When Android came along as a strong competitor to iOS, I remember reading about OTA updates and thinking "How come we are still updating via freaking iTunes? I hate this shit from Apple..".
At some point I got an Android, had to root and install CM to upgrade after waiting a long time for OTA update. Then I got a Lumia 920 last year to see the development opportunity on WP8, had to wait for an update (Portico?) to roll out on my carrier for months after it's US release. Got rid of it sometime later.
My iPhone 5 is downloading the iOS 7 update right now.
I have never owned an iOS device, but this is the one area that competitors have not been able to match, and I don't fully understand why. Google tried with the Handset Alliance but that basically didn't work at all. Microsoft tried to make carriers allow them to release updates directly but they couldn't get that to work either.
It seems like only Apple has enough money-making power for carriers to tell the carrier to go screw themselves.
It's pretty simple - Apple owns the hardware and software they're pushing updates for. Sure, they don't own the carriers, but that's not the problem.
In Google's case they neither own the hardware nor all the software because each third party phone manufacturer slaps in its own stuff and maintains its own fork of android.
Microsoft might own the software, but they don't fully own the hardware. Microsoft is a lot closer to managing it than Google though.
This isn't that Apple has more power over carriers and it isn't hard to understand - it's simply that they have more ownership of all the devices and there are far fewer types of devices (very limited set of software/hardware combinations).
> In Google's case they neither own the hardware nor all the software because each third party phone manufacturer slaps in its own stuff and maintains its own fork of android.
Which is a problem because these forks take substantial time to update to the newest version of each OS. And then they take more time because sometimes vendors make modifications to the core OS that breaks Google or other core apps (see e.g. EVO and Gmail) so the whole system has to be QA'd rigorously to prove that nothing is broken.
Apple didn't always offer the stream the updates over the air, and they've always been good about getting the new OS pushed out. I think another part of it is that iPhone users are more likely (or at least were) to plug their phones into their computers, use iTunes, and be prompted to update their phones. That part didn't deal with the carriers at all.
I think the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem plays a large part in that. Apple only has to worry about a few models and can push updates all at once with very few variations in firmware.
At some point I got an Android, had to root and install CM to upgrade after waiting a long time for OTA update. Then I got a Lumia 920 last year to see the development opportunity on WP8, had to wait for an update (Portico?) to roll out on my carrier for months after it's US release. Got rid of it sometime later.
My iPhone 5 is downloading the iOS 7 update right now.