I wish Apple would at least provide security and bug fixes (and maybe some performance improvements) for older iOS devices.
It would be really awesome if there were iOS 3.1.4, iOS 4.2.2, iOS 5.1.2, iOS 6.1.7 and iOS 7.1.3.
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will next IOS slow down the Iphone 5?
- Thread starter Matheew944
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I wish Apple would at least provide security and bug fixes (and maybe some performance improvements) for older iOS devices.
It would be really awesome if there were iOS 3.1.4, iOS 4.2.2, iOS 5.1.2, iOS 6.1.7 and iOS 7.1.3.
However, the logic of dropping A5 devices escapes me - the iPad mini is still on the market, and the Apple TV still has an A5.
They could release a new Apple TV with an A9 or whatever, but then they would be dropping support for every Apple TV currently in existence.
Same for the iPad mini. I know when they introduced iOS 7 they were still selling the iPod touch 4th gen which never got past 6.1.6 - however, again, they have two products, not just one, which would warrant an upgrade.
^^^ My logic. The iPod Touch 4 was unfortunate, it was discontinued only a few months before iOS 7 - but you have to consider that Johnny Ive took over iOS development (presumably when it gained the new interface with power sapping features), the decision to keep the Touch 4 around had been made months ago - I'd say when they kept the Apple TV 3, iPod Touch 5 and iPad Mini 1 around, they had the bare bones of iOS 9 (the one we will see) to test them on, and decided it would run well enough.
If you investigate iOS device market shares, plus App developer statistics on who is downloading their Apps, around 60 percent of iPad users are on A5 devices, which is huge.
Wow! Really?! Where does one find these stats as a non-developer? That's intruiging. I mean - it makes sense considering that the iPad 2 was the budget iPad on sale until 2014 and can still be purchased refurbished, the iPad 3 uses an A5X, the iPod touch is still on sale (I had forgotten about that) and the mini is still going strong.
Makes sense to see a lot of A5 devices
Heres one example
http://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/
While that is of course not a complete representation, it does reflect what is happening. I can't find the other ones - but I'll keep looking.
It truly does make sense that there are so many people on A5 devices. The iPad Mini 1 sold well when it was the latest from late 2012-2013, then it continued to sell well in 2014 and even up to last quarter it apparently sold more than the iPad Mini 3 and iPad Mini 2 (But less than both combined). The iPad 2 sold very well right up to the end of 2013. Also tied with this is that people aren't upgrading their iPads as often, and a lot of iPad sales are to new users rather than upgrades.
People also forget that with each version of the iPhone, there were more and more sold, so it makes sense that the 4S is still being highly used. Between the 4S, Touch 5, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad Mini (and this doesn't include the apple TV) there are a lot of A5 devices in active use.
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Heres one example
http://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/
While that is of course not a complete representation, it does reflect what is happening. I can't find the other ones - but I'll keep looking.
People also forget that with each version of the iPhone, there were more and more sold, so it makes sense that the 4S is still being highly used. Between the 4S, Touch 5, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad Mini (and this doesn't include the apple TV) there are a lot of A5 devices in active use.
Excellent! Thank you!! Looking at those, it seems like it would be a bad move to cut off A5/512MB RAM support.
However: It looks like the A4/256MB RAM and iPhone 4 (512MB RAM) would be a tough sell for them to skip an iOS release and jump to 9.
However, if we guess there to be 900 million total devices sold and 5% of those are 256MB RAM and 512MB A4 devices (iPad 1, iPod touch 4th, iPhone 4) that would still be 45 million devices out there which could be supported and targeted!
The more broader stats showed that the iPhone 4 had around 12 percent of the iPhone market share when it lost support, and that was one of the largest market share devices Apple had ended support for.
Support will never come back for the A4, because its just too slow, and while there are a heap of people still on them, Apple never goes backwards and supports devices it has dropped. It would be nice if it did though
I'm just hoping they do the right thing by customers and release iOS 9 for all A5 devices. Lets not forget that if Apple wrote iOS 9 so that it could perform well with a mere 512 MB of ram, it would be great on the 1 and 2 GB devices.
How do we know all of this about iOS 9?The more broader stats showed that the iPhone 4 had around 12 percent of the iPhone market share when it lost support, and that was one of the largest market share devices Apple had ended support for.
Support will never come back for the A4, because its just too slow, and while there are a heap of people still on them, Apple never goes backwards and supports devices it has dropped. It would be nice if it did though
I'm just hoping they do the right thing by customers and release iOS 9 for all A5 devices. Lets not forget that if Apple wrote iOS 9 so that it could perform well with a mere 512 MB of ram, it would be great on the 1 and 2 GB devices.
Agreed, it's all speculation. It was the same last year when many on MR thought the A5 would be dropped with iOS 8. It turned out to be false. My guess is no one knows atm including Apple. My guess is they may be in the planning stages to see if it will help or hurt performance on the A5.
I still say, Apple should have stopped selling old equipment this year and should've dropped the A5. The only devices that should be sold is the A7/A8X followed by the A8X/A9.
Then they should just make iOS X 64 bit only and move on from the older devices. A complete rewrite of iOS wouldn't hurt to get rid of all the legacy code. It pains me to use Safari on my iPad.
While I can see there are negatives to A5 support, I'm hoping for it
Same here! Especially with everyone saying it is going to be "Snow Leopard type release" I could see it giving one more year of support to all current iOS 8 devices.
Otherwise if all these devices hang out as bad performers, it may tarnish the image of Apple rather than give people an incentive to upgrade to another Apple product.
Then by iOS 10 or 9.5 or whatever, we should see 64-bit only support!
I didn't suggest we know anything about iOS 9, I said "If" Apple was to write iOS 9 to run well on the A5, then it would run well on devices with more RAM.
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My guess is that Apple had already decided that iOS 9 ran well enough on the A5, when it decided to keep the Touch 5 and iPad Mini 1 around.
Nothing wrong with keeping old hardware around, but the A5 is too old. The A6 is alright as long as it is properly supported. Older hardware should serve iOS from getting too inflated - Eg the 512 MB of ram should ensure that iOS does not become a RAM hog on 1 GB devices.
They don't have to drop A6 devices with iOS 10, to do a complete rewrite. They can just rewrite the 64 bit version and the 32 bit version and keep them separate. (Though that could be a logistical nightmare). It depends how many people are on A6 devices in 2016.
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If I'd bought an iPad Mini 1 only to find it looses support within 6 months (assuming it was discontinued tomorrow) I would not be happy. Why buy expensive Apple products when you could buy an $100 Android tablet every year and get more support plus a fresh new tablet every year, rather than a $300 iPad Mini with no support.
I think iOS 11 will be 64 bit only. If Apple stretches support for the A5 chipset into a 6th version of iOS, it would be fair for them to give the A6 5 versions.
Statistics
I have another thread right now on whether or not I should update my i5 with 16 GB of RAM to iOS 8.3 so I am too curious, not so much about the new OS but the latest one.
My thinking is that one thing remains [almost] certain. Apple is comparing their performance of iOS 9 to iOS 8 on their devices including older devices. I have yet to see any benchmarks showing the speed and efficiency of the device and software compared to the native OS that came with it. In other words, iOS 9 might work better on an iPhone5 than iOS 8 did, but I doubt it can beat the performance of iOS 7 or even iOS 6 which came with the iPhone 5.
I have another thread right now on whether or not I should update my i5 with 16 GB of RAM to iOS 8.3 so I am too curious, not so much about the new OS but the latest one.
My thinking is that one thing remains [almost] certain. Apple is comparing their performance of iOS 9 to iOS 8 on their devices including older devices. I have yet to see any benchmarks showing the speed and efficiency of the device and software compared to the native OS that came with it. In other words, iOS 9 might work better on an iPhone5 than iOS 8 did, but I doubt it can beat the performance of iOS 7 or even iOS 6 which came with the iPhone 5.
I think iOS 9 (if properly optimised) will run better on almost all devices. iOS 8 had a huge number of changes under the hood, and new APIs. Also Apple moved developers off iOS 8 development and onto Yosemite to to finish Yosemite so iOS 8 was basically a rush job.
iOS 7 however, was more like a new coat of paint with iOS 6 underneath it (Plus some new features) thus it ran better.
Performance doesn't appear to be the focus of iOS 7.0, but it does for 7.1. There was a noticeable difference there. If Apple plans a full major release on optimizing I see no reason iOS 9 can't potentially run as well as (or even better than) iOS 7.
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Another thing about the iPod Touch 4 being dropped is that it already had a succesor released at the time. The 5th Gen Touch doesn't so it wouldn't make as much sense to drop it.
Do you mean 8.0 and 8.1???
And yes - the iPod Touch 4 had a successor - i.e. a premium and a low end model. There is no low end model with the Touch 5, it is the premium model so I doubt it will loose support.
I didnt upgrad from to 7.0, rather I went directly to 7.1 from 6.x so I didn't experience the performance issues of 7.0. However, I did notice a hit with 7.1. It wasn't huge, but noticeable to me.
Tonight I have been seeing some youtube videos comparing iOS 8.1 to 8.1.3 and there have been a few improvements in speed in some areas and worse in others. In theory, if the OS is properly optimized, i/o instructions might run more efficiently but typically at a cost of CPU power and resources. That of course doesn't' take into account poorly developed apps by 3rd parties. I think this is where Android really has a problem.
Ew 7.0 was bad, you're lucky you didn't have to experience it. A lot of the animations were excessively slow, not because the device in question was too slow for iOS 7, but because Apple just made poor choices in the set animation speed. Plus these animations lagged quite a lot and there were lots of springboard crashes. Luckily iOS 7.1 fixed a ton of this although it was still pretty messy on iPad. Even messier today.
iOS 7.0 was slow on my iPhone 4, but I never found it as buggy as iOS 8 on my iPhone 5.
iOS 7.1 really improved things a lot for my iPad 2 and iPhone 4 and then later my iPhone 5 - I was especially impressed with how my iPad 2 ran it.
I can usually put up with slowness, but bugs just annoy the hell out of me