[pmich]

I'm curious as to why it takes Microsoft so long to push out updates that frankly don't offer a lot of features. We got rotation lock and some SMS tones but not a lot of features that are 'wow' after a year since WP8 launched. When i compare this to what Blackberry has done moving from 10 to 10.1 and now to 10.2 you can see the rapid pace at which they're updating features. Instead of catching up, it feels like they're just lagging farther behind sometimes.

[Blacklac]

I'm curious as to why it takes Microsoft so long to push out updates that frankly don't offer a lot of features. We got rotation lock and some SMS tones but not a lot of features that are 'wow' after a year since WP8 launched. When i compare this to what Blackberry has done moving from 10 to 10.1 and now to 10.2 you can see the rapid pace at which they're updating features. Instead of catching up, it feels like they're just lagging farther behind sometimes.

The flaw is, you're comparing an 8.0 -> 8.0 update vs 10.0 -> 10.1 & 10.2.

[gsquared]

Well,

BB has nothing else going on except a failing smartphone business. Thats why.

[techiez]

what matters is the time taken, u can compare 8.0 n 8.1 when it comes

[Jas00555]

They're not slow, they're not exactly quick, but they're still doing a ton with WP. Blackberry doesn't have an ecosystem so you just get updates for the phone. MS is doing a lot of behind the scenes stuff like making RT and WP share many APIs, that whole thing with streaming Xbox games, making SkyDrive better and better. Don't worry, you'll be happier and happier as we get more updates.

[Blacklac]

Blackberry has more than just its OS work on. Lol. Enterprise, BBM, BBM Music, etc... They also design their own hardware, run their own servers, etc... Not to mention it owns QNX so that whole auto division. Lol.

[Microsoftjunkie]

Well, your kinda concern for no reason, at least for now. MS has always stated that any and all GDR releases are bug fixes and putting things in place for wp8.1. Everyone warned not to give their hopes up looking for features when ms said 8.1 is the key. Just wait.

[jongthechemist]

Looking at the things they made for Windows 8.1, I believe they are preparing more than users features right now for WP8.1. what i mean by that is they might be preparing for more hardware supports and development features too in both Visual Studio and WP SDK. This means more variety in terms of hardware and more capabilities in terms of apps. They might need to put more people on the next big update than these GDRs we're getting in between times. For iOS and BB10, they have specific hardwares thus easier for them to support those while android is open-source. Those are my thoughts.

[Kavu2]

Microsoft lags behind at updating OS

Not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.
The Comical Irony That IO7 Users Are Suffering From Blue Screens Of Death (TechCrunch)
Best line in the article...
"Its funny, Apple fans. iOS 7 is the new Vista"

Apple iPhone iOS7 update BSoD in action (YouTube)

Certainties in Life:
- Death and Taxes
- Bad Karma's gonna getcha
and...
- Payback's a B*tch
Always be careful what you wish for...you just may get it....and more.

[eruptflail]

Apple does the same thing, except they don't even get the service packs that MS gives us (GDR1,2,3). Come January we'll have a solid update. You wait.

[Funky Cricket]

so, 3 bug fix updates and a major release update in a year is slow? I don't get how people have this attitude.

[pmich]

Well i love the enthusiasm by everyone. I just hope it really happens when 8.1 comes in next spring. I'm banking on a much better notification system and 'zuning' the xbox music application. (my term for bringing back what was already awesome when it was Zune) Hopefully they'll have other surprises for us as well especially with the phablets coming debuting shortly. They need to create split screens and use of styluses for those devices such as the 1520.

[rajthilak]

Hi,
Remember that Blackberry is just having blackberry devices to use its software. Apple uses only Apple hardware.
But Microsoft is using multiple hardware's from multiple companies. Ultimately everything should work fine and should look identical too.

Android manages this by making the updates delivering to mobile manufacturers and they customize it completely. But MS does here almost everything which is taking its own time.

[badcat]

Not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.
The Comical Irony That IO7 Users Are Suffering From Blue Screens Of Death (TechCrunch)
Best line in the article...
"It’s funny, Apple fans. iOS 7 is the new Vista"

Apple iPhone iOS7 update BSoD in action (YouTube)

Certainties in Life:
- Death and Taxes
- Bad Karma's gonna getcha
and...
- Payback's a B*tch
Always be careful what you wish for...you just may get it....and more.

Now that is funny...

[dkediger]

I'm curious as to why it takes Microsoft so long to push out updates that frankly don't offer a lot of features. We got rotation lock and some SMS tones but not a lot of features that are 'wow' after a year since WP8 launched. When i compare this to what Blackberry has done moving from 10 to 10.1 and now to 10.2 you can see the rapid pace at which they're updating features. Instead of catching up, it feels like they're just lagging farther behind sometimes.

Pretty sure it took BlackBerry longer to release 10 than Microsoft took to go WinMo6.5 -> WP7 -> WP7.5 -> WP7.8/WP8 Even then, it was by stripping out features, which is what they're adding back in the point releases.
I guess you could also compare to Apple's IOS 7.0.0 - > 7.0.1 -> 7.0.2 releases in a what - two week time frame?

[Blacklac]

Pretty sure it took BlackBerry longer to release 10 than Microsoft took to go WinMo6.5 -> WP7 -> WP7.5 -> WP7.8/WP8 Even then, it was by stripping out features, which is what they're adding back in the point releases.
I guess you could also compare to Apple's IOS 7.0.0 - > 7.0.1 -> 7.0.2 releases in a what - two week time frame?

Not really sure what you mean comparing BB10 to WinMo 6.5 to WP8. Blackberry is still supporting its old OS, 7.1 now. They actually just released a brand new phone for it. I actually forgot this part about my last post, Blackberry is currently supporting 3 OS's... Lol. I mean, the Playbook OS is all but dead, but it was just updated a month ago or so. So essentially, it took no time for BB to jump from 7 to 10. And also, WP stripped out tons of features from WinMo and is now adding them back. Its typical for any new platform to do this. It takes years to build a matured OS.

[Jas00555]

Blackberry has more than just its OS work on. Lol. Enterprise, BBM, BBM Music, etc... They also design their own hardware, run their own servers, etc... Not to mention it owns QNX so that whole auto division. Lol.

Still though, besides QNX, everything you just listed centers around their phones

[pottyvick]

I wouldn't say they don't update enough, but it seems like they take a while to implement some basic things (custom text tones for ex)... Nothing major but small things... Like the whole no MMS on the first few apple software updates...

While apple, google, and blackberry have all had little things missing they all are pretty even now, so i can see where this OP is coming from...

[stephen_az]

Not really sure what you mean comparing BB10 to WinMo 6.5 to WP8. Blackberry is still supporting its old OS, 7.1 now. They actually just released a brand new phone for it. I actually forgot this part about my last post, Blackberry is currently supporting 3 OS's... Lol. I mean, the Playbook OS is all but dead, but it was just updated a month ago or so. So essentially, it took no time for BB to jump from 7 to 10. And also, WP stripped out tons of features from WinMo and is now adding them back. Its typical for any new platform to do this. It takes years to build a matured OS.

In what universe or alternate reality could anyone possibly suggest RIMM/BB took no time to get from BBOS7 to BB10? In the time the BB10 project was underway, the company changed names, has been forced to put itself on the market for buyers, had the OS name changed as a result of litigation, released and killed a tablet, and saw WP7, 7.5, 8, and GDR1 and 2, multiple Google confectionaries, and (I think) IOS 4 - 7.02 (maybe 5 - 7.02). I use the current date since BB10.2 is only a leak and the OS has struggled with bugs, feature holes, and a truly empty app store. When 10.2 is officially released, the OS will finally be at a level of completeness and stability roughly comparable to any other player. WP8 will have seen within one calendar year three significant updates, plus additional OEM firmware improvements. That is far more than Android and IOS, and BB is still working on basic bug fixes to its original release. Just because BB uses a .x designation for basic .0X fixes, does not make them even the equivalent of even Android 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3, which are hardly major changes themselves. How long exactly has Android been on 4.X, and until IOS 7, what were the things that really distinguished the three preceding full version number upgrades? Updates to WP8 have not been perfect but they have certainly not lagged. As far as any statements that they do not doing things like RIMM/BB go, that is really a compliment in the tech industry.

[Blacklac]

BB was still supporting its current OS when 10 was released and its actually still supported today. There was no gap in support. Wasn't really a hard statement to understand. Considering you're mixing it with iOS4 I think your a bit confused. The first BB10 device came out early 2013 and the old OS is still getting support and even new devices. Where is this "wait"?

Seems like a pointless conversation anyway. I could really care less about any of it, I simply made a statement.

[imbasaurus]

please tell us you know a little software dev. before you came up with this.

[Jas00555]

BB was still supporting its current OS when 10 was released and its actually still supported today. There was no gap in support. Wasn't really a hard statement to understand. Considering you're mixing it with iOS4 I think your a bit confused. The first BB10 device came out early 2013 and the old OS is still getting support and even new devices. Where is this "wait"?

Seems like a pointless conversation anyway. I could really care less about any of it, I simply made a statement.

They're not supporting WP7? surprise to me.

Your argument is assuming that BB7 and BB10 were just evolutions of the same OS. They weren't. The devices and places that BB7 phones were made to work in were places with very limited data connection. BB10 was a "modern" smartphone that was suppose to compete with ios/android/windows. WP7 and WP8 were made to run on the same types of devices (full touch screens), so they had the same target market. BB has 2 different markets to cater to, so of course they need to support both.

[PB_H]

Time to trade my 810 in for a Blackberry -thanks!

[MyNL822]

Well, guess what iOS 7 is only 7 updates and we have 8, but look at which OS performs best. I completely agree with the OP because I am a previous iOS user, and their little ****ty updates don't impress me at all. I would actually be happy if we got simple features available on Android and iOS for at least two years. Notification Center(a real notification center not a tile, something I could open from any app), Battery status(Why the **** was this not in GDR3?! It is just a simple feature), Some type of quick settings(not like iOS 7, but like iOS 5 and iOS 6 in addition to double tapping to close apps, you could scroll left to get quick volume, screen rotation, and mute.), video controls(I can't scroll through a long video on YouTube to get to an ending part because their is no slider), Better brightness control(phone is still pretty bright even on low, I need a slider to be able to turn it down better). These are just a few features I really want NOW, and you can see they aren't asking much, I don't like this new put up or shut up attitude where every update is geared around new phones instead of current consumer base, and they wonder why their consumer base isn't growing? Obviously if you are losing costumers and gaining them, your growth is going to be slow, they need to be more like Apple because while Microsoft makes a bunch of new phones, Apple has only like 7-9 iPhones and they are the most successful smartphone business.

[MyNL822]

Not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.
The Comical Irony That IO7 Users Are Suffering From Blue Screens Of Death (TechCrunch)
Best line in the article...
"It’s funny, Apple fans. iOS 7 is the new Vista"

Apple iPhone iOS7 update BSoD in action (YouTube)

Certainties in Life:
- Death and Taxes
- Bad Karma's gonna getcha
and...
- Payback's a B*tch
Always be careful what you wish for...you just may get it....and more.

My phone does this quite a few times a week and it isn't as complex with the steps it just happens while I'm using an app or something, only difference is that I don't get blue screen my phone just sorts force closes the app and reboots.