I was scrolling through the SMH site this morning and noticed the article “Windows Mobile takes a bite at Apple”. Whilst this article talks about a lot of positive aspects of the Windows Mobile 6.5 platform it really annoys me when there are glaring mistakes:
“WM6 and 6.1 users can download the 6.5 beta version now”
Now unless I’m wrong it’s not possible to download a beta version, nor will it be likely that owners of even recent 6.1 devices can even upgrade to 6.5 when it ships.
<rant>
I don’t know how long the community have been asking both Microsoft and OEMs to provide a better upgrade story. If you download the Developer Tool Kit you can have a play with the emulators for Windows Mobile 6.5 – you’ll notice that other than some UI improvements, gestures and of course widgets there isn’t much else that’s different from 6.0/6.1. So this begs the question, why do OEMs insist on not providing updates to their existing customers – do they want them to switch to another fruitier platform that provides FREE upgrades to new versions of the OS?
Microsoft, stop contributing to this problem and start working with the OEMs to encourage them to ship upgrades rather than always insisting customers buy new devices.
</rant>