The evolution of technology goes at a breakneck pace. Whether it’s new products coming to market or updates to existing products – it’s a never-ending cycle.
As a software company that supports multiple Operating Systems (OS), we’re no different and one of the common questions I’m asked has to do with releasing product updates to support various OS updates.
Every company does their updates differently, or if it’s open source, the community provides updates. All these updates to the core OS have the potential to affect any and all other software that runs in that operating system. Generally speaking, when looking at PCs (laptops & desktops) there are three fundamental OSs at play; Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
With Windows, updates come fast and furious via continuous Windows Updates that install in the background. Occasionally, Microsoft will also release Service Packs – which offer more significant updates to the OS and can impact 3rd party software. Generally speaking, Microsoft updates are rarely disruptive, and as a software developer, we’re able to keep up with all changes and they have little to no impact on how SecureDoc performs.
Mac OS X updates are released regularly and are typically planned well in advance. However, these updates are more akin to Service Packs adding new functionality or improving existing functionality. These changes often affect how the OS behaves and how our products work in the OS. There are numerous versions of the OS put through various developer beta stages and we work to keep up with all of them.
But sometimes, last minute changes before the official release don’t give us enough time to get an update to our product ready. This is why there is typically a delay of a week to 30 days to get an update to SecureDoc for Mac OS X. This time is needed to ensure we can run it through the proper Quality Assurance (QA) tests so we don’t release a broken product to customers.
Linux has always been a challenge. With Kernel updates coming fast and furious all the time and ever-evolving nature of the OS, it can be impossible to keep up with and support every version available out there today. It’s a fundamental reason why we introduced SecureDoc OSA. It eliminated a lot of complexity for our developers by using a simpler solution that could be entirely OS Agnostic.
As awesome as our developers are, they’re human, so we need to let them sleep every once in a while and maybe even let them eat. They work as quickly and effectively as they can to ensure we get our products to market in a timely manner and we’re grateful for that – without them, and their efforts, there would be no SecureDoc.
