The recent experience with the 1.6 release underscores the need for Google to take a different approach to future releases. No matter how hard you try to make an OS backward-compatible, or an application forward-compatible, there will always be breaking changes in an OS release. That is why OS vendors typically give developers a good amount of time to test on upcoming releases before they're made generally available.
It's pretty clear that Android has reached the stage of maturity where Google needs to treat it more like Sun, IBM, Microsoft et al treat their OSes and less like a freewheeling community development effort. Allowing developers two weeks to test on a release candidate before it goes GA is, to say the least, inadequate. Google should establish an orderly release process, drawing on the decades of experience of other OS vendors, that provides developers with the necessary time to ensure that their applications work on the new OS level the first day that it's released. In addition, there needs to be a way for developers to have different versions of an application available in the Market for different versions of the OS. The good news is that we're seeing a marked increase in the use of Android on various devices by numerous vendors. The bad news is that this ensures that there will be an increasing diversity of OS versions being used at any given time. Developers need to be able to take advantage of features in newer OS levels without shutting out all the users who are not yet on those levels (and may never be). This shouldn't be a big change to the Market, but it's an absolutely necessary one. It's crystal-clear to me that the Android release process needs to change. I know that a fast-moving mobile OS is different from a workstation or desktop OS, but there are many ways in which they are the same, and the need to support developers in these two areas is one of them. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
