improving through increments

Paul Thurrott: Software updates: Windows Phone vs. iPhone (via Daring Fireball)

Of course, it didn’t stop there. Apple delivered iPhone 1.1.2 in November 2007, and iPhone 1.1.3 in January 2008. The sheer pace of improvement and innovation there is stunning in retrospect. And it makes what Microsoft has done in a similar time frame–i.e. absolutely nothing–look even sillier by comparison.

To summarize, the Microsoft of 2011 doesn’t compete effectively with the Apple of 2007. How, exactly, are they going to compete with today’s Apple?

As you can see from Thurrott’s post, Incremental updates might not look like much in the short term, but it’s progress. When you look back at a year of them, they add up to a lot.
I did some quick digging and it looks as though Microsoft is copying the Apple way of updating devices through their Zune software. This means if they had updates ready, it’s a no-brainer for people to install them. It’s also an advantage they have over Android, where the talk lately has been about how carriers hold the keys to Android updates and many many devices are still running old software.

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