[slantyyz]

>> Surely true, phone hardware was quite 'limited' at first

Well here's my problem with that argument. The 3G, 4 and iPad 1 were quite fast until the bloated OS upgrades started coming out.

The one thing that would keep me from being bitter is if Apple offered an easy way to downgrade to the original OS version of each one.

I don't run a lot of apps. The most important apps to me are the ones that come with the phone. If that meant living without some apps and new features but being able to keep the devices in use longer, I would have surely made that trade-off.

[agumonkey]

True, but I can also understand how for some time iPad 1 level hardware was just a bit too limiting. Now the bloated upgrades, as I said, did also help forcing users to "want" the new one more.

The thing that saddens me is that, business will always do that, it's the survival gene by making profit. On the other hand we could have nice open source, legit good software layers but it just doesn't happen the right way on smartphones so we're stuck with android / ios and their tricks.

[slantyyz]

>> Now the bloated upgrades, as I said, did also help forcing users to "want" the new one more.

My experience after switching to Android is not that though. Most of the major releases, including the upcoming N, offer performance improvements.

Granted, I don't know what that says about the code base, whether it was already so vastly inefficient that they find tons of room for improvements or whatnot, but it's definitely a refreshing change from iOS for me.

[Nullabillity]

Google wins when you upgrade Android, Apple wins when you buy a new iDevice. The different priorities shouldn't be surprising at all.

[rootusrootus]

That's irony, since Apple has a ~80% adoption rate for iOS 9 and Google has an adoption rate of <40% for Android 5+.

I long ago switched away from iPhones to Android devices, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that Apple's public commitment to privacy and Android's recent security woes didn't make me think twice about what the next phone in my pocket will be. I look at the system updates page on my Moto X longingly, but it still says February 1st is the most recent update available. Not sure how long I'll have to wait but I hope I don't get exploited in the meantime.

[slantyyz]

> That's irony, since Apple has a ~80% adoption rate for iOS 9 and Google has an adoption rate of <40% for Android 5+.

But I also wonder what the story is behind that adoption rate discrepancy.

Apple makes their own phones, so they can push out upgrades easily. Most of the Android phones sold were made by Samsung right? And Samsung has a a wide variety of phone models and penchant for making mods that slow down updates and/or make them infeasible for other models.

Aging iPhones also tend to become less enjoyable (carefully selected words) to use on their last viable OS update, so people tend to either upgrade to the latest iPhone or switch platforms.

Speaking of Moto X'es, I just got a notification for an update right now, while my wife who has the same model on the same network got her notification over a week ago. I'm guessing they like to stagger their updates?

[Roboprog]

I think part of the Android version spread has to do with prepaid phones. At least 2 of my family members regularly lose/destroy their cheap Android phones and then replace them. These cheaper phones ($30 - $60) are usually running an older 4.x version (until recently, often 3.x).

[agumonkey]

True, after version 7 iOS became too demanding. Ironically I had much love for first OSX releases that got better even on 1st gen iMac until 10.5 I believe. Apple put that gene to rest ..

[secstate]

All valid points, but it hasn't always been this way. There is a model for profitably and sustainably running a business that builds solid products and then services them.

We often act as though the world we live in is the only way things could have possibly proceeded, but after WW2 U.S. manufacturing invented the idea of the consumer to cope with manufacturing capacity built up during war time.

We are still effectively living in a manufacturing boom time created by a war machine.