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iPod touch Who thinks that the iPod touch 5 will run iOS 9 next year?

Solver said:
Time to speculate.
Part of the decision to purchase a mobile device is based on the support you expect to receive in the future. Apple just announced a new/updated 16Gig iPod Touch with two cameras. The question is, will this new iPod Touch run the new iOS 9 next year? If so, could anything possibly prevent the older iPod Touch 5s from also running iOS 9? Will any iOS devices with the A5 CPU or higher be able to run iOS 9 next year?

What do you think Apple will do?
Click to expand...

Any iOS device announced this year will run iOS 9 next year. While not a definite, I'd bet quite a lot on it. So, if there's a new iPod touch this year, it's a safe bet that it'll take iOS 9. As for the fifth generation iPod touch, I'd bet that all A5 devices will be left out of iOS 9, with the third generation iPad going either way (given its 1GB of RAM on the A5X versus the 512MB on the A5 devices).
 
Yebubbleman said:
Any iOS device announced this year will run iOS 9 next year. While not a definite, I'd bet quite a lot on it. So, if there's a new iPod touch this year, it's a safe bet that it'll take iOS 9. As for the fifth generation iPod touch, I'd bet that all A5 devices will be left out of iOS 9, with the third generation iPad going either way (given its 1GB of RAM on the A5X versus the 512MB on the A5 devices).
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Apple's A-series chips are very capable. The iPhone's A4 chip runs iOS 7 very well, and I can see the dual core A5 chip receiving iOS updates well into the future.

Name one resource-hogging feature you might see coming to the iPhone/iPod touch in the future. Such as multitasking and wallpapers in iOS 4, iCloud in iOS 5, Maps flyover in iOS 6, backgrounding and blur in iOS 7, and continuity in iOS 8. Well, all these features can be turned off, or fragmented for older devices. Even look at Apple's software optimization efforts, such as the less resource intensive Swift programming language in iOS 8. There is no reason A5 devices can't receive iOS 9, 10, and beyond.

Look at OS X Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and Yosemite: they all include optimizations and support the exact same machines. And both OS X and iOS programmers now increasingly work together under former OS X head Craig Federighi.

Now that these Apple chips are more capable, Apple will be able for support them longer. Apple doesn't do planned obsolescence. With all the competition, doing this wouldn't encourage sales, instead, it would hurt future hardware sales.
 
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mangomind said:
Apple's A-series chips are very capable. The iPhone's A4 chip runs iOS 7 very well, and I can see the dual core A5 chip receiving iOS updates well into the future.

Name one resource-hogging feature you might see coming to the iPhone/iPod touch in the future. Such as multitasking and wallpapers in iOS 4, iCloud in iOS 5, Maps flyover in iOS 6, backgrounding and blur in iOS 7, and continuity in iOS 8. Well, all these features can be turned off, or fragmented for older devices. Even look at Apple's software optimization efforts, such as the less resource intensive Swift programming language in iOS 8. There is no reason A5 devices can't receive iOS 9, 10, and beyond.

Look at OS X Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and Yosemite: they all include optimizations and support the exact same machines. And both OS X and iOS programmers now increasingly work together under former OS X head Craig Federighi.

Now that these Apple chips are more capable, Apple will be able for support them longer. Apple doesn't do planned obsolescence. With all the competition, doing this wouldn't encourage sales, instead, it would hurt future hardware sales.
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iOS 8 runs slower on the 5th generation iPod touch than 7 does so far. And this is with Beta 5. Last year, the speed boosts to iOS 7 came in beta 5 and they more or less stayed there until 7.1, which, while faster, wasn't THAT much faster.

Also comparing the progress with the desktop OS to the mobile OS, when they're on different timetables and at different stages of development under the hood is an apples and oranges comparison.

Also, I know no iPhone 4 user who doesn't find iOS 7.x.x to be slow as balls and isn't chomping at the bit to get an upgrade. Also note that the iPhone 4 will not be running iOS 8; a testament to it not running it as well as you say it does.

Plus, you run iOS 7 on an iPad 2 or first generation iPad mini, and (far more than on the iPhone 4S and 5th generation iPod touch) you will feel more sluggish performance than those devices had on iOS 6. The trend with iOS devices is that the older devices get eschewed. (for iOS 7 it was the 4th gen iPod touch, and the iPhone 3GS; for iOS 8, it's the iPhone 4 and 2nd Gen AppleTV). Next year, it wouldn't shock me if it was everything with an A5; because (a) 512MB really isn't much these days, and (b) it's already noticeably slower than A6(X) and A7 devices.
 
Yebubbleman said:
iOS 8 runs slower on the 5th generation iPod touch than 7 does so far. And this is with Beta 5. Last year, the speed boosts to iOS 7 came in beta 5 and they more or less stayed there until 7.1, which, while faster, wasn't THAT much faster.

Also comparing the progress with the desktop OS to the mobile OS, when they're on different timetables and at different stages of development under the hood is an apples and oranges comparison.

Also, I know no iPhone 4 user who doesn't find iOS 7.x.x to be slow as balls and isn't chomping at the bit to get an upgrade. Also note that the iPhone 4 will not be running iOS 8; a testament to it not running it as well as you say it does.

Plus, you run iOS 7 on an iPad 2 or first generation iPad mini, and (far more than on the iPhone 4S and 5th generation iPod touch) you will feel more sluggish performance than those devices had on iOS 6. The trend with iOS devices is that the older devices get eschewed. (for iOS 7 it was the 4th gen iPod touch, and the iPhone 3GS; for iOS 8, it's the iPhone 4 and 2nd Gen AppleTV). Next year, it wouldn't shock me if it was everything with an A5; because (a) 512MB really isn't much these days, and (b) it's already noticeably slower than A6(X) and A7 devices.
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Web browsing on the A5 chip is extremely fast, and the A6/A7 chips are just a bit faster. And almost every other app except heavy games run very well. So in terms of speed, the A5 chip is perfectly usable. As far as iOS updates, I think RAM will end up to be the limitation of the A5 chip. But, for the next few years, I can see iOS running on 512MB RAM with enough memory to hold at least one app or one website in memory.

However, if Apple introduces a mandatory RAM hogging feature in iOS, I can see the A5 being cut. iOS 7 introduced two major mandatory RAM hogs - holding app thumbnails in multitasking, and control center. With the next version, iOS 8, the new RAM hogging features can be disabled - Handoff, Continuity, and third party extensions. If the resource hogging features in the next few iOS versions are fragmented or can be disabled, I can see Apple supporting the A5 for quite a while.

Regarding the iPhone 4, it absolutely could have been supported much longer if it weren't for one hardware bottleneck. The speed of the A4 chip and the 512MB RAM are completely usable. Quite simply, the bottleneck of the iPhone 4 was its GPU - its iPhone 3GS GPU paired with a display with 4x the pixels.
 
I doubt it. I think ios 8 will be the last update. Although I agree the A5 chip is still very capable. My ipod touch 5th gen is only slightly slower than my ipad air and when I briefly had the 5S earlier this year I didn't notice a massive step up in performance.
 
If there are some new features in iOS 9 that are beyond what the iPod 5 can handle, they could just disable them. But unless there is some radical shift/breakthrough in the handheld GUI paradigm, I can't imagine what those features could possibly be? At this point the touch screen handheld device GUI model is more or less set and has been for at least 4 years, ever since Android 2.1 - and whatever iOS version was around at that time. Everything since then has been just polish and rearrangement.

What is the touchscreen handheld device model anyway? "Touch some cute icon that may or not have flatness to launch program." "Have some ways to add or delete cute flat or nonflat icons." That's pretty much it and it hasn't changed much since around 2001-2002 with WindowsCE devices that even then had icon based launchers. The major breakthrough/addition on top of that since 2002 or so was multitouch gestures/swiping around to do stuff, that Apple more or less perfected in 2007-8, and then Android copied their perfection. Was there anything else?

Maybe if Apple decided to add Flash compatibility - then the A5 would be done - probably would be a fire hazard.
 
iolinux333 said:
If there are some new features in iOS 9 that are beyond what the iPod 5 can handle, they could just disable them. But unless there is some radical shift/breakthrough in the handheld GUI paradigm, I can't imagine what those features could possibly be? At this point the touch screen handheld device GUI model is more or less set and has been for at least 4 years, ever since Android 2.1 - and whatever iOS version was around at that time. Everything since then has been just polish and rearrangement.

What is the touchscreen handheld device model anyway? "Touch some cute icon that may or not have flatness to launch program." "Have some ways to add or delete cute flat or nonflat icons." That's pretty much it and it hasn't changed much since around 2001-2002 with WindowsCE devices that even then had icon based launchers. The major breakthrough/addition on top of that since 2002 or so was multitouch gestures/swiping around to do stuff, that Apple more or less perfected in 2007-8, and then Android copied their perfection. Was there anything else?

Maybe if Apple decided to add Flash compatibility - then the A5 would be done - probably would be a fire hazard.
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You are right - iOS already has all the necessary features.
The only feature I can think of that Apple could add to the iPhone iOS in the future would be allowing more third party extensions for siri and control center, set third party apps to default, and allow notification center widgets on the home screen and lock screen. All of these third party features can be disabled.

And the only iPad iOS features I can think of are split screen multitasking and multiple users. And these features do not have to be used.

I do not see a scenario where Apple forces a resource hogging feature to iOS devices. If Apple does decide to include an unnecessary resource hogging feature in a future iOS version, such as translucency and blur, it would be there to show off the hardware in a new device and can be disabled.
 
mangomind said:
You are right - iOS already has all the necessary features.
The only feature I can think of that Apple could add to the iPhone iOS in the future would be allowing more third party extensions for siri and control center, set third party apps to default, and allow notification center widgets on the home screen and lock screen. All of these third party features can be disabled.

And the only iPad iOS features I can think of are split screen multitasking and multiple users. And these features do not have to be used.

I do not see a scenario where Apple forces a resource hogging feature to iOS devices. If Apple does decide to include an unnecessary resource hogging feature in a future iOS version, such as translucency and blur, it would be there to show off the hardware in a new device and can be disabled.
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There is one other feature I've been weeping for during the year I've been using iOS: global graphic EQ. That was on android three generations of phone ago though, so I'm sure A5 could handle it.
 
Who thinks that the iPod Touch 5 will run iOS 9 next year?

iolinux333 said:
There is one other feature I've been weeping for during the year I've been using iOS: global graphic EQ. That was on android three generations of phone ago though, so I'm sure A5 could handle it.
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It's not that the A5 couldn't handle it. It's not how Core Audio is designed. Core Audio with iOS functions much more like on Mac computer. In fact, Apple took Core Audio directly from OS X and dropped it into iOS. This allows the user to customize audio far more than one simple audio out signal for all sound.

With iOS Core Audio, I am able to use my Bluetooth hands-free ear piece while playing music through my FM transmitter in my car. When my iPhone rings, it rings through my Bluetooth ear piece, while fading and pausing my music to my car stereo. Same with using Siri. Siri works through my earpiece, while fading and pausing my music fed to my car stereo. It resumes my music when I am done. This translates to the iPod touch or iPad as well, using features like AirPlay with a home stereo and bluetooth for FaceTime audio, for example.

I don't like the idea of thunder bass equalization being applied to my spoken word podcasts, Siri or phone calls, either. OS's that have universal EQ applied to every audio are just lazy.

Android OS doesn't have a very complex system audio. It uses tinyalsa, which is so crippled with what it can do. Desktop Linux, Windows and OS X and iOS can run JACK audio. Android OS can't, because there is a very limited and crippled way with tinyalsa to assign audio where a user wants.
 
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It's possible, but the A5 chip is showing its age on my iPod touch and iPad mini.

I think that iOS 8 will probably leave A5 devices like an iPod touch 4g or an iPhone 4 on iOS 7.

It MAY support iOS 9, but I highly doubt it. We'll see at WWDC 2015.
 
Winona Northdakota said:
It's not that the A5 couldn't handle it. It's not how Core Audio is designed. Core Audio with iOS functions much more like on Mac computer. In fact, Apple took Core Audio directly from OS X and dropped it into iOS. This allows the user to customize audio far more than one simple audio out signal for all sound.

With iOS Core Audio, I am able to use my Bluetooth hands-free ear piece while playing music through my FM transmitter in my car. When my iPhone rings, it rings through my Bluetooth ear piece, while fading and pausing my music to my car stereo. Same with using Siri. Siri works through my earpiece, while fading and pausing my music fed to my car stereo. It resumes my music when I am done. This translates to the iPod touch or iPad as well, using features like AirPlay with a home stereo and bluetooth for FaceTime audio, for example.

I don't like the idea of thunder bass equalization being applied to my spoken word podcasts, Siri or phone calls, either. OS's that have universal EQ applied to every audio are just lazy.

Android OS doesn't have a very complex system audio. It uses tinyalsa, which is so crippled with what it can do. Desktop Linux, Windows and OS X and iOS can run JACK audio. Android OS can't, because there is a very limited and crippled way with tinyalsa to assign audio where a user wants.
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Your post is the first intelligent and also very interesting response to my bitching about this issue in the course of a year. I'm going to have to reread what you wrote and ponder it for a while.

But while I'm pondering - do you know if android is planning on moving away from tinyALSA? I thought most Linux distros moved away from ALSA years ago.
 
Who thinks that the iPod Touch 5 will run iOS 9 next year?

iolinux333 said:
Your post is the first intelligent and also very interesting response to my bitching about this issue in the course of a year. I'm going to have to reread what you wrote and ponder it for a while.



But while I'm pondering - do you know if android is planning on moving away from tinyALSA? I thought most Linux distros moved away from ALSA years ago.
Click to expand...


Android OS provides just one API for audio control and it's up to each manufacture to implement audio control. Unfortunately, each manufacturer does this differently, and there’s no way of finding out how they did it until you test each individual model.

Pulseaudio has been ported over to Android OS, if you want to play with it.

iOS does have a system wide EQ for the Music app. It's up to 3rd party app developers to take advantage of it or not. This applies to iTunes music directory only and does not apply to audio files you may have downloaded outside of the iTunes music directory, since these files are not associated with the Music app and the iTunes music directory.
 
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Winona Northdakota said:
Android OS provides just one API for audio control and it's up to each manufacture to implement audio control. Unfortunately, each manufacturer does this differently, and there’s no way of finding out how they did it until you test each individual model.

Pulseaudio has been ported over to Android OS, if you want to play with it.

iOS does have a system wide EQ for the Music app. It's up to 3rd party app developers to take advantage of it or not. This applies to iTunes music directory only and does not apply to audio files you may have downloaded outside of the iTunes music directory, since these files are not associated with the Music app and the iTunes music directory.
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But I still do not understand why the EQ setting "Late Night" *is* system wide in iOS7 and iOS8 and affects audio that I play from other apps playing files in other directories outside of iTunes, as well as streaming audio. What's up with that?
 
iolinux333 said:
But I still do not understand why the EQ setting "Late Night" *is* system wide in iOS7 and iOS8 and affects audio that I play from other apps playing files in other directories outside of iTunes, as well as streaming audio. What's up with that?
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My bad. Then you have system wide EQ. What's the problem?
 
Who thinks that the iPod Touch 5 will run iOS 9 next year?

iolinux333 said:
With *one* non adjustable setting? What's the point? I'm trying to understand where Apple is coming from here. It's like they moved the sound team to another project then forgot to move them back.
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There are 23 non-adjustable EQ settings with the Music app settings, with off, 24. No, there isn't a graphic EQ. Look for more audio customization with iOS 8. iOS 8 will allow system extensions. At least iOS can handle real time audio.

If you are looking for graphic EQ for the iTunes music library, you can always try a 3rd party EQ app, of course, it will be a sandboxed app, and not a plug-in to iOS, universally.
 
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Here's what I'm hoping for someday:

For 3 years of Android, I had all my android devices set up like this:

I had a paid App called "Equalizer". The author sold way over a millions of copies at $1, so author is now a millionaire.

The app used the simple built in 5-band EQ of android with bass boost. And does the following:

For each of my cars or different speaker setups, I would tailor the 5-band to sound as good as possible, often amazing if I spent enough time (you can do a LOT with a 5 band if you take your time). Event little tiny portable speaker can sound amazing with a 5-band.

But here's the magic: each EQ setting I liked I could assign a preset, and save each preset on the android home screen, so if I switched to a new sound environment, like my car, I would just tap the preset and BAM, everything played, no matter what app, streaming or recorded, would just sound amazing.

Now on iOS I use the Denon app to do the same thing for songs in my iTunes library, but since Songza, spotify, etc and other streamers don't have an EQ built into their apps, they all sound bad compared to how good they used to sound in android. I guess my solution is going to be go back to android.
 
Winona Northdakota said:
http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/29/spotify-ios-app-equalizer/

"Spotify's iOS app gets equalizer feature with custom settings and 22 presets"

Clearly you are just trolling.
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Oh c'mon I'm not trolling I'm reading what you're saying very carefully and trying to consider why, since you clearly know what you're writing about, Apple's way might be adventageous somehow, whereas before I was assuming all negatives. Spotify must have added EQ recently and I missed that. As I haven't updated the app in a while. I've learned to rarely update mass media type apps as often the updates only bring on new, weirder and more obtrusive ways of throwing obnoxious advertisements at me.

I'm still seeing more positives, for *me* in Android's way of doing things, but I am starting to see a few positives in the Apple way as well. I just still wish Apple would give developers a hook into the sound system so someone, even myself, could write a global graphic EQ app. I haven't coded in a very very long time but I'm sure I could put out a working alpha version within two weeks if it were possiblle.


Edit: here's the app I'm talking about:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.smartandroidapps.equalizer


Don't you think it would be nice if this dev, who codes a beautiful app, was able to port that over to iOS?
 
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Who thinks that the iPod Touch 5 will run iOS 9 next year?

iolinux333 said:
Don't you think it would be nice if this dev, who codes a beautiful app, was able to port that over to iOS?
Click to expand...


In this case, no, I don't. The underlying system audios are entirely different, as I have previously stated. It's not as easy as being able to "port that over to iOS".

Android OS has one API for audio control and it's up to manufactures to decide what they do. What is beautiful on one Android manufacture's hardware can be entirely crappy on another Android Manufacture's hardware. It's Audio mayhem, in my opinion!

You are free to use whatever you like. I don't know why you care so much about validating that in public.
 
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Winona Northdakota said:
In this case, no, I don't. The underlying system audios are entirely different, as I have previously stated. It's not as easy as being able to "port that over to iOS".

Android OS has one API for audio control and it's up to manufactures to decide what they do. What is beautiful on one Android manufacture's hardware can be entirely crappy on another Android Manufacture's hardware. It's Audio mayhem, in my opinion!

You are free to use whatever you like. I don't know why you care so much about validating that in public.
Click to expand...

I'm not trying to validate an android vs iOS choice. Overall, I prefer iOS except for this whole EQ issue. If iOS would allow global EQ I would stay, definitely, on iOS. I was going to jump back to android a few months ago over the EQ issue PLUS the lack of Swype keyboard, but Apple finally have up on their silly restriction regarding keyboards so I'm still here. Why they are holding onto this last rediculous restriction is beyond me.
 
mangomind said:
Web browsing on the A5 chip is extremely fast, and the A6/A7 chips are just a bit faster. And almost every other app except heavy games run very well. So in terms of speed, the A5 chip is perfectly usable. As far as iOS updates, I think RAM will end up to be the limitation of the A5 chip. But, for the next few years, I can see iOS running on 512MB RAM with enough memory to hold at least one app or one website in memory.
Click to expand...

Again, I have iOS 8 Beta 5 on an A5-equipped 5th generation iPod touch and it is markedly slower than iOS 7 is on the same device. I literally have two 16GB rear-camera-less models, one with iOS 7 and one with iOS 8 Beta 5 and the difference in speed is VERY apparent. Each version of iOS since 2.0 has made the OS that much slower for the device it is running on. 8 is no exception to the rule. Odds are decent that 9 won't be either.

mangomind said:
However, if Apple introduces a mandatory RAM hogging feature in iOS, I can see the A5 being cut. iOS 7 introduced two major mandatory RAM hogs - holding app thumbnails in multitasking, and control center. With the next version, iOS 8, the new RAM hogging features can be disabled - Handoff, Continuity, and third party extensions. If the resource hogging features in the next few iOS versions are fragmented or can be disabled, I can see Apple supporting the A5 for quite a while.
Click to expand...

You're forgetting all of the zillions of un-marketed under the hood features that also require beefier hardware. Again, every version of iOS since 2.0 has made the OS that much slower for the device it is running on; hence why we're moving away from devices with the A4 and A5 (and soon A6) Processor in favor of devices with the A7 and soon-to-be A8 processors. Otherwise, I'd still be rocking my 3rd generation iPod touch.

mangomind said:
Regarding the iPhone 4, it absolutely could have been supported much longer if it weren't for one hardware bottleneck. The speed of the A4 chip and the 512MB RAM are completely usable. Quite simply, the bottleneck of the iPhone 4 was its GPU - its iPhone 3GS GPU paired with a display with 4x the pixels.
Click to expand...

No, that CPU was pretty slow as well. Barring the RAM difference, it was the same processing guts from the fourth generation iPod touch, which ran iOS 6 slowly. Basic actions are sluggish as all hell on an iPhone 4 with iOS 7.1.2; damm thing is barely usable.
 
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