Probably the best description of Apple's challenges with the iPhone 1.1.1 update

Rainer Brockerhoff has an excellent description of the obstacles and complexities of doing any sophisticated software update on the iPhone. His conclusion: Apple didn't intend to disable all old software, but they did need a known starting and ending point for the upgrade to work. Those who imagine Apple conspiring against third party developers should try writing software that does in-place updates on a three-processor embedded system. My own experience working on parallel processor operating systems says that multiprocessor software is always an order of magnitude tougher to get right; we shouldn't be surprised that Apple was conservative about how it went about it.

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone