Quote:
Originally Posted by ZeroTX
We've been talked up by B&N staff and others about the upcoming update, so where is it?? It's January now. Did they mean January 31st? Where's our pinch-zoom browser, our app store, etc? I'm ready now! Even for a beta version.
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There are a lot of misconceptions out there about what's coming for the NC, as gtriever indicated. Q1 of 2011 does not mean January, no matter how much wishful thinking you might indulge in. And unfortunately, B&N staffers in store may not have the most accurate information, and may be depending on rumors like everyone else.
First off, there's not AN update coming, there are several. All in or around Q1. So when you ask, "When is THE big update coming?", you're asking the wrong question. The most imminent is 1.1, which is primarily focused on getting 3rd-party developers what they need to build and test their apps on the NC. Even users should be happy about that, because even though it may not impact them directly and immediately, 3rd-party devs are where a large pool of their future apps will be coming from.
Whether 1.1 will include anything else, such as improvements in on-board apps to resolve well-known issues is anybody's guess, but there's been no such commitment. That would be great, but it's not the priority for 1.1. However, 1.1 will have neither Flash nor App Store support. Flash, along with Adobe AIR support will come later, with the 1.2 update, which upgrades to Android 2.2. While 2.2 does have both performance and reliability improvements, Flash is the primary motivator there.
Lastly, the App Store will come with update 1.3. Since the commitment there was Q1, I wouldn't be surprised to see it materialize on Mar31, or even the 1st week of April. B&N has some ambitious goals, and they can't all be achieved simultaneously. Also, the B&N Nook App Store will be a curated marketplace, to ensure the highest quality experience for end-users. It will contain apps that have been tested on and tweaked for the NC, and known to work well there.
Throwing the doors open to the general Android marketplace would be
a big mistake for several reasons. One is that whether a specific app worked or not would be a crap-shoot. And the other is that things that didn't work might also cause problems for things that did. And with no commitment from their developers, not only might those problems never be fixed, but NOOKcolor owners would have no where to go for assistance with them.
That scenario is good for no one... not Nook owners, and not B&N.
- Mark
P.S. I'm not privy to any internal B&N information. I'm just an ordinary NC owner like everyone else here, who also happens to be evaluating doing some development on the platform. I've just spent a bit more time collating and analyzing the tidbits of information that are floating around in various venues. And the above conclusions are the result of that.