... as long as I could.

Deere came out with hardware enhancements in Jan/Feb that required some file format changes.   They made the software for those changes available to third-party software vendors in September.   The changes to support the new features were minor third-party changes, but they did make the cardinal sin of of making it so that the component that worked with the new firmware could not write setup info to the old firmware.   That, in an of itself, became the issue for third-party software companies.    

Every grower that had existing hardware when the changes came out had the opportunity to say that they didn't want the new hardware features, and then they would have had no problems with their existing third-party software.   But the features must have been significant enough to make people decide the update was worth it.    And, other software companies have previously responded to the changes, and did so w/o requiring the kind of downloads that AgBoy referenced.   And, somehow, providing all of these enhancements becomes a knock on Deere?    I'm not bashing AgLeader for releasing an update later than other companies... each company has to decide how to best allocate their resources to meet the needs of their customers.   MapShots went a year before introducing multi-product Insight support.   That's just business.   But that was a MapShots decision... no reason for anyone to kick AgLeader over their changes to support multi-product as an enhancement for their customers.

I went to the SMS 8.01 release notes.   There are 20 first-level bullet points on corrections and enhancements.  1 of those related to GS2.  19 were improvements in other areas.  But it is Deere's fault that you have a huge download? 

As to the next GS2 firmware update, Jacob:   Deere has publicly announced that the summer firmware bundle requires no updates to third-party software.  Annndddddd, three weeks ago, they released a preview copy of the software that we will have to interact with in order to work with the 2009 winter bundle firmware updates... 9 months before the firmware is released.  Is it going to take some major changes in third-party software to work with it?   You bet.  It is a redesign of the third-party interfaces, from the ground up.   And, do you know who requested these changes?   Yep... the third-party vendors.

I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but I just don't get what the point is in flaming any hardware or software vendor because new features in their hardware might require some support from third-party vendors.   Would I like to see Deere adopt an architecture where new features required extensions, rather than changes? Yep.   But the old farmer in me says if I can only have one or the other... give me new hardware features.