus One users won’t be getting upgraded to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich led some to justifiably question Google’s support of their devices. I look at it a little differently: Nexus One owners are lucky. I’ve been researching the history of OS updates on Android phones…
Yeah - this is going to be a problem. It’s striking to me that apparently neither Google nor Microsoft seem able to internalize the intrinsic connection between hardware and software. This sort of fragmentation is the result.
The article does a good job of explaining the outcome of this fragmentation and the technical reasons for it, but one additional thing I might add is the cultural aspect to it. It would appear that both Microsoft and Google seem intent on trying to bending society to match their internal cultural rather than designing a company to meet the needs of society. It seems to not be working out well for them.
