What Im saying is that when a "NEW" device releases, support for the previous "great" device/s goes out the ****ter. Its happened with every device on the market and if you think otherwise your wrong. Its how their business works.
Indeed that is always true however that's not what you said or implied. Let's break it down:
"Now that their bread -n- butter device is out - The Nexus One. The Droids taking a back seat with development.. " implying that now that
Google's bread and butter device is out that they (Google) are no longer developing for Motorola's Droid.
What I was trying to tell you is that MOTOROLA is responsible for all updates. Motorola has access to the source code, they have had access to the source code prior to the source code even being made public. I would be willing to bet a large sum of money that Motorola has been working with 2.1 and the Droid for a while. You are incorrectly blaming Google.
Why is it taking so long?
In CDMA land (Sprint and Verizon) and somewhat in GSM land (for carrier branded devices for example the MyTouch3g) typically before the manufacture even starts working on an update the carrier must first request it or accept the idea put forth by the manufacture. After the carrier requests it there is probably weeks worth of pure paper pushing before development even starts. How is the costs going to be shared, what's the update going to include, what's a good deadline for each company, how is going to be delivered, are we going to add branded apps, are we going to add this or subtract that etc etc etc. Okay so then they get the specifics ironed out now on to the real job - development.
Well phones are not standardized devices like home computers are. They just can't plop it on the device and expect it to run perfectly. The Android source is just a base - Motorola or any other device manufacture for that matter - must port the base to run on their hardware. In a nutshell they have to tell it how to communicate with the keyboard, with the screen, with the buttons on the front, with the microphone, with the speaker and so on. This is an overly simplified view - perhaps some of these components are standardized perhaps some are not. Then it comes down to software - they have to add certain modules (think the Verizon section in the market) maybe they need to remove other modules (think like the ability to freely tether or force roam etc).
During that process there is the whole "Why isn't this working right - it should be working right.....aaaaarrrrghhhhh" process that developers have to go through as just a pure fact of life. Get past that part then of course internal testing must be done to see how the "finished" product works. In some hypothetical fantasy land let's say the update passes it's "finished" product test. Well then it gets sent to Verizon and guess what....they have to test it. Now just imagine what happens when Verizon says "Oh Hai there is a bug" Now it's back to the developers who have to go through the whole "Why isn't this working right - it should be working right.....aaaaarrrrghhhhh" and "%*&# I changed this and now x works but y doesn't" process and the cycle continues.
As for rooting my device, well, Ive tried, MANY times and for some reason it doesnt want to work so importing 2.1 on my Droid is non-existant. I even had a buddy of mine try an do it since he has a Droid and worked for his. Still didnt work and he was pretty amazed that my device would except the root. So not sure what to tell ya...
Well you could root your device and put 2.1 on there but that's not what I was actually talking about. What I was saying is that the Android 2.1 source code is now public and open source. This means that if you had the ability and full knowledge of all the proprietary hardware aspects you could sit in your underwear at home and port 2.1 to the Droid. You could also hypothetically design your own hardware, purchase the components and download Android 2.1 and put it on your own device.
I was simply just trying to highlight the fact that Google is not holding up anyone at this point. Everyone with an internet connection has full and equal access to the source code needed to get it to run on any device. The ball is in the manufactures and carriers court.
*Some people claim that Google is playing games by telling manufactures that they "can't update *yet*" I call bull**** on this. Google is not into selling phones or OS's for that matter. Google's ultimate strategy with Android is to get it into as many hands as possible. People who use Google's services see Google's ads and after all what is Google? An advertisement firm.