Dilemma: The fast pace of consumer tech turnover

One reason users like to bring in their own technology: They typically get the latest and greatest, and they can keep up with the pace of change as they prefer, finances permitting. That’s the opposite of how companies typically plan out their capital expenses, which for accounting reasons often need to be spread out over three or five years so that computer equipment is replaced no sooner than it is capitalized.

For most of the 2000s, that was OK. PCs built in 2002 were often perfectly good in 2007 or 2008 — and likely running the same operating system (Windows XP) and apps (Office 2003 and so on). Maybe the Wi-Fi was slow, but corporate Wi-Fi access points were upgraded less often than the PCs using them anyhow. Mice and keyboards also worked perfectly fine on USB 1.0 even as USB 2.0 became the standard.

iPads, iPhones, Windows Phones, Macs quickly orphan old models But today, vendors obsolesce their products much more quickly. For example, when Apple ships OS X Mountain Lion next month, it will not run on most Macs built before 2009, including all models of the popular white MacBook line discontinued a couple years ago. That’s a three-year life on a product typically expensed over five years by a company. That is, if you want to use the current technology — those older Macs will continue to run OS X Lion, which nearly every Intel-based Mac supports, covering Apple back to 2006 models. But who wants to use old technology?

The iPad and iPhone are updated annually, often with major (from a user perspective) improvements. Apple’s compatibility window for such devices is even shorter than for Macs: This fall’s iOS 6 will support only iPads and iPod Touch models from the previous two years; for iPhones, it’s the previous three years. According to reports, some features won’t run on even two-year-old devices, such as turn-by-turn voice navigation and Siri voice assistance.

But what got people riled was Microsoft’s revelation last week that its forthcoming Windows Phone 8 operating system won’t run on any Windows Phone 7 devices. The biggest maker of Windows Phones, Nokia, had released just a few months ago in the United States its Lumia series of smartphones on which it is hoping to resurrect its fast-fading fortunes. (Nokia’s Lumia Windows Phones were released in Europe last fall.)

Who would buy a Lumia now, knowing it won’t run Windows Phone 8 this fall? And what about all the Lumia and Samsung Focus owners whose Windows Phones are less than a year old? As a user, your consolation prize is the 7.8 update to Windows Phone and the knowledge that your Windows Phone 7 apps will run on a new Windows Phone 8 device when your current contract lets you get one. As a Microsoft “key” partner, however, Nokia may be unclear on its consolation prize.

Of course, every serious review of Windows Phone has pointed out it’s a great social device but not good for much else. The people who bought it should not be wishing it were an iPhone or Android (either of which they could’ve bought in the first place) — which is exactly what Windows Phone 8 is trying to become. After two years of underdelivering on Windows Phone, Microsoft is simply bowing to reality. It would be silly for Microsoft to let Windows Phone 7 be a ball and chain that keeps it uncompetitve. I don’t think we’ll see much of the Windows Phone example — it’s an exception based on Microsoft’s realization it needed to get serious fast, consequences be damned.

Rate of change has always existed, but businesses carved out exceptions In many respects, all this change is nothing new. In the traditional cellphone and PC worlds, individual models came and go every few months. Connectivity technologies such as USB, Bluetooth, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi periodically were improved, making some capabilities (such as USB-connected external drives) awkward on older systems every few years.

We all learned the differences were usually cosmetic or incremental — no reason to lose sleep. And we got used to a certain pace of change in everything from TV sets to home laptops that we accepted as life in modern times: This year’s PC would be slower than next year’s, and this year’s TV would have less of something than next year’s; ditto on cars and stereos. Most people are perfectly happy with a reasonably current technology product.

It’s the business world where the true distortion occurred. Enterprises, used to long-term supply relationships, carved out special deals with Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and other suppliers to ensure they could get exactly the same corporate PC model for five years, so as not to confuse IT with minor differences. Research in Motion’s BlackBerry messaging devices also changed little, catering to that corporate need for consistency over time (one reason RIM is now flirting with death).

Then there was the Windows exception: Microsoft was years late on delivering the replacement for Windows XP. Microsoft says it wants to replace Windows every three years, to drive upgrade sales, but in the case of XP, a variety of internal issues pushed it to a five-year cycle. Then no one wanted what Microsoft finally delivered — Windows Vista — so XP saw yet another five years of life. Although Windows 7 was released in October 2009 to well-deserved good reviews, business are only now upgrading. This fall’s Windows 8 will be available when businesses are in the throes of Windows 7 upgrades.

With mobile and cloud, rate of change is pushing the envelope Given that history, is there really a problem with the pace of change in consumer-derived tech today? Yes.

For users, it’s a small issue: The pace of change in areas such as mobile is faster than the three-year average we were conditioned to expect in the 2000s. Mobile devices seem to have a peak lifespan of two years today, as the advancements each year in both hardware and software have been tremendous. We experienced a similar rate of change in the early 1990s when PCs were still fairly new, so this is mostly about maturity. It will settle down, but not for a few more years.

Cloud and mobile apps also get revved more often than their traditional counterparts, and you often have no choice about using the latest version. But traditional software vendors outside the back-end tools such as ERP, CRM, virtualization, and databases have long tried to keep the money flowing through frequent updates — every two to three years has been common since the mid-1980s.

For businesses, it’s a bigger question — they’re not constructed to handle this pace of change. One issue is the IT management, user training, and support ramp-up, all of which take time and money. That’s why they skip versions of software and, if they have enough purchasing volume, signed deals with Dell and HP to keep the same PC systems available for multiple years with the same configurations, OS, and software image.

Businesses also face a fundamental financial management reality. Take that need to capitalize computer equipment over a five-year period and telecom over a three-year period — the IRS set those rates, so companies don’t have flexibility here. If they replace equipment before the capitalization period is over, it’s an accounting nightmare. (Yes, there are some ways around it, but that raises its own issues.)

Apple, Google, and Microsoft have all decided to not let those issues get in the way of evolving their products and underlying technologies. In the case of many services, such as those available in the cloud, you can’t resist upgrades — they’re automatic. In the cases of devices and apps, there’s more flexibility in sticking with older versions, but that’s hard to do when users have some purchasing authority of their own and as software end-of-life on its own accord, which now happens with mobile apps.

As users, we can deal by remembering that consumer goods turn over quickly as their technology evolves. The pace of change usually has a benefit or pleasure.

For IT, it’s time to stop getting hung up on devices and instead abstract up to policies, standards, and the like. The era of buying the exact same PC model until the next five-year refresh cycle and putting the same system image on it is over. That was not a realistic long-term approach to begin with, as it would be for mainframes, industrial robots, or ERP software.

IT had carved out an exception to reality that is fast disappearing, as devices that are more like appliances, such as tablets and cloud apps, get adopted; when you buy one, you get whatever model is current, as with a refrigerator or stereo. IT needs a different strategy for the new reality.

The bottom line: The technology pace is on a one- to three-year cycle, depending on the specific device, protocol, and so on. The three- to five-year cycles are gone, at least for user technology. We’ll all have to get used to it.

This article, “Dilemma: The fast pace of consumer tech turnover,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Smart User blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.