Well what do you know, another example of Microsoft playing "beta tester" with its customers. I don't know who's in charge of their mobile programs, but they've been killing off support for new products pretty often lately, and this new business model doesn't reflect well on Microsoft. I'll just quote an earlier post of relevance to this ill conceived plan:
"Yaa... the dirty little secret we're not being told is that Microsoft has basically dumped development support for their Zune HD "beta testers", sacrificing a good portion of their loyal fan base in order to accelerate the development of their Windows Phone 7 OS and hardware platform. Much of the UI is merely an evolution of the one found in the Zune HD, but the apps and games created and ported to this new WP7 platform using XNA 4.0 will not be compatible with the Zune HD. And yes, that includes the recently announced Xbox Live Arcade games.
It really sucks, but I think Microsoft has made a huge mistake in overlooking the Zune HD like this, a device that isn't even a year old. I can't imagine what would've happened if similar actions were taken against the Moto Droid (people would probably think twice before buying the Droid 2)."
Oops, and the next day something very similar to my hypothetical situation comes true. I think this current situation with the Kin is very similar, and it's pretty shameful of Microsoft to 'use' their customers in this way. So what happens if WP7 doesn't pan out quite as well as they're anticipating? Will they simply kill support for it a few months later in anticipation of something newer and better? Will people then justify it by saying "who would buy such a bad phone to begin with..."? The problem isn't that consumers are buying these products, it's that Microsoft is using them to achieve a powerful, robust, and popular mobile platform, no matter how many short lived non-supported iterations it takes. Supporting 'older' products and having backwards compatibility is such a burden.
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