Apple Adds Shared Photo Streams and VIP Mail to iPhone 3GS with iOS 6 Beta 3

[scottwaugh]

whats the point of suporting the 3GS the tech is super old

Because this is the "free" iPhone (someone said it was a $1.00) you can get with a 2 year contract at AT&T and Apple is still selling it unlocked (~$300).

Presumably it'll fall off the update cycle (no iOS 7) after the next gen iPhone comes out.

Frankly since Apple is selling 3GS new, they should have as many features enabled as possible (that work acceptably) - typically the folks that would get a 3GS wouldn't be getting a 4S features or not (not sure that carries over to the 4).

 

[convergent]

Absurd. iOS should run on all iPhones, iPodTouches and iPads. It should gracefully shed the features that can't be supported by the hardware but support should be continued for the older devices. It is wasteful of Apple to be marooning these older devices. Same goes for OSX with support for Rosetta and Classic on Macs. This sort of behavior by Apple is anti-green and should get them serious demerit points.

And then users would complain that it ran like crap. I had a 3G up until a few weeks ago when my daughter dropped it in the toilet and still ran iOS 3 on it because anything newer was a pig. Apple has to draw a line somewhere to what they want to support and the fact that iOS 6 runs at all on a 3Gs is pretty good stuff. Expecting all new OS versions to run on all old machines is just ridiculous and would limit what they could do in the new releases in order to always support everything back to the beginning of time.

 

[napabar]

Hey, Apple supported the Mac Plus for 11 years with OS updates!

That's got to be some kind of record!

 

[zorinlynx]

How exactly is it 'super old' when its still being sold by apple as new?! Just because it has a less powerful processor it does not make it a 'super old' technology.

The 3G is actually faster than the iPhone 4 in many cases as it doesn't have to push as many pixels.

I actually wonder why Apple is even still selling the 3GS. You'd think less hardware to support would be a good thing. You have people still buying 3GSs today, that have to be supported for at least two more years!

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Maybe you should read the OP before rolling out the same old FUD.



And people say that Apple fans can rationalize anything.

Sad part is it is not fud. It just a cold hard reality. There are 100% pure greed reasons in Apples blocks.

The other part is again a fact. People who say other wise really have very poor understanding of how Android works. Now yeah I agree the fact that the updates take for ever and are spotty at best is crap but at the same token to get updates to most of the core apps does not require an update to the entire OS.

Maps, navigation ,search ect are all done separately.

 

[spb3]

good move Apple.

 

[unplugme71]

if they bother to port the iOS to a device they shouldnt take out features just for fun/to make newer devices more attractive - its probably more work to take out the features than to have the same stuff on all devices....

not talking about features that are not possible because of hardware restrictions of course.

It's actually about the UX than anything else. If it doesn't meet Apple's standards, it won't be available to use.

 

[jmgregory1]

It would be one thing to complain if you just bought an iPad 1 and the update all but made it useless, but chances are that those of you still using the iPad 1 have been doing so for quite a while now.

How is it that you think you should have what feels like a new product years after using it? In tech especially, change occurs so rapidly that you're bound to have multiple updates to hardware and software over the life of the product. If you weren't happy when you first got the iPad 1, you should have returned it. If you happily used it then you shouldn't complain. The only case where Apple could be at fault is if they recommended a new software update that degraded the hardware and user experience. In cases like that, they simply need to make downgrading a simple solution.

 

[Matthew Yohe]

Seriously though, the member had a good point, why is the 1st gen iPad neglected while the 3GS is getting iOS 6 love?

Because one is being sold still today. Please read rest of the thread.

 

[sers]

The 1st gen. iPad really should never have been released with 256MB RAM. I still have mine and it runs like complete garbage with iOS 5, let alone iOS 6.

Agree with this wholeheartedly. Although I have an iPad 3 which runs great, my iPad 1 is barely usable with iOS 5. It is choppy, isn't fluid anymore, freezes a lot, and apps crash on it all the time. I'm quite angry at Apple that they've crippled my once usable iPad 1 to a paperweight. 256mb of memory is not enough and should have been released with at least 512mb.Can't stand when Apple does this. They did the same thing with my iPhone 3g running iOS 4.

 

[Matthew Yohe]

The other part is again a fact. People who say other wise really have very poor understanding of how Android works. Now yeah I agree the fact that the updates take for ever and are spotty at best is crap but at the same token to get updates to most of the core apps does not require an update to the entire OS.

Maps, navigation ,search ect are all done separately.

Sure, Apple could do things separately, where different groups release updates to apps at different times...

But which of these two platforms has a single, clear, coherent interface? And why do you think that is?

 

[napabar]

Both the iPhone 3GS and the iPad 1 are limited to 256 MB of RAM. I think what makes the 3GS still practical with iOS 6 is that it's smaller resolution/display eats up less available RAM.

On top of that, the iPad 1 hasn't been sold in over a year, while the 3GS is still for sale, and probably sells better than most people expect with its nominal or free price.

There are WAY more iPhone 3GS's out in the wild than iPad 1's.

The iPad 1 is like the original iPhone. Both were only sold for a year, then discontinued. Starting with the iPhone 3G and the iPad 2, Apple keep them around after they were superseded with newer models to have a lower price point model. That racks up their total sales over a lifetime.

 

[iSee]

As an iPad 1Gen owner I can now finally put the last nail on the iPad coffin for me. That was the first and the last time Apple got 800€ from me for an iPad. There poor support on that premium product, while cheaper hardware gets the same support just because it still is a money maker for them is just ridiculous!

My 1st-gen iPad works better today than the day I bought it.

 

[Reason077]

I actually wonder why Apple is even still selling the 3GS. You'd think less hardware to support would be a good thing. You have people still buying 3GSs today, that have to be supported for at least two more years!

Because they want to have a low-end, entry level iPhone in the market. Apple need this to compete with the new crop of cheap, but actually quite decent Android phones, like the Galaxy Y.

Most likely, they will keep selling the 3GS until they come out with some sort of "iPhone mini" to replace it.

 

[Northgrove]

whats the point of suporting the 3GS the tech is super old

The reason is most likely that Apple still market them.

Also, I happily use mine. Not all of us have the latest or next-to-latest and greatest.

Anyway, as for the news here.. These two features were confusing me as for why they were left out, and I suppose it was some kind of mistake or a policy change has happened. Glad to see them there now.

 

[RedCroissant]

Awesome. Now my wife will have more of an upgrade than I expected!

 

[Galatian]

My 1st-gen iPad works better today than the day I bought it.

Mine does not. So many apps that crash including Safari (although that got better with the last update). I thought I'd use it for university and actually thought about getting the new iPad because if the retina display, but this experience made me reconsider. I now have a MacBook Air and will never ever touch an iPad again! They sure lost me as a customer over this lukewarm user experience. If you want to do serious work and not simply play some games or watch movies: don't get an iPad. It's highly overrated. No wonder nobody purchases any other tablets as their shortcomings are so obvious yet Apple's marketing is just very good in covering this up.

 

[icemanjc]

Heres hoping they fixed a bunch of the iCloud bugs when listening to music from iCloud. Either it crashes on me, or takes ten years to start playing.

 

[Audigy]

I actually wonder why Apple is even still selling the 3GS. You'd think less hardware to support would be a good thing. You have people still buying 3GSs today, that have to be supported for at least two more years!

In technical words, the 3GS and 4 have the same architecture baseline in the CPU. Both cores are "Cortexes" A8, S5PC100 Samsung based naturally with the same controlling and instructions set. The main differences between both are in the SoC packaging and speculative Apple optimizations on the SoC A4.

So, keeping firmware support for 3GS will not represent a necessary economic investment by Apple, since the 4 needs it too.

You can say, well but the baseband is different... again, not quite. Despite the different models used, they use the same SDK.

Different resolutions? Well resizing the higher resolution resources from the "retinas" to the WVGA of the 3GS is a job for minutes.

So if the support cord is cut in the future, it will be more likely due to strategic reasons. If runs in the 4, can run in the 3GS too(less pixels means 256MB will not be a problem).

 

[Reason077]

Are you being serious? If so, you need to be corrected. The iPhone 4 has 512MB of RAM (twice as much memory as the iPhone 3GS) and an A4 processor running at 800Mhz. Having a faster processor and twice as much memory (not to mention much-improved graphics) is hardly "the same cloth".

The iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 4, and the iPad 1 all have exactly the same CPU and graphics core.

CPU: ARM Cortex-A8
Graphics: PowerVR SGX 535

The only difference is that, in the iPhone 4 and iPad, Apple combined everything onto a single SoC, clocked it slightly higher (800mhz in the iPhone 4, 1Ghz in the iPad 1) and called it the A4.

 

[charlituna]

What about iPad 1st Gen????

Unlike the iPhone 3gs they aren't selling the iPad 1st Gen anymore so don't expect anything to be supported by it at this point.

 

[utahman130]

See, I knew the 3GS could run these features!

 

[charlituna]

iOS 6 compatible with iPhone 3Gs.
iCloud incompatible with Snow Leopard.

Nothing to say.

Apples and Oranges. You can comparing whether a hardware can run a software with features from a software. Not the same thing by a long shot.

That 3gs running iOS 4 didn't support iCloud either. You wanted iCloud you went to iOS 5. SAme with going from Snow Leopard to Lion. Sucks that theres's some software that won't run cause the developer was too lazy to update it or you were too lazy and cheap to upgrade (and probably too lazy and cheap to upgrade to ML) but that's not Apple's fault

 

[AppleGuesser]

Heres hoping they fixed a bunch of the iCloud bugs when listening to music from iCloud. Either it crashes on me, or takes ten years to start playing.

Amazon Cloud Player for me. I absolutely hate iTunes Match. Its slow, buggy, and tears through data faster than Netflix. Pass on that Just give amazon a try. 5 gigs of space is free and so is the app. Make a small playlist and give it a shot, if you like it, look at 20 bucks for unlimited storage, if you hate it, no loss to you at all. Something I wish Apple had done honestly. There goes 25 bucks ill never get back.

 

[PracticalMac]

what about the newer then 3GS iPad 1?