In a 'I thought they already did this years ago' move, Microsoft has quietly announced that they're turning off push notification support for the 2011 Windows Phone 7.5 and 8.0. This will affect absolutely no one, of course, at least no one within throwing distance of AAWP, but it's an interesting talking point for various reasons.

From the Microsoft post:

On February 20, 2018, Mobile Push Notification services will be turned off for Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8.0.  Once this happens:

• Your phone will no longer receive notifications.
• Your phone will not receive additional live tile updates.
• The “Find my phone” feature will no longer locate your phone.

Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8.0 have reached their end of support dates, and thus services for these versions of Windows will be discontinued over time. 

Note: 

Notification services will continue to function for Windows Phone 8.1 at this time, and newer phones running Windows 10 Mobile are still fully supported.

These OS versions were from the very earliest days of the OS and of AAWP, but old hands might remember them.

There are two interesting points here:

1. Windows Phone 8.1 has itself gone way beyond its 'End of Support' date (last July) and I suspect that the EoS date for 7.5 and 8.0 was years ago, so I'm not sure why this particular reason is being wheeled out at this stage. Unless there are in fact two different dates for 'Support' - one involving the cessation of security updates and one involving the physical removal of online APIs. All a bit confusing, Microsoft.
    
2. The need for push notifications at all. I realise that this is Apple's fault, since they introduced the idea for the iPhone about 8 years ago. Why should it be necessary to have an OS maker maintain a server to poll Internet services and then ping a particular user account if something's happened? Back 2010 or so this might have been deemed to be the best way to do things, but surely we have enough processing power and bandwidth to spare on today's smartphones to just have individual client applications check for changes and important updates themselves? What am I missing here?

(Via WC)