So I was thinking about the update to iPhone OS 3.0: How come Apple doesn’t keep their applications up to date like the rest of the iPhone OS developers”? By this I mean how come we do not see more Apple application updates for the iPhone OS?
Maybe it’s just me, but I would tend to think that you would want to have the best possible experience for your users and provide the most stable, secure and top of the line applications to your users. I can’t seem to figure out why they do not use the AppStore to provide updates to their own iPhone OS applications.
I know it cannot be the whole Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) excuse, even for the iPod Touch users, since they could just not provide an update to anybody who doesn’t have the latest version of the iPhone OS. Those who do update to the latest OS Apple already paid their money and are provided the latest firmware updates to those users.
Could it be incompatibilities? Possibly, however you could just program the application to figure out what type of iPhone OS device it is, and provide only the specific functions that are available to the device. So if you have a first or second generation iPod touch some options may be disabled.
It’s not like updating the iPod application is going to break anything. Particularly since there are possibly some bugs within the application and it just seems like a waste to have to do an entire firmware upgrade, just to fix a bug. The same could go for the Messages, Calendar, Weather, and the rest of the Apple applications.
Now, I can see them not updating the base-band except through firmware because that might require some changes to other applications or other functionality. Any additional features that are added could also come through individual application updates; much like Apple’s current Mac OS applications.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like Apple should be eating their own dog-food and use their own Application store to update their own applications. If you have any clues as to why they do not update their applications more frequently, or other thoughts, just let us know.
