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iPad iPad 4 and iOS 8, your experience, please

Z

zephonic

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 7, 2011
1,328
724
greater L.A. area
Hello,
I am on an iPad (4th gen, 128GB, Verizon LTE) and happily rocking iOS6.1.3

I like the way it looks and feels better than the later versions, but app incompatibility is becoming more of an issue every day.

I hesitate to update to 8, as previous experience with my Macs and iDevices has taught me that an OS update usually comes with a performance hit.

So I'd like to hear from other iPad4 owners how iOS8 is running on their device.
Thanks in advance for your feedback.
 
I've got an iPad 3 on iOS8.1. Occasionally I see little things in the animations that aren't smooth, like zooming in and out of folders. It doesn't detract from my experience, but it is noticeable. The important things (to me) like web surfing and video playback aren't affected. You have a faster processor and I would think you should be fine. Honestly, I see my new iPhone 6+ doing the same sort of stuttering every once in a while with the springboard animations. I think it's the way iOS is heading, but again I can't say it's a big deal to me as my important apps don't seem to be inhibited.
 
i still think the ipad 4 was the ipad as it was meant to be from the beginning

like the iPhone 4S was from the iphone side.

iOS 8 works great on it.
 
Mine runs just as well as on ios7, except sometimes the multitouch gestures stop working. This can be a bit irritating at times, but I have no other complaints.
 
zephonic said:
Hello,
I am on an iPad (4th gen, 128GB, Verizon LTE) and happily rocking iOS6.1.3

I like the way it looks and feels better than the later versions, but app incompatibility is becoming more of an issue every day.

I hesitate to update to 8, as previous experience with my Macs and iDevices has taught me that an OS update usually comes with a performance hit.

So I'd like to hear from other iPad4 owners how iOS8 is running on their device.
Thanks in advance for your feedback.
Click to expand...
I have a 64GB iPad 4. I had kept it running 6.1.3 for the longest time but because of a security fix I upgraded to iOS 7. Big mistake. Laggy. When iOS 8 arrived, I upgraded figuring that it couldn't be any worse than iOS 7. It was slightly better.

I then wiped it out and started completely from scratch... manually loading apps and data. It is slightly better than it was when I upgraded to 8 but no where near as fluid as it was under iOS 6. If I had the choice, I'd downgrade to 6 and live with the potential security exposure.

My rule of thumb is to stick with the major OS version that the device ships with... eg. if it shipped with 6, stick with 6.1, 6.1.x, etc. but don't upgrade to 7. The one time that I made the exception I got burned.

Just my opinion... others may have different experiences.
 
I wanted to update my status of my iPad 4 on 8.1

I did a factory restore and started over from a new device and found that is no longer lagging and feels just as snappy as it was on the previous iOS
 
dunxxx said:
I wanted to update my status of my iPad 4 on 8.1

I did a factory restore and started over from a new device and found that is no longer lagging and feels just as snappy as it was on the previous iOS
Click to expand...

How did you do the restore? I did a restore through iTunes and find iOS 8.1 to be laggy in spots on my 4. Most noticeable is when going to multitask view it is very laggy when scrolling through apps. Also in safari opening the bookmarks sidebar stutters terrible.
It is very usable but noticeably slower. Granted 7.1.2 had its share of stuttering, but nowhere near what 8.1 has.

I'm not sorry I upgraded because I like the new features. But they do come at a price.
 
iPad 4th gen.

I am running iOS 8.1 and for the most part everything is running fine. I have noticed load time for some applications have increased. For example, emails seem to take longer to load in the default Mail app and webpages in Safari seem to take a little longer to load compared with iOS 7. The thing that has bothered me the most though, is that a tab in Safari will crash if I try to load more than 200 hundred comments on a thread on The Verge (another tech site). It will then continue to crash and I have to race to load another page so it will stop crashing.
 
NeoX360 said:
How did you do the restore? I did a restore through iTunes and find iOS 8.1 to be laggy in spots on my 4. Most noticeable is when going to multitask view it is very laggy when scrolling through apps. Also in safari opening the bookmarks sidebar stutters terrible.
It is very usable but noticeably slower. Granted 7.1.2 had its share of stuttering, but nowhere near what 8.1 has.

I'm not sorry I upgraded because I like the new features. But they do come at a price.
Click to expand...

Fresh restore from iTunes and wiped the slate clean. Loaded all my old apps and such manually.
 
dunxxx said:
Fresh restore from iTunes and wiped the slate clean. Loaded all my old apps and such manually.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I think I'll give that a shot. Just didn't want to enter all the settings in my email accounts again, getting all the folders right, etc. lol
 
I have the iPad 4 on 8.1. Don't notice any slowness, or freezes or lags like i saw with my iPad 3. I'm assuming it has to do with going from 512mb of ram to 1gb.
 
sracer said:
I have a 64GB iPad 4. I had kept it running 6.1.3 for the longest time but because of a security fix I upgraded to iOS 7. Big mistake. Laggy. When iOS 8 arrived, I upgraded figuring that it couldn't be any worse than iOS 7. It was slightly better.

I then wiped it out and started completely from scratch... manually loading apps and data. It is slightly better than it was when I upgraded to 8 but no where near as fluid as it was under iOS 6. If I had the choice, I'd downgrade to 6 and live with the potential security exposure.

My rule of thumb is to stick with the major OS version that the device ships with... eg. if it shipped with 6, stick with 6.1, 6.1.x, etc. but don't upgrade to 7. The one time that I made the exception I got burned.

Just my opinion... others may have different experiences.
Click to expand...

I updated my iPad 3 so I could use Office. Now it's so laggy. I can't decide if I should upgrade to the Air 2 or not.

The iPad 4 has twice the CPU and GPU power as my 3. Judging by my experinece you'll be fine, but it may not be as fluid.
 
Traverse said:
I updated my iPad 3 so I could use Office. Now it's so laggy. I can't decide if I should upgrade to the Air 2 or not.

The iPad 4 has twice the CPU and GPU power as my 3. Judging by my experinece you'll be fine, but it may not be as fluid.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I didn't word it clearly, but I had already updated to iOS 8. Even after a complete manual build from scratch, it is still laggy and less responsive than it was under iOS 6.

I have decided that until Apple allows downgrading (or allows to upgrade to the latest point release to apply a fix) I will not purchase another Apple tablet.

When the SSH bug fix was released, Apple applied the fix to iOS 6 and iOS 7 but required any device capable of installing iOS 7 to upgrade to iOS 7 in order to get the fix. I was on iOS 6 at the time. I could either live with the bug on 6 or upgrade to 7 (even though the fix was available for iOS 6).
 
sracer said:
When the SSH bug fix was released, Apple applied the fix to iOS 6 and iOS 7 but required any device capable of installing iOS 7 to upgrade to iOS 7 in order to get the fix. I was on iOS 6 at the time. I could either live with the bug on 6 or upgrade to 7 (even though the fix was available for iOS 6).
Click to expand...

THis is an excellent point. I don't think I'll updated my iPhone 6 past iOS 8 anytime soon after iOS 9 is released. I am currently decidied between Mavericks and Yosemite and I'll just stay on whichever I pick for a while.

Apple's updates (mainly for iOS) just haven't been satisfactory. I remember a few years ago OS X and iOS 5/6 was rock solid and just worked without issues. Lately, there software has become buggy and amount of slowdown is sad. I see people complaining about iOS 8 on an iPad Air. The A7 should not be showing age yet. ALso, I see laggy UI on my iPhone 6. APple needs to step it up or slow down the update process.
 
Lag and stutter are very subjective. What is unacceptable to one person is not even noticeable to another.
I updated my iPad 4 to 8.1, and while there has been a bit of stutter, I have been quite happy with it. I was running out of space so I got an Air 2, otherwise I probably would not have upgraded. Even on the Air 2 there is stutter, while scrolling a book in iBooks for example.
To the OP - I suggest updating to 8.1.1 when it is released, then take advantage of all the iOS 8 goodies for a year before perhaps buying a new iPad next fall.
 
Don’t

I (thought I) had my credentials to MacRumors on one OS on my computer. And I rebooted just for you when I saw this thread.
Well, I don’t have the credentials for my previous account so here’s a new one, but anyway.

Stay. On. iOS. Six.

iOS 6 was a pinnacle of speed and stability. My device was fast, fast, fast. That was my first iOS device and I was **in love**.

Then I upgraded to iOS 7 and I lost all of that (not to mention the more attractive design). Then I upgraded to iOS 7.1 and it became a bit better, but still less stable than iOS 6 and far more slower. My god.

iOS 8 is slower than 7.1 even. iOS 8.1 is faster than 8 but slower than 7.1 still.

It’s crazy. Every bit of interface lags. Everything is laggy.

Let’s quote Tim Cook on Android tablets:
“I think if I bought [an Android tablet] and used it, and I thought that was a tablet experience, I’m not sure I would ever buy another tablet, the responsiveness isn’t there. The basic touch is really off.”

Well, he has put the finger right on how I feel about my iPad after iOS 6.

Also iOS 8 is a pretty weak package, iPad 4 or not. I just bought an iPad mini 2, with an A7, the processor Apple had in mind when designing iOS 7. Well, it’s faster than my iPad 4, but it’s still very slow. You can’t just throw money to solve iOS 8’s problem. The top of the line iOS device in raw computing terms, the iPad Air 2, has a slower interface than your iPad 4 with iOS 6. ⁽¹⁾

I thought maybe the problem was with my iPad 4. Well, my iPad mini 2 purchase disclaims that. The only hypothesis I got left is that people don’t consciously notice responsiveness (though it’s really, really important), which would also be why Apple permitted itself to not care nearly as much about it with iOS 7.

Let’s go back to iOS 8, it’s not just speed (well, the lack thereof), there are an unbearable number of BUGS. It’s all buggy. I often must type ten times and wait as many seconds (this is not an exaggeration!) in a textarea to be able to select the text, the text cursor isn’t blinking anymore and the select popup won’t be touchable. iOS 8 users who type on forums must know what I mean, it’s really sad. Editing text on iPad is super-painful.

It’s a dark period for Apple software. Hope they sort themselves out this iOS year. If my first iOS device had been on iOS 7/8, I would think way, way less of Apple (kind of incredible how good the UX was with iOS 6, in a freakin' complete operating system). It’s a really big f’ up.

Really infuriating stuff, all of this.

(First time I really post my thought on this, as I flabbergastedly saw pretty much noone complain about this, until I stumbled upon this thread.)

(1): To be clear I did not test the iPad Air 2. But it’s logical than it will not be up to par with an iPad with iOS 6, just like the mini 2 is. This is really a software problem.

P.S. I did restore it to factory settings to test if this would make things faster. Nope. Well, a little bit faster, but it has nothing to do with the blazing speed I continuously experienced with iOS 6.
 
KeepCalmPeople said:
Lag and stutter are very subjective.
Click to expand...

This is true and what makes it hard to give advice.

My iPad three lags/stutters an infuriating amount, yet some on this forum say they only notice it a slight amount. I did a clean install and started from scratch.

My aunt has an iPad 2 and doesn't notice anything despite the fact that she has about 75 apps in the app switcher.

My friend doesn't care. She doesn't notice lag in scrolling or swiping and doesn't mind waiting for pages to load. I do. I HATE a choppy UI as it makes the entire device seem slow.
 
I find fluidity of iOS 8 to be the same as iOS 7 on the iPad 4. That said, even on the iPad Air, iOS 7/8 also stutters. Still, it's nowhere near as bad as some of the Android and Windows 8/Atom tablets I've used (mind, I do have all my iOS 7/8 devices set to Reduce Motion in Accessibility). However, I do have to say I find iOS 6 to be smoother than iOS 7/8. iOS 6 seems to be more RAM friendly, too. Safari webpage refreshes occur less often on the 6 than on 7 or 8.

I hear Dieulot on the typing lag, though. Ironically, I haven't seen the issue thus far on my older A6 and A7 devices running iOS 8 (knock on wood) but rather on the brand new iPhone 6 Plus (setup as new).
 
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