So the solution is what - Google should wait 5 years between OS upgrades? In which case people would be complaining that Google never updates the functionality.

Phones are not computers. Most people upgrade their phones annually, and a lot of consumers don't know about or expect an OS upgrade during that time. I think you're over-egging the pudding on this.

And besides, I still use XP despite Vista and W7 being released in the last few years. XP works just fine, thanks. And the same goes for Android - I know plenty of people for whom 1.6 is just perfect. 2.0 would be nice, but it's not essential.

Erm, the SDK usually hits the streets a couple of months before the firmware does (that's certainly the case with 1.6 and 2.0 - SDK was available about 8-10 weeks before the first devices with that OS version were released. And during that time many/most developers were able to test/update their apps to run with the new OS. So, for the example, by the time Cupcake was installed on most phones, most major Android apps had been upgraded to support it perfectly. Same goes for 2.0.

This process is exactly the same on iPhone as it is for Android - the market knows which OS versions an app supports, and devs get the SDK early and can upgrade the apps for max compatibility before the OS is released.

Plus, the SDK allows apps to target certain versions of the OS and use reflection to test if functionality is available on the device before using it (and degrade gracefully if it doesn't). And the Android auto-update meant that phone users were prompted to install the new update automatically. If devs don't choose to use those tools properly, then their app will fail; that's a loss to the developers, not Google, Android or the end users.

So basically, most of your post is irrelevant bunk.

And, of course, if people are techy enough to understand the differences between 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0, and really want the latter, they can just root their device and install 2.0 if they want. It's hardly complicated. Seems like a pretty goo upgrade path to me.

Have to agree. I've had a Magic and Nexus One, and all the apps I want to use work on both (except Google Earth, which requires 2.x).

And besides, there are, what, 3 major revisions of Android - Cupcake/1.5, Donut/1.6, Eclair/2.1. There's a few devices running 2.0, but they have only been around a couple of months and will undoubtedly move to 2.1 very soon. Most providers are upgrading or planning to upgrade to at least 1.6, and many to 2.x, within the next couple of months.

So in reality, within the next 3-4 months we're talking about a handful of apps not working on a handful of devices running older versions of the OS. People make this out to be a far bigger issue than it actually is.

As is "CGI-quality". I guess whoever wrote the article summary didn't actually consider what CGI stands for.

You mean there are women here? :-o

Perhaps you should be more careful? I've had expensive mobile phones since 1995, and never had one stolen, lost or damaged (and certainly never dropped one into a toilet).

Insurance companies aren't dumb to do this. They probably save money and end up with happier customers.

For example, I bought a laptop imported from Japan (a Fujitsu P-series) before they were available in the UK. Awesome little device, like a netbook - but back in 2001. The device cost around £2k, and had a 233Mhz CPU, optical drive, 60GB disk, 1024x640 screen.

In 2005/2006 the laptop got knocked off a table and the screen broke. Insurers tried to find a replacement screen, but couldn't. In the end they realised that for around £500 they could replace the entire machine with a device twice as powerful in terms of CPU, screen, etc, from the most recent P-series range. Cost of a replacement screen (plus labour to fit it) would probably have been more than the device.

Moore's law means it's usually cheaper to replace electronics with more recent models, and the customer gets an upgrade to boot. It does encourage fraud though.

How about this for an example. I run NewsRob on my Nexus One. It's an offline RSS reader, which periodically downloads the articles and web content in the background. It does this seamlessly and transparently, without me even noticing. When I fire it up, the content is all there, cached locally on the device - so I can read my feeds regardless of whether I have a signal or not. The closest equivalent to this on iPhone is Bylines. It can't sync in the background, and (I believe) can't run as a scheduled job in the background). So you have to have the download running in the foreground, which means that while it's downloading the content you can't do anything else. Which, frankly, is a total FAIL.

There are many other examples. I have a twitter app which refreshes my twitter feed periodically in the background and notifies me of mentions or messages. I have FoxyRing which runs in the background and every 10 minutes or so it checks the ambient noise level and sets the ringtone volume accordingly. I have a wifi app (Y5) which tracks my location, and if I'm in the same area as an SSID that I've connected to, it automatically enables Wifi (and when I leave that area, it switches wifi off again to save power). Another service I run in the background is 'Screen On', which monitors for certain applications running foreground, and if they're detected it switches the screen timeout to 'infinite'.

Now, some or all of those features, you could argue, could be part of the OS. They could also - with some hoop-jumping - be managed using notifications from the OS location/device state subsystem. However, that all requires the OS vendor to provide those functions. And the RSS download one simply isn't possible at all without it preventing me from using the device to do other things concurrently to the download.

Lots of people say "but I don't need multi-tasking" in justification of the iPhone's draconian limitations. Personally, my device would simply not fit my needs or requirements if it couldn't have background services running....

Have to agree, the new layout is just fine. But more importantly, I don't bother using the full version - I do everything from my Android device. Facebook haven't changed the mobile site (http://m.facebook.com) for over 2 years....

What happened was that the general public wants all the functionality, implemented 6 months ago on hardware which doesn't exist yet. So either Google/Apple/et al test properly, and consumers claim 'disappointment' that it takes 3 years for a device to get to market, or they do the best they can, get it into consumers' hands, and then push out updates whenever the next round of functionality/testing/bugfixing is complete.

Frankly, being an early adopter and a lover of new tech, I know which I'd prefer. Most bugs have workarounds (and, of course, the OSS community can fix or workaround some of them if the platform isn't horrendously locked down).

It's not about "nothing to hide, nothing to fear". It's about the fact that (as the parent wrote) Google doesn't give a shit about your individual data.

What google are looking for are trends. Not individual behaviour. If I go and visit www.corpse-pictures.com that doesn't help google unless others do. Individuals are outliers on the graph unless there's a lot of people behaving in similar correlated patterns, at which point the data becomes interesting.

People in this world are far too paranoid about their internet data without actually thinking about why they're paranoid. I bet half the people who use Tor to hide their web-surfing have thrown away supermarket receipts into the dustbin without shredding it, or use loyalty cards like Nectar etc when they shop at supermarkets...

"Unauthorized running of scripts on my computer"?

By visiting the site, you authorised it. If you don't want those scripts run, don't visit the site.

It's a bit like saying "unauthorised filming of me by CCTV when I walk into a branch of Sainsburys". If you don't like it, you can do the other thing.

Very good point. Google aren't trying to produce the iPhone-killer, since they make a whole bunch of revenue via search/maps/gmail on the iPhone. What google probably want is a Microsoft-killer and Nokia-killer. There's plenty enough revenue in the smartphone market for 2 players, and Google makes money from both of them....

Well, okay, I mean "anyone normal". ;)

I don't actually care if somebody knows I use Gmail, and most people can't tell cosmetically from a received email (particularly as I use my own SMTP).

Of course if I really wanted to hide the fact that I use GMail, instead of mail directing straight to Google, I could have an immediate redirect from my non-Google-hosted pop account to my Gmail account. In fact, that's how I used to have it, before Google introduced the ability to specify custom SMTP servers and I migrated to using their infrastructure directly.