You aren't making any sense at all. My phone which came out like 6 months ago still doesn't have an ICS update. Apple is still updating the iPhone 3GS which is a 3 year old phone. And what do you mean nothing forces you to upgrade? How does one force someone to upgrade there iPhone 4 to the iPhone 4S? You can still run the iPhone 4 and it will be fine, no one is forcing you to update.
Android is a Linux-based system - all you need to update is the drivers for your particular hardware, a system image and you can cook a ROM for your device. I can bet that there are ROM's for your device that have this update, you just didn't bother to look. Android is quite organic and most good ROM's are actually cooked by the community.
I think I would be aware of that, but the ROMs that developers make just aren't as good as real official ones. They are slow, unstable, and very buggy. I would rather use something reliable.
Buy an iPhone. Nobody said using Google for updates was easy.
Custom ROMs are the exact oposite of what you just said because they have the branding crap and slow-mo-ware removed.
First of all, game consoles and smartphones are completely different markets. Smartphones are subsidized by the price of the contract, and users are permitted (and encouraged) to update their phone to the latest and greatest every two years.Fair play, but by accepting complete make-overs of a device on a yearly basis you accept the fact that your $300+ worth device will become obselete by the end of the year.I don't really care anyway. Simply because I don't buy these products every year or whenever they launched.I wonder what you'd do if Nintendo released a new DS each year cutting the compatibility and support to the previous model.
Apple gets a pass because it's Apple? I don't think so.
The DS Lite was just a smaller DS, the DSi was an upgrade, the DSi XL was just a bigger DSi, altogether you had one hardware update throughout the whole DS cycle.
What would happen if Sony did it with the PS3,4,5,6? Or Nintendo with 3,4,5DS? Or Microsoft with the XBox 1024 and so on and so forth?
It's unacceptable to sentence users to "obseleteness" within a year.
Buy an iPhone. Nobody said using Google for updates was easy.
On a serious note though, is typing "Android" + "The name of your device" + "The edition you are interested in" + "ROM" so incredibly difficult? I updated the ROM of my device when I was 14-15, I don't see why other users wouldn't be able to. That, and you can go to any random phone repair store and they'll do it for you on the spot.
Custom ROMs are the exact oposite of what you just said because they have the branding crap and slow-mo-ware removed.
By no means am I saying that it is an equally-easy task on all makes - of course every phone will have a varied degree of difficulty when it comes to flashing, but don't you think that's a matter of interest for the users of particular phones? I'm also not saying that all Custom ROM's are glorious, I just said that the great majority is actually an improvement over the stock ones. I don't think that the stock firmware is always 100% stable - that's not a general rule, that's a matter of who designed and customized it - there are better and worse stocks.
Official ROMs from the OEM undergo far more extensive testing than Custom ROMs (maybe CyanogenMod is an exception). I never said they were 100% stable, but they're significantly more stable than Custom ROMs.By no means am I saying that it is an equally-easy task on all makes - of course every phone will have a varied degree of difficulty when it comes to flashing, but don't you think that's a matter of interest for the users of particular phones? I'm also not saying that all Custom ROM's are glorious, I just said that the great majority is actually an improvement over the stock ones. I don't think that the stock firmware is always 100% stable - that's not a general rule, that's a matter of who designed and customized it - there are better and worse stocks.
I also disagree with your point that phones are upgraded because of the necessity of communication - communication implies that a phone is supposed to make phonecalls and send texts, everything over that is extra functionality. You don't even need a smartphone to satisfy that need and you don't need any updates to facilitate it - that much I can assure you of.
When it comes to development, it is only "quicker" because many smartphones are really based off of similar blueprints with certain parts replaced with different ones. Not once and not twice have I seen two smartphones of basically the exact same make but marketed as two different products due to some superficial difference.
Not only that, not all people buy phones on a contract - I actually buy phones boxed and SIM Unlocked, simply because I like my number enough not to change it and I never get "neat enough" deals to actually decide on one.
Other then that, I agree with you, however I do believe you also see my point, even though I grasped it quite crudely.
That is truly a shame. Where I live, you can cheaply buy a phone on-contract or you can opt to pay the full price of the phone and buy it unlocked with the stock, non-branded firmware in just about any supermarket or electronics store. I can't even begin to explain why this is an exceptionally good deal if you can afford it.
We unnecessarily shifted to phones when the innitial chit-chat was actually about the iPad.
Google are combating that. Starting with ICS, all manufacturers releasing devices with officially certified Android (i.e. if they have Market access by default) have to guarantee updates for a certain period of time. Can't remember what it is, but it is there. With Apple, there is no guarantee. Yes, they do update older devices for a while, but there is no guarantee they have made that they will do that.
They have in the past, there is no guarantee they will in future. You cannot possibly use historical events as a factual prediction of the future.
