iOS 8 Adoption Stagnates Just Two and a Half Weeks After Launch

[Yank in UK]

Corporate IT Departments Typically Do Not Upgrade Quickly

It is Worth noting that some of the lag in iOS 8 adoption may be due to the reticence of corporate IT departments to allow upgrades of their iOS devices until they can review its affect on their own internal systems and or applications which we may need to be partially rewritten to either take it advantage of iOS 8 or simply to be compatible with it.

As corporate users increasingly become a significant percentage of iOS device users, the effect of their actions on iOS adoption numbers will be increasingly significant.

 

[CmdrLaForge]

Usually I update sooner myself but not this time. Too many reports of slower devices and even on new iPad Airs.

 

[iHEARTcartoons]

We are officially back to the mid-late 90s when you waited to install an Apple operating system or update. You had to wait 6 months till all the suckers downloaded it and helped get all the bugs are worked out first. I guess we can't complain too much since it's free these days, but betas should not be released as masters.

As the local Apple "genius" for my friends, colleagues, and family, my official position these days is DO NOT DOWNLOAD THE LATEST OSX/IOS UPDATES! Wait 6 months for the bugs to be worked out.

 

[a0me]

An over-the-air update is a tough sell on 8GB or 16GB devices – lots of people wouldn't want to delete photos and apps to make way for a software update.

Was the OTA update for iOS 7 significantly smaller than iOS 8? If it wasn't that wouldn't explain why iOS 8 adoption is slower than iOS 7 was.

 

[KPOM]

Was the OTA update for iOS 7 significantly smaller than iOS 8? If it wasn't that wouldn't explain why iOS 8 adoption is slower than iOS 7 was.

I believe it required about 3GB. iOS 8 requires 5.8GB free.

 

[JeffDM]

I've had a habit of waiting a month or so anyways.

For iOS7, I wanted the control center, but I didn't care for the garish color schemes of some of the built-in apps. I still don't.

iOS8 has some nice stuff, but some of that isn't available yet anyway.

 

[TigerMSTR]

The solution to this problem is simple:

Apple needs to release iOS 7.2. This version of iOS needs to backup all the data on the users device to iCloud, erase the device, download iOS 8, install iOS 8 and reinstall user data.

 

[Burger Thing]

Yesterday I wanted to show some pics to my daughter, using my iPad. iPhotos is not supported anymore and gosh, Photos is yet an indication where the current software development is heading. It is rubbish, is lacking features and God, it looks awful. All this empty white spaces. A minimalistic, flat look is fine. But this app is giving me eye cancer. We are coming to a point where apps looks much better in Android Land than iOS.

Not impressed with iOS 8 overall. I still feel handcuffed compared to using Android on my phone. And browsing and scrolling web pages feels laggier now.

 

[CmdrLaForge]

Well, I guess that puts me in the "other" 47%. Still on a 4s. Made the mistake going from iOS6 to 7. Won't make that mistake again. iOS8 on my dinosaur would be suicide. Still wish I could go back to 6

I got burned before with my iPad 1 and on my iPhone 3G. Both worked perfect on iOS 3.2 and 4. 5 killed them. So I will not do that stupid mistake again. If I am not seeing 99% happiness in the forum I don't update.

 

[AlecZ]

Most of my friends still haven't updated. Why? They have 16GB iPhones with not enough space! (I told them about iTunes update, but that's extra work.)

If Apple really wants to drive rapid OS adoption, they need to start w/ 32GB entry level iPhones.

iOS 8 also takes more space after installation, and I can't afford that. Plus iOS 8 has nothing I want except the custom Armenian keyboard, so why bother?

 

[DougWade]

My issues with IOS 8.

My issue that appears to be with IOS 8 is a minor annoyance but the affected hardware is likely to be replaced sooner than later.

Updated my iPad 3 to IOS8. My iMac 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo running OS X 10.6.8 and iTunes 11.4 no longer updates the iPad when connected via wireless. Now when I start up iTunes it wireless detects all other devices (couple of iPhones and an old iPod Touch except for the iPad with IOS 8.0.2. iPad is seen only when using the wired connection.

I rebooted the iMac, power cycled the Time Capsule and reset the iPad. Problem still exists after that but as I said it is more of an annoyance than something I'll rant about.

 

[Justafrogg]

I'm not surprised it's lagging. That's some pretty outdated hardware.

Nonsense. They were all working fine with iOS 7.1.2. Apple was in fact selling the 4S up until a few weeks ago, and the iPad2 this year.

With the iPad2 being the best selling iPad that Apple has made, they should have insured that iOS 8 would work well on it. If it wasn't possible, Apple should have cut off the iPad2 at iOS 7.1.2.

Again, Apple will definitely get iOS 8 optimized to work well with older devices. My point is that they should have done this before releasing it in the first place.

Finally, there are plenty of posts from people running iPhone 5S', iPad Air's, and even iPhone 6's that are all having problems with iOS 8.

It's not BAD HARDWARE! IT'S BAD SOFTWARE!

 

[AlecZ]

As the local Apple "genius" for my friends, colleagues, and family, my official position these days is DO NOT DOWNLOAD THE LATEST OSX/IOS UPDATES! Wait 6 months for the bugs to be worked out.

Solid advice. Mavericks was super slow on my computer until 10.9.5. I tried 10.9.0, and it was just burning CPU cycles, memory, and disk I/O. Stayed with 10.8.5 until now. And literally the only reason I updated was for Xcode, as usual.

 

[ronjon10]

I updated my iPhone 5 and didn't have any issues. I updated my ipad2. That was a big mistake. It's buggy and s l o w......

 

[carrrrrlos]

Yeah... its not because of bugs.. It is because people do not know anything about their phones, and the vast majority just let that red 1 sit on their setting app, and the people that actually try to update? They don't have 2 free gigs of space available, and they don't know how to update from their computers.

Am I a pessimist? Yes.... because I work at a technology help desk. And no one.... knows anything.

The only reason my direct and extended family even updated was because I did it for them. They had no idea about the update, and most certainly no idea how to make sure the update goes semi-flawlessly.

I knew the moment I sold them all on Apple products I was in for lifetime tech support. :/

 

[reidme]

Please there are many new enhancements https://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/. Smarter keyboard, iMessage, automatic Siri are but many. Lots of things Android has for in the past but not quite there for 9.

"Please"
So if someone said you could update your new car and you'd get lots of new stations on the radio, cool new features on the voice command you don't use, and a new dashboard, but it would have less acceleration, lower top speed, sometimes it wouldn't start, sometimes the brakes won't work, and sometimes the door locks and headlights won't work, that'd be OK?

I won't even try to decode what this sentence means:
"Lots of things Android has for in the past but not quite there for 9."

 

[shuka.margolin]

iOS 8 is too heavy for iPhone 4 and 4s

Users of iPhone 4 ad 4s have been warned to not upgrade to iOS 8 because it will slow their devices. It was also recommended that they at least wait for version 8.1 (lie was the case when upgrading to 7)

Perhaps this is the reason for the slow rate of adoption - there are still many many users with 4 and 4s out there.

 

[BvizioN]

An over-the-air update is a tough sell on 8GB or 16GB devices – lots of people wouldn't want to delete photos and apps to make way for a software update.

And many of them don't know that they can do that without having to delete anything on computer through iTunes. I have told many of people I know and they have managed to do it through iTunes hassle free.

 

[sotorious]

I wish i was able to downgrade back to 7, ios8 is reminding me of andoird in its ealry days. Crashing, apps not working right, its driving me nuts.

Is there a way to revert?

 

[macduke]

The thing about telling people who don't have enough free space to connect to iTunes is that for many people nowadays, especially iPad users, they don't have a computer they can plug their device into. And yet Apple keeps selling 16GB devices that require 4-6GB of free space to upgrade. iOS is starting to look fragmented already. Is it as bad as Android? No way. Google would be ecstatic to have their latest release pass 10-15%, and there are many more screen sizes. But nevertheless Apple should be doing a better job because they are Apple and people expect quality from them.

 

[palpatine]

iOS 8 is not interesting to me. There is nothing in it that I want to use, it will take up more space on my iPad, and it is still buggy. There's a huge headache for me.

iOS 8 isn't working with some of my apps. They still haven't updated to be compatible (they just crash in iOS 8). There's another headache.

iOS 8 has somehow messed up my iPhone 5s or the apps in it, and I regret installing it. I'm not really sure what is going on, and perhaps I'll have to erase the whole thing and start over again. There's yet another headache.

What a debacle for a company whose stuff is supposed to "just work." It doesn't. In fact, Safari has been crashing on me ever since I got the iPad Air (I suspect it is too little RAM). I avoid using the browser at all these days. Maybe they've finally fixed it and it will work great in iOS 8. Do I have the time to beta test for them? No.

Apple needs better quality control, and it needs to come out with more innovative iOS updates if it wants people to upgrade and developers to revise their apps.

 

[BvizioN]

That's weird. I seem to remember more bugs out of the box with iOS 7 than iOS 8.

Same here, but hey.... that's a human nature. When people get frustrated with something, they quickly forget the past and they will call it the worst thing since sliced bread

 

[canyonlight]

iOS 8 Annoying

Seems to me as though Apple has joined the race to mediocrity with this buggy software release.

 

[Datalinks]

it's full of bugs that's why

 

[zipa]

I'm a couple of versions behind, because every recent iOS install has been telling me 'there are purchased items on your iPhone that won't be transferred.'



And you know what? If the installer is smart enough to know that, it's smart enough to tell me which ones they are instead of making me guess. I asked Apple to fix it a couple releases ago.



I used to get a response when I sent notes like that to sjobs@apple.com Not so with the present CEO.

Why would you send things like that to the CEO of a company? Do you think that his responsibilities include defect backlog management? I'm pretty sure there is a support address for bug reports.