Nearly 300 Million Devices Running iOS 6, 60% of All iOS Devices Ever

Iamthinking said:

As an APP developer, I can tell you that Apple makes it pretty darn difficult to support older OSes. Xcode all but forces you to add "retina iphone5 this" and "Arm7 that". That is why new APPs (and even many older ones that ran fine on OS4 or 5) require OS6 to run. Kinda sux, but that's how the game is played. M$ invented it, Apple is simply perfecting it as they are always keen to do.

-iamthinking

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2 things:
1 - with so many users keeping up to date, why would you care if its difficult to support older OSs?
2 - it's not difficult to support older OSs? Just because it defaults to those settings when you make a new project doesn't mean you're forced to use them.

Schmitty11 said:

The fact they keep track of the number as notifications and messages received/sent scares the s*** out of me.

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No different than what BB does since they control the entire back end of their services. It probably helps them figure out how to fine tune it when they know exactly how many messages are coming and going.

r2shyyou said:

And people say Android is fragmented!?!

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Yeah, it is. How many Android devices are out there? Lets say there's 100.

Of those 100;

How many run the most recent OS build?
What's their screen resolution?
How much RAM do they have?
What's their CPU benchmarks?
Will my App run on every one of those devices?

Apple Developers get it very, very easy when compared to Android. Android is ridiculously fragmented, and Google have only recently started taking steps to stop it.

I think Apple should start naming their ios releases similar to osx's big cat names.

Restricting Integration = Unbeatable Distribution

Unggoy Murderer said:

Yeah, it is. How many Android devices are out there? Lets say there's 100.

Of those 100;

How many run the most recent OS build?
What's their screen resolution?
How much RAM do they have?
What's their CPU benchmarks?
Will my App run on every one of those devices?

Apple Developers get it very, very easy when compared to Android. Android is ridiculously fragmented, and Google have only recently started taking steps to stop it.

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It was a joke. Re-read the quote in my post.

hello12 said:

IOs 6 is already the best OS for a phone. But iOS 7 needs to be revolutionary (by that I mean introduce a lot of the features users are dying to have). I hope they listen.

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What new features are "users dying to have"? I hope you tell us and Apple so we know.

I'm still on 5.1.1. on my 3GS because it's Jailbroken. I can't give up my iBlacklist just yet.

Pakaku said:

Ok. Fine. How do you suggest they 're-invent' it?

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Clean up the GUI, better keyboard (i.e. Swype), Haptic feedback for starters.

I could go on.

Unggoy Murderer said:

How many run the most recent OS build?
What's their screen resolution?
How much RAM do they have?
What's their CPU benchmarks?
Will my App run on every one of those devices?

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Google Play does a lot of those checks to prevent apps from being installed on incompatible devices.

As for screen resolution, most Android apps auto-scale to the proper resolution anyways.

Locking down an OS tends to lead to uniform distribution

Gatekeeper in iOS 7 would be VERY nice indeed.

What do you mean? I have a Samsung Galaxy S, released at the same time as the iPhone 4, that runs Android 2.2 which is the latest version of Android right? Right? Because that's all it supports and it never says it has any updates.

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coolspot18 said:

Clean up the GUI, better keyboard (i.e. Swype), Haptic feedback for starters.

I could go on.

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OMG are you kidding me? GUI is way better than androids. So is keyboard. Apparently you dont know how the iPhone keyboard works in the background. Haptic feedback is useless.

slffl said:

What do you mean? I have a Samsung Galaxy S, released at the same time as the iPhone 4, that runs Android 2.2 which is the latest version of Android right? Right? Because that's all it supports and it never says it has any updates.

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OMG are you kidding me? GUI is way better than androids. So is keyboard. Apparently you dont know how the iPhone keyboard works in the background. Haptic feedback is useless.

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Apparently you haven't used any version of Android in the last few years, not to mention 4.2 The keyboard in 4.2 is so much better than iOS it's ridiculous. Not to mention the "GUI" in 4.2 absolutely smokes iOS these days.

People who insist that iOS is still at the top of the heap do so out of ignorance. The game has changed people.

dwman said:

I honestly don't think anything revolutionary will come from iOS 7. It was probably well under development when the announcement was made that Federighi and Ive were going to be put in charge. You'll more likely see the stamp of the new execs in iOS 8 or later.

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Really hope this isn't true but I was thinking the same thing.

kjs862 said:

This write up sounds more like an advertisement. Or is it just me?

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Mac journalism expired about the time MacUser magazine ceased printing and has steadily devolved into unabashed fanboism, embarrassing leg humping and school girl cheerleading. The dangerous thing is that Apple probably believes it all and has gone tone deaf to valid analysis and criticism.

dwman said:

I honestly don't think anything revolutionary will come from iOS 7. It was probably well under development when the announcement was made that Federighi and Ive were going to be put in charge. You'll more likely see the stamp of the new execs in iOS 8 or later.

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Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I think iOS 7 could be revolutionary.

Even though it was likely well under development when Federighi and Ive took over, I doubt either of those men would allow subpar development to continue just for the sake of not interrupting inertia. Steve Jobs was an interrupter; and while I don't know much about Federighi, I think Ive is largely cut from the same cloth as Steve Jobs.

Apple would see a much higher conversion rate approaching 100% if they would make their new OSs run on older hardware. This would benefit them by being able to charge the annual $10 for upgrades which would pay the cost of such compatibility programming and they would have a nearly completely unified pool of users which would make it easier to do support for them, easier for developers, etc. Same goes for MacOS.

r2shyyou said:

And people say Android is fragmented!?!

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Android is fragmented b/c over 60% (and that's a nice conservative number) of all Android devices ever are not eligible for updates.

That said, keep in mind many of these devices that aren't on iOS 6 are capable. That's a drastic difference from the alternative not being capable of being officially updated.

avanpelt said:

Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I think iOS 7 could be revolutionary.

Even though it was likely well under development when Federighi and Ive took over, I doubt either of those men would allow subpar development to continue just for the sake of not interrupting inertia. Steve Jobs was an interrupter; and while I don't know much about Federighi, I think Ive is largely cut from the same cloth as Steve Jobs.

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I think they are working overtime getting iOS 7 ready....hence the lackluster iOS 6.1 update (which had very odd timing).

While I don't expect iOS 7 to be COMPLETELY redesigned, I'm betting we'll see a lot of Federighi and Ive in it.

Schmitty11 said:

The fact they keep track of the number as notifications and messages received/sent scares the s*** out of me.

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Why? Besides being able to flaunt it, it's incredibly useful to know the capacity of their system, and the average message count per user so that they can better plan for future upgrades to the system. If an engineer walks in and says they can send a message 1% more efficiently, there is no way to measure how useful that would be if you don't know the rate at which messages are sent.

Bubba Satori said:

Mac journalism expired about the time MacUser magazine ceased printing and has steadily devolved into unabashed fanboism, embarrassing leg humping and school girl cheerleading.

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Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

r2shyyou said:

And people say Android is fragmented!?!

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by the gods !

tjl3 said:

Android is fragmented b/c over 60% (and that's a nice conservative number) of all Android devices ever are not eligible for updates.

That said, keep in mind many of these devices that aren't on iOS 6 are capable. That's a drastic difference from the alternative not being capable of being officially updated.

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Sarcasm no translate good on Interwebz...

cube said:

Not successful. iPad 1 was obsoleted in just 2 years.

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Tell that to everyone still loving their iOS 5 iPad 1 and getting even more value from it now than they got 2 years ago.

And tell it to Android owners... many Android models are OS-version-obsolete before you even buy them! And it's nearly unheard of for an Android device to still get software updates 2 years later... even though that's probably how long you're locked into a contract to pay for it! Unacceptable.

I wish iPad 1 and every other device would get iOS 20... but if not, we're still so much better off than Android users' update nightmare.

Schmitty11 said:

The fact they keep track of the number as notifications and messages received/sent scares the s*** out of me.

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How could they possibly not know their data traffic volume? How could they manage their server resources without such basic info?

nagromme said:

Tell that to everyone still loving their iOS 6 iPad 1 and getting even more value from it now than they got 2 years ago.

And tell it to Android owners... many Android models are OS-version-obsolete before you even buy them! And it's nearly unheard of for an Android device to still get software updates 2 years later... even though that's probably how long you're locked into a contract to pay for it! Unacceptable.



How could they possibly not know their data traffic volume? How could they manage their server resources without such basic info?

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The problem there is while it may say "iOS 6" in the settings, they won't get many of the features it brings. Whereas with Android the individual core apps are updated separately.

While I've only had 1 system update for my Nexus 4, the core apps have recieved multiple updates, the browser, Google Now and all the other core apps simply receive update without requiring you to update the entire OS version number.

I'm not sure about anyone else, but with Apple, updating is just hassle free.

You get the message saying update is available, click update and just let your phone do the rest. Only once have I had a problem, but with iCloud I just got everything back to the way it was within half an hour.