Adam

Why do people seem to think this engineer will get fired? He's a senior designer there, no? Unless he leaked the story himself, it seems like whoever overruled his decision should be going back to him, getting on their knees and apologizing. And why are people feeling sorry for him? Even if he does get fired, his name is out there as the guy who told Apple management "Hey, don't do that. It's a bad idea." Now he's been proven right. That should bolster his reputation a bit, I'd think.

So does anyone think that Allard and Bach got canned over this? I kind of thought that they maybe left because MS was putting out crap like this instead of focusing on things like Courier.

But considering these pieces of crap got the boot so shortly after launch, and shortly after Allard and Bach, it kind of seems like it may be the other way around. Maybe they were forced out when their higher-ups saw them working towards this obviously-terrible idea. Food for thought, I guess, even though I don't really know much about the development of these phones, and I do remember there was some crazy, ignorant sounding woman in charge when this was known as Project Pink.

Now who wants to place bets on how that Kinect is gonna turn out, hm?

@bfdhud Well, that's the point. Froyo is a major release, one that brings significant performance improvements. That's the big draw. I understand that everything will eventually become obsolete (and I'm not saying that not getting the newest update makes something obsolete. The Hero is obviously still a good phone), but with a release like 2.2, which can run on older phones and bring remarkable performance, then I think the manufacturers and carriers should make a good effort to deliver that release to their customers. If you're going to stop delivering updates, then leave those who have already purchased your products at the best possible stopping point. I just think that's fair, and shouldn't be too much to ask.

@bfdhud I believe the Hero has been confirmed as not getting 2.2. I'm pretty sure Sprint announced that. The regional carrier I use has a Hero that hasn't even gotten 2.1 on it yet. I know a lot of people who picked up a Hero on Cellular South. I believe it was actually the second carrier to even have an Android phone, and it got a lot of attention with my friends and family around here. Considering that they don't even have 2.1 yet, I don't imagine they'd get 2.2, and that will be a lot of early adopters left out in the cold.

@ObjectInSpace I'm with you. I'd prefer vanilla Android, with the ability to get quick updates without the need to wait for third-party UI customizations, but that's not going to happen. The phone manufacturers need to differentiate their products. I just wish there was a way on each and every Android device to turn off whatever customizations the manufacturer had put on there. And I mean completely disable them, not just remove the widget and launcher bar like you can do with Sense.

Of course, I don't know if Android would technically be open source if Google implemented something like that in the licensing terms, but that's my wish.

On my regional carrier, I still don't even know anyone who's gotten 2.1 on their Hero yet, but it's perpetually "coming soon."

Seems like HTC should maybe release fewer models so they can concentrate more on delivering continued support to those people who have already bought their products. Maybe that's unreasonable considering carrier exclusivity agreements, but so many of their phones are so similar that it seems like it would be much easier on them, and better for the consumers, if they would just keep the internals on a lot of these phones the same and only change up the outer shells.

That would mean less programming effort for all the various models, HTC and the carriers look good in the process, and we get the software updates in a more timely manner. Everybody wins.

Froyo looks great, I'll be getting a Desire soon and I'm hoping it won't be long for the update. I was wondering if someone here could help me out with something though: how deeply does Sense integrate into Android?

I've never had the chance to use a vanilla Android device, but from what I can tell in videos and pics online, the only thing Sense really adds are a few widgets, the dock-like panel at the bottom, a darker-colored notification bar, extra home screens, and the "leap view," or whatever it's called, to show you thumbnails of those home screens.

What other differences are there, and does turning Sense off in the app settings undo all those changes or just get rid of those home screen widgets? I'd love to see something explaining this, since HTC has such a large mindshare/marketshare of Android devices.

Why all this talk of 2.1 being the end of the line for a lot of phones? I'm no developer, but if 2.2 brings such big performance boosts, wouldn't it be ideal for those older phones? Then again, considering how long it's taking everyone to get the various 2.1 updates (Blur, Sense, etc.) I can see why some companies may just push out that last update and get to work on whatever needs to be done for the newer 2.1. phones that people are expecting a 2.2 update for. That sucks for consumers though.

On another note, why can't Google just stop making 1.5 and 1.6 available, or at least mandate that any phones shipping after x date must use at least 2.x version of Android? It seems like that would curb this issue a good bit.

@sfox8 I know Android is open source and all, but it seems like Google would just say "all right, we're not distributing older versions of Android anymore" once they reach a certain point. Why not just cut it off? They've got 2.2 almost ready for release and there are still tons of phones being sold with 1.5. They could solve their own problem if they would just mandate manufacturers to use a more recent version.

Cellular South just announced officially they're getting the Desire this summer. At least I don't have to be uncertain anymore. I'll definitely skip the Milestone and wait for this one.