Apple Highlights Low Fragmentation Among iOS Devices in Direct Jab at Android

[inkswamp]

As long as your definition of reliability is perfection

It's not my definition of reliability. But when unreliable means I have to consistently work around a device's shortcomings, then it's an issue. I don't require perfection nor did I say so.

- there cannot be any argument. Having used every Android release - I can't call any of the features unreliable.

Come on! As people who have had experience with Android, you and I both know that's ridiculous. The Android phone I had crashed at least once every couple days and frequently drained battery power at a rapid rate for no apparent reason. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Can be improved - yes, that's always the case with everything, but unusable, heck no. They were fine for the time. Lot better than having nothing.

Yes, everything can be improved. I didn't say otherwise. What I'm specifically taking issue with (and the point you seem eager to get away from) is claiming Android got a feature before iOS is somehow an inherent win for Android. It's meaningless if the feature is so badly done that it's just not worth a user's time to bother with it. That was my experience with Android. Yeah, I had copy and paste, but I never bothered with it. It was a convoluted mess and often didn't even work. In that case, who cares if Android had it first?

 

[davjaxn]

It's going to be more fragmented now once iOS7 is released. I have a feeling adoption rates will not be as high as previous iOS, people are afraid of change.

I think you are right. But that is a choice by the customer. Android fragmentation is almost always due to new versions of android simply not being available to many devices.

 

[mindsaspire]

Speaking as a small app developer (Gym Log+ BTW), this is a really important issue. It can be difficult enough to test on all iOS devices as one must test on all combinations of Retina and non-Retina displays on both iPad and iPhone devices in both portrait and landscape orientations. I can't imagine having to test on such a wide variety of Android versions. I suspect "well, it works on my device" is a common response to bug reports.

 

[jaymzuk]

Points at hand:

Fragmentation is an issue when new software is being written that isn't compatible with prior versions of the software. A quick browse through the app store shows that most popular apps written require 2.3 or above (So 95.2% of devices) or 4.0 or above (58.6%). Given that you'd be hard pushed to buy a new Android device that doesn't have at least 4.0 installed, what is the issue with fragmentation?

If you have the OS features you need (And if you continue to run an aging 2.3 device, it's fair to assume that it meets your needs), and run the apps that you want, what do you care for fragmentation?

It's a big stick used to beat Android with, yet I fear that most people don't understand that real meaning of the charts and just take that just because a quarter of users are running ICS means a quarter of users are stuck with a half-baked OS with no app support, which simply isn't the case.

 

[sir1963nz]

Honestly, who is the 1% on an OS older than 6? Either get a new device or upgrade. Its not safe to live in the stone age.

My older iPhone which still works just fine for my wife. I have a 4S but all she needs is the ability to make calls, send txts and play a few games. The phone works just fine and has a new battery fitted so gets a long standby/talk time.

 

[anomie]

What about those devices that DIDN'T access iTunes in those two weeks?

Who cares? To a developer it is important to know which version possibly BUYING customers are using.

 

[smoking monkey]

Yeah baby! I'm part of the 1%!!! Hang on, that's the wrong 1%.... Stuff it!

I've still got a 1st Gen ipod touch that runs iOS 3 for one single reason - the way it displays photos on a non HDMI TV is superior to later versions. You don't need to start a slide show to show a photo from anywhere in a series. I use it for work purposes only. My work still has plenty of non HDMI TVs... sigh.

 

[sjwk]

Sorry, but your post reminds me of the battered wife syndrome. There is no guarantee that if your Nexus phone will be supported as long as Apple supports iPhone. Why continue with Android if you constantly are denied OS upgrades and have to wait longer or indefinitely for "hot" apps that might or might not end up on the Android platform even assuming that you can even run it on the version of Android that you have?

You recognize the fragmentation but then proceed to make excuses for it.

Sorry, I don't follow your logic here. For a start, you're assuming that my saying I want to move away from network-branded phone implies I want to stick with Android. Actually, have been considering iPhone. Currently somewhere around 60/40 in favour of keeping with Android but by no means decided. I like the iPhone too (and have an iPad 3), but there are some apps that I use for work which simply don't exist on IOS, and probably never will (wifi network analysis/spectrum analyser for instance).

Anyway, that aside. I don't understand your other comment. Like Apple, Google make new firmware available to the Google-branded Nexus devices right away. OK, there's no guarantee (as with Apple) that they will continue to support them until the end of time, but certainly for the useful life of the device. Unlike, say, the first gen iPad, which cannot take IOS6 and so, after 18 months, needed replacing to remain current. Of course, it didn't have to be replaced, it still ran IOS5 fine (for limited values of 'fine'). In the same way that Android 4.0 handsets still run fine.

Yes, I recognise the fragmentation. But I do still blame the phone networks for delaying things by wanting to fill the phones with useless tools and trials of games, and tweaking things to be in their own colours, or just by not bothering to release already existing updates. Apple did a fantastic job of cutting out the middleman and simply not allowing the networks to mess about with it. That is my point.

 

[lilo777]

Hide it? Why would they hide it? If your made up fact is actually true, Apple would be proud of it.

What exactly is made up in my post? Ginger bread has better notifications than iOS 6. It has File System (user level). It has better multitasking. It has better between app integration (default apps etc.). It has support for memory cards, live wallpapers (coming to iOS 7).

 

[lordofthereef]

The Google Maps app isn't default, and it's a laggy, jumbled mess in general. Good thing I don't need it.

I agree it's not default, though I am not sure why it needs to be? Too bad it's laggy for you. Jumbled mess? Not sure I follow.

 

[BaldiMac]

What exactly is made up in my post? Ginger bread has better notifications than iOS 6. It has File System (user level). It has better multitasking. It has better between app integration (default apps etc.). It has support for memory cards, live wallpapers (coming to iOS 7).

Your cherry picked, subjective, and arbitrary examples notwithstanding, I assume you haven't actually counted whether or not Gingerbread has more features than iOS 6. So I called it "made up". Feel free to provide evidence to prove me wrong.

 

[jamswirl]

I feel like I'm in an exclusive retro club still rocking an iPhone 3G. a member of the 1%! haha, that 5s is going to be quite the upgrade... or should i wait for the 6?

 

[redscull]

Honestly, who is the 1% on an OS older than 6? Either get a new device or upgrade. Its not safe to live in the stone age.

It's one thing to upgrade your phone every two years considering most carriers force you to pay for it regardless (you pay the subsidy even once the phone is paid off).

It's another thing to replace an iPad, which, since you aren't paying for via forced subsidy, seems a lot more expensive and harder to justify upgrading. And all those iPad 1s, those first ever actually cool tablets that lots of people paid $500-830 for, are stuck on iOS 5.

 

[donutbagel]

I agree it's not default, though I am not sure why it needs to be? Too bad it's laggy for you. Jumbled mess? Not sure I follow.

Mainly, I hate the interface. That annoying thing you pull from the side for the options is bad. Navigation and scrolling lags on my iPhone 4. The iPhone 5 can use it without lag, but I'm pretty sure that it drains the battery.

 

[lilo777]

Your cherry picked, subjective, and arbitrary examples notwithstanding, I assume you haven't actually counted whether or not Gingerbread has more features than iOS 6. So I called it "made up". Feel free to provide evidence to prove me wrong.

The fact that Apple has copied (or is about to copy - in iOS 7) many of these features including flat UI obviously proves that my examples are not cherry picked.

 

[thekev]

As a matter of fact, this tells us a bit about how many iPhone users have upgraded. You need a 3GS or later to run iOS6, so that means at most 7% of App Store customers still have the 3G iPhone, and only a trivial percentage could still be using the original model. After iOS7 ships, we'll be able to infer a maximum percentage of 3GS units still in use.

A lot of those might still be in use by secondary owners. Remember that they shipped a lot more of the later iphones than they did the earlier ones.

 

[Pegamush]

i wonder how many people are still using 3gs out there that won't get ios7.
i'm one of them, i'll use this phone until it dies completely. it's already built from two broken 3gs

i'd say the real plague of android is os 2.x that comes in all the cheap samsung, etc. mostly used by old people who don't even know how to use it, let alone knowing what an update is!

 

[BaldiMac]

The fact that Apple has copied (or is about to copy - in iOS 7) many of these features including flat UI obviously proves that my examples are not cherry picked.

That may be true, but it doesn't change the fact that you made up your original statement.

 

[Arfdog]

Well I think the advent of iOS 7 will quickly turn those numbers around, lol. I'm an Apple fanboy, but goddamn iOS 7 looks like it's for pansies.

 

[alent1234]

The fact that Apple has copied (or is about to copy - in iOS 7) many of these features including flat UI obviously proves that my examples are not cherry picked.

How many of these features did google make up?

None?

 

[pirg]

The fact that Apple has copied (or is about to copy - in iOS 7) many of these features including flat UI obviously proves that my examples are not cherry picked.

Please don't tell me you think Google invented all that stuff.

Oh boy...

 

[lilo777]

Please don't tell me you think Google invented all that stuff.

Oh boy...

That was not the point. The point was that all these features have been in Android for at least three last releases. Which means that so called fragmentation hurts Android users less than iOS hurts its perfectly up to date users who still lack many of those features.

 

[BaldiMac]

That was not the point. The point was that all these features have been in Android for at least three last releases. Which means that so called fragmentation hurts Android users less than iOS hurts its perfectly up to date users who still lack many of those features.

That only makes sense if you pretend that there are no other features in iOS.

 

[OLDCODGER]

i wonder how many people are still using 3gs out there that won't get ios7.
i'm one of them, i'll use this phone until it dies completely. it's already built from two broken 3gs

i'd say the real plague of android is os 2.x that comes in all the cheap samsung, etc. mostly used by old people who don't even know how to use it, let alone knowing what an update is!

One of the advantages? of being old is that we know what we want/need in an appliance. We are well past the panting "mustaveit" stage of reckless spending.

 

[ben428]

The reason devices running earlier versions of iOS don't visit the App Store is that almost no apps are compatible with them. It doesn't say anything about the fragmentation of all active devices.