Sharp IS01 Android 1.6 device (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Prior to the advent of Internet-centric devices, such as Android tablets or Chromebooks, it could be reasonably be expected for a computer to be usable as long as its components and power sources were functional or could be readily replaced. For example, if an Apple II computer is working, it can still do everything that it could when it came out of the box new 40 years ago (although it may require other contemporary devices such as a cassette tape recorder for mass storage). However if an Internet-centric device is put through a factory reset sequence even a scant few years after it was purchased, the software that enabled it to be in a usable state that was not in ROM may no longer be available, either because something like the latest version of the Firefox web browser won't support an older device, or the primary source of software such as the Android Marketplace or Google Play is no longer available.
Last month Google announced it was Ending support for Android Market on Android 2.1 and lower after just 7 years. While I understand that older devices can't be supported forever, since much of the software is not available through means other than a single official channel like the "Android Market," this means it possible the heritage of this generation of devices may increasingly be lost to computing history forever. Likewise if development environments and emulators used to originate the software are carefully archived as virtual machines that can be run in the future, we may escape having a missing link in the history of computing devices.
