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Apple's upgrade dilemma

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Re: Apple's upgrade dilemma

#31

Post by saosebastiao »

smoyer wrote: post #27

My almost two year-old HTC Thunderbolt was supposed to be the "next big thing" when I bought it. It finally got upgraded to ICS Saturday (yes ... 2/9/2013) morning. It takes an effort to support the hardware you produce, but if you're putting people into two year contracts, it's pretty pathetic that the upgrade finally occurred within two months of my renewal (OTOH, I won't be trading this for another HTC phone as I'…

Heh...same phone, but my plan upgrade came the day they deployed the update. I learned my lesson too...bought a Samsung.

Re: Apple's upgrade dilemma

#32

Post by rogerbinns »

Note that the iPhone/smart phone market is in no way saturated - there are many dumb/feature phone users to sell to. We only just passed 50% of the US market being smart phones. There are currently about 6.5 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide, but only about 1 billion smart phones. That leaves a market five times the size of the existing smart phone base, or in other words the smart phone market is only 16% saturated.

Re: Apple's upgrade dilemma

#33

Post by doomlaser »

adamjernst wrote: post #21
melvinram wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with most of what you said except "Apple's eschewed this option approximately forever". Siri for only iPhone 4S when iPhone 4 hardware could support it was one chink in their impecable reputation for supporting older hardware as long as possible.

This is because the iPhone 4 is missing a newer version of the crucial noise reduction chip: http://www.tuaw.com/2012/02/06/siri-may-be-iphone-4s-only-be... The fact that Apple supported iOS 6 on the 3GS is proof that they're pretty serious about backwards compatibility.

That is not true. Siri was available in the App Store from a third party for at least a year prior to its reintroduction in the 4S, and ran on a 3GS just fine. There isn't a technical reason for it not being available on earlier models.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/04/the-original-siri-app-gets-...

Re: Apple's upgrade dilemma

#34

Post by yesimahuman »

melvinram wrote: post #19
Bud wrote: post #11

Sloppy, content-free article that is basically half a dollop of pure speculation and little else. "However, it won’t be long until it becomes an attractive option to increase sales." Seriously? Um, it's already an attractive option. Always has been, if you are a lazy, sloppy company. Apple's eschewed this option approximately forever, and there's no evidence of anything different.

Agree with most of what you said except "Apple's eschewed this option approximately forever". Siri for only iPhone 4S when iPhone 4 hardware could support it was one chink in their impecable reputation for supporting older hardware as long as possible.

What about when iOS 4 came out and updating rendered the 3G completely unusable? I know forward progress is great, but I felt really screwed over and forced to upgrade.

Re: Apple's upgrade dilemma

#35

Post by shurcooL »

adamjernst wrote: post #21
melvinram wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with most of what you said except "Apple's eschewed this option approximately forever". Siri for only iPhone 4S when iPhone 4 hardware could support it was one chink in their impecable reputation for supporting older hardware as long as possible.

This is because the iPhone 4 is missing a newer version of the crucial noise reduction chip: http://www.tuaw.com/2012/02/06/siri-may-be-iphone-4s-only-be... The fact that Apple supported iOS 6 on the 3GS is proof that they're pretty serious about backwards compatibility.

Come on, what about VIP in Mail.app and Reading List in Safari being unsupported on older devices. There's no way that the 3GS lacks some required hardware feature. Is there?

Re: Apple's upgrade dilemma

#36

Post by [deleted] »

rogerbinns wrote: post #32

Note that the iPhone/smart phone market is in no way saturated - there are many dumb/feature phone users to sell to. We only just passed 50% of the US market being smart phones. There are currently about 6.5 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide, but only about 1 billion smart phones. That leaves a market five times the size of the existing smart phone base, or in other words the smart phone market is only 16% s…

[deleted]

Re: Apple's upgrade dilemma

#37

Post by shurcooL »

coob wrote: post #8
dpearson wrote: post #4

Apple is already killing off device support, sometimes (seemingly) for marketing reasons. With iOS 6, Apple dropped support for the first-generation iPad, but continued to support the iPhone 3GS (which I cannot imagine being much faster [edit: see Xuzz's reply to this comment]). The obvious reason, from my layman's perspective, is sales: the iPhone 3GS was on the market more recently, so the (newer) iPad got the ax.…

The 3GS supported iOS6 because Apple were still selling it at the time. They were not selling the original iPad.

In other words, they had to support iOS 6 on 3GS, but for iPad 1 it was optional. Hence they didn't support iPad 1.

It's mostly strange because iOS 6 didn't really add any performance-critical changes, it was mostly changes to iCloud. Unlike iOS 4 that added multitasking, for example. Well, the new Maps.app is likely more demanding than old one, so perhaps they kept back the entire iOS 6 because of that.

Re: Apple's upgrade dilemma

#38

Post by esolyt »

adamjernst wrote: post #21
melvinram wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with most of what you said except "Apple's eschewed this option approximately forever". Siri for only iPhone 4S when iPhone 4 hardware could support it was one chink in their impecable reputation for supporting older hardware as long as possible.

This is because the iPhone 4 is missing a newer version of the crucial noise reduction chip: http://www.tuaw.com/2012/02/06/siri-may-be-iphone-4s-only-be... The fact that Apple supported iOS 6 on the 3GS is proof that they're pretty serious about backwards compatibility.

How do you explain the fact that Google Voice Search on iPhone 4 works so good that its recognition is faster then Siri on iPhone 4S?

Re: Apple's upgrade dilemma

#39

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

habitue wrote: post #17

Actually, continually providing upgrades to older iPhones is a wonderful way to push new hardware sales: the upgrades significantly degrade the user experience because the hardware isn't as capable.

I've had issues with iOS upgrades before, but they were all fixable. Usually by an annoying backup and restore. Even iOS 4 on my 3G worked OK.

I'm sure others haven't been so lucky.

The idea that Apple is purposely introducing bugs to degrade user experience is silly. There is no conspiracy.

Re: Apple's upgrade dilemma

#40

Post by melvinram »

sigzero wrote: post #29
melvinram wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this was the case, they should have communicated it. As an iPhone 4 user, I chose not to upgrade to iPhone 5 when my contract expired because I feel like whatever gets released this coming year (5S/6) might not be compatible with iPhone 5 software wise.

They did communicate it. They have communicated it for a couple years now.

It wasn't part of the announcement.
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