Every Platform and Application Will Die In The End

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CellPhoneSoft have announced, in a reversal of their previous statement, that they will be ceasing to support and develop their UIQ portfolio with immediate effect. They had pledged resources through to the end of 2009, but with rising levels of piracy and a drop in income from registrations they've pulled the plug.

 

They won't be the first to decide to leave a platform behind, and they won't be the last. There are countless examples of platforms that lost manufacturer support and continued for a long time; there are also platforms that manufacturers held onto for far too long (PalmOS only got the official 'you're dead' memo yesterday) as well. There's no easy way to step away from a platform, because people will continue to use the product that works for them even though the technology may be older, and they need to work twice as hard to get it connected to modern computers, cellphones or services.

(At this point Steve says lots of people still use Psion PDA's, someone points out David Wood continues to use a 5mx, I bemoan the death of lifeblog and hold onto my N95 that supports it rather than move down to Nokia Photos, and Rafe just shakes his head and moves on with the times).

While times move on, the fact is that without a strong community, every platform, every application, every software company, even every language will die. By all means mourn their passing, and take note of anything that hastened their demise, but like life, we must all (eventually) move on.

And remember.

-- Ewan Spence, Feb 2009.