This is common Google strategy. They are trying to build the future and pre-ICS devices are not the future. So they get shafted. Google may make unhappy customers this way, but they can move a lot faster than companies like Microsoft, who support everything back two decades or so sometimes.
But to be fair, everyone gets a cheap phone every two years, so what's 1% today will be 100% in two years. Remember, the G1 is three-ish years old, and it's mostly gone now. The Nexus One was released on January 5, 2010, and so only the earliest of early adopters (with a standard contract) are just now gaining the ability to upgrade.
Two years is a long time, but if IE 6 went away after two years, we wouldn't even remember that it was once a thing :)
I would not call iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G "robust": it was more of a disaster than anything. There are obviously strengths to all sides here, and I don't mean to champion that Google's is best or the only way. But I think it's clear what they're doing, and I'd bet they've weighed all possible options and found this to be the most economically sensible one.
I honestly thought Apple's behaviour with the 3G was shameful. I wouldn't have minded if they hadn't released the update for the 3G, but instead what they effectively did was brick a load of people's phones and then offer poor options for downgrading. It's really not what I expect from a premium brand.
this is a bad analogy, apple does not backport features to old versions of their OS, they put their new OS on old handsets. google puts their new OS onto old devices as much as they can too, the problem is that the carriers and other handset manufacturers don't. i'm sure google would love if everything would start running ICS, but it's not their responsibility.
Let's not guess what he would say. But blaming Linus for that is like the Iranian government blaming a dev because someone used his upload app to upload porn pictures or people blaming gun makers instead of killers. You can do it but it isn't the smartest thing to do to say the least IMO.
The inability to run a handful of hardware dependent features on iOS is not even in the same ballpark as the complete lack of timely updates for over 95% of Android users.
There's a difference between running and running as well as on the 4S. The demo of noise reduction is impressive.
http://www.audience.com/demos/transmit-noise-en.php [audience.com]
It's easy to see why with that noise reduction, Siri would be much more accurate than without it, in real scenarios.
Apple obviously wants Siri to be judged on it's best performance. They have a reputation for quality to maintain.
