What is 5 years old? The iPod Touch 5 is not 5 years old. No A5 device is 5 years old, the iPad 2 just turned. The iPo Touch 5 is 2 and a half years old and still for sale. Alongside the iPad Mini 1. Apple clearly thinks that A5/512MB of ram is good enough for consumers in 2015. That also means they think that the iPad 2 and 4S are still good enough.
You're missing the point completely. iOS 9 is predicted to be a bug fix release, a release that improves performance. If its going to have lesser requirement than iOS 9, it will run better than iOS 8 on all hardware.
I use multiple A5 devices every single day. I use a 3GS, an iPod Touch 4, a 4S, an iPad 2, an iPad mini 2 and an iPhone 5 all regularly, the iPad 2 being my main device.
Apple would spend the money as iOS 8 is a mess. It needs to be optimised for lower end hardware if it wants a flying chance in hell of being any food on A7 and A8 devices, especially considering it decided to stick with 1 GB of ram for another year. Raising the requirement to 1 GB would be a terrible idea at the moment. What Apple needs is a very tight an efficient iOS, and targeting A5/512mb of ram would be a great way of ensuring that.
In additon to that, Apple except for one specific time gives all its devices at least 1 year of support after its discontinued, so they're still selling two A5 devices, so unless Apple completely rips off customers who are still buying the Mini 1 in bulk, then they will get support.
Not to mention that the iPad 2 is still the most used iPad, followed by the Mini 1. In fact around 60 percent of iPad users are on A5 iPads ( the iPad 2, iPad mini 1 and iPad 3). Considering people are treating their iPads like computers, it makes perfect sense for them to get longer support periods and also for Apple to try and maintain brand loyalty.
They use the same internals, so it is 5 years old.
What is that 60% data based on? US? Western Europe? the World? you count in 3rd world countries and this data is out to content. iPad 2 is the most used because it was still sold last year, which almost makes it the longest lasting iOS device model apple has ever put on its shelf.
It was intended for a cheaper option to push consumers to get an iOS device rather then looking at other alternatives.
Who uses an iPad 2 in the Western World? Kids Don't even want an iPad 2. Hell they'll go for the more sluggish iPad 3 just because it gives retina display.
lol 1 GB is plenty of memory, that 512 is NOT.
Have you used Xcode? if you do you would know all these devices with A/5 internals crash at 200MB.
Im not , as well as other developers are going to make it compatible with old devices that are OBSOLETE.
thats a COMPLETE waste of time. Why optimize it for nearly unworkable devices that when i can spend my time applying new Components, features, and cool gestures, or getting my app ready for the iPad Pros 12 inch display?
This goes to the same as the developers for iOS. Apple isn't going to waste money down the drain for optimizing for obsolete devices.
Apple? Loyalty? its obvious apple does not care about the consumer, what cave are you living under?
17" Macbook pros say hello, they weren't even losing money, just not as much profit as they did with the smaller models. Soldering the ram, all of these leads to "buy the new model, forget the old"
and the fact is THEY MAKE NO MONEY SUPPORTING OLDER MODELS! only LOSE money for optimizing it because they need to put in LABOR
lol the requirement being 1 GB of ram? 1 GB of ram is quite enough for now, i have 2GB on my Air and i have no worries about it crashing from syncing high resolution images from a database to converting high resolution images to a PDF within my App.
these 512MB devices is hardly "for the consumer". I don't recommend the iPad Mini 1, or the iPod touch to anyone.
I don't know what you use on those devices, Their consumer target isn't old people that use basic functions of their devices.
anyways besides that fact these Devices are nearly unworkable in a work environment.
First of all, it lags. Loading screens its slow. People don't have the patience and this can be the difference from a successful demo and making a sale to a failure without.
its slow when viewing PDF files, its just slow. it can handle these functions with the current OS. Some companies have time, others don't, regardless is frustrating to work with these devices.
And the crashing, you have customers waiting for you to take orders either in a retail store or at a booth in the trade show.
Something, whether its calling the camera function and taking a picture, other functions i described above and it crashes.
You know how frustrating it is for the my customer and their customer? when it crashes? Thank god for Core Data or it'll be a mess.
Even for simple apps that i KNOW are optimized because they have the MONEY and MANPOWER to do so. Yelp, Facebook, safari, text messages ALL LAG and CRASH frequently.
Its quite frustrating, and i use the touch to save battery for my phone when it isn't so i use all aspects of the Device, not just for testing the app for work, not to mention i use that device to look at iOS programmers resumes and download their projects that they worked on. And its horrible.
YOUR iPad 2 might run without crashing THAT much or maybe it has a 5 second lag rather then a 10. (i don't even know why you mentioned a 5 or a Mini 2 considering they have 1GB of ram)
But i worked with Many iPad 2's, iPad Mini 1s, iPod 5th Gen, iPod 4th Gen, 3-4S, and i mean MANY. not just mine, not just the companies, but PLENTY of our customers.
and we just had to replace all of them, even simple functions like emailing took to long.
Lol apple doesn't think the 512/A5 chip works well with he current OS, they think that they can still SELL IT using the current OS.
Main consumer base doesn't buy these obsolete devices, apple does not care about the consumers buying these products. nonetheless any of their consumers.
They wouldn't of soldered in the ram on mac computers, they wouldn't of get rid of 17" macs that were still selling. etc etc.
