I certainly hate that idea as well, but I also accept a pretty decent amount of that because of interactions with the greater world outside of one company’s direct control.
For instance, suppose a streaming service starts requiring a new login method. They have to update their apps to use this new API. If there are and have been over a dozen different distinct smart television operating systems in the past 15 years, and there will be a dozen more in the next 15 years, it’s unreasonable to expect that even companies the size of say, Netflix, are going to reach far enough back in their history to update all those apps. They probably don’t have developers who understand those systems anymore.
And also, the software distribution mechanisms for each of those platforms are probably no longer intact either in order to receive an update. While it’s true that my Panasonic Blu-ray player that I bought in 2009 is still perfectly functional, and has a Netflix app, I assume it doesn’t work and that Panasonic would be hard pressed to distribute me a working updated app.
The only way things would be much different would be if technology progressed at a far slower pace, so there had been no need to adopt any breaking changes to how the app is built, how the apps and firmware was distributed, etc.
For instance, suppose a streaming service starts requiring a new login method. They have to update their apps to use this new API. If there are and have been over a dozen different distinct smart television operating systems in the past 15 years, and there will be a dozen more in the next 15 years, it’s unreasonable to expect that even companies the size of say, Netflix, are going to reach far enough back in their history to update all those apps. They probably don’t have developers who understand those systems anymore.
And also, the software distribution mechanisms for each of those platforms are probably no longer intact either in order to receive an update. While it’s true that my Panasonic Blu-ray player that I bought in 2009 is still perfectly functional, and has a Netflix app, I assume it doesn’t work and that Panasonic would be hard pressed to distribute me a working updated app.
The only way things would be much different would be if technology progressed at a far slower pace, so there had been no need to adopt any breaking changes to how the app is built, how the apps and firmware was distributed, etc.