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iOS 8 Adoption Stalls at 47% of Users After Three Weeks

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Re: iOS 8 Adoption Stalls at 47% of Users After Three Weeks

#81

Post by wlesieutre »

acdha wrote: post #49
wlesieutre wrote: post #6

I'm in that remaining 53%. I still have an iPhone 4S, which works fine, and the new features in iOS 8 aren't enough for me to justify the performance hits. Safari launch goes from 1.25 to 2.16 seconds, and I use that all the time. Not worth it, as much as I'd like 3rd party keyboards and 1password integration. Plus there's the fact that everything is being designed for iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 screens now, so it gets te…

Most of the performance claims are exaggerated – unless you're obsessively stop-watching or switching apps all the time, the difference in Safari startup isn't significant and the newer WebKit means that Safari is actually faster once you actually use it, noticeably so on JavaScript-heavy sites. A fraction of a second startup time is lost in network overhead or render on the first page you visit. In general, it feels…

Oh my. I don't even want to imagine what Google Voice looks like with the full keyboard.

On iOS 7 it's already down to two lines of text messages, because it's more important that they tell me the name of who I'm talking to three goddamn times. If Google's trying to help Apple sell more new phones, they're doing a pretty good job of it.

http://i.imgur.com/QHL8FeN.png

Does anybody have GV on iOS 8 with a 4S for comparison? I'm genuinely curious what it does.

Re: iOS 8 Adoption Stalls at 47% of Users After Three Weeks

#82

Post by mhurron »

untog wrote: post #75
mhurron wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not really sure those comparisons are accurate any more They never were accurate because it's mostly not in the users control if/when they upgrade. The carrier has to 'bless' you with the privilege of even being offered an update. This is one of the reasons I just switched to an iPhone.

It's as if you totally ignored the rest of my post. Was this in the Android 2.x era? That was awful, I agree. But like I said, these days it doesn't matter very much. Almost every single core app is updated via the Play Store, out of the control of carriers.

That's nice. That doesn't update the base OS. Have a bug? You have it forever. New features your phones hardware supports? Maybe you'll get lucky but they would prefer you to buy a new phone, so don't bet on it.

> Was this in the Android 2.x era?

Galaxy S3. Galaxy S Relay 4g. Android 4.1/4.0 respectively the day they were bought and the day they were traded in.

Re: iOS 8 Adoption Stalls at 47% of Users After Three Weeks

#83

Post by wlesieutre »

happyscrappy wrote: post #43
steve-benjamins wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally. I have a 4S but I did upgrade to iOS 8. I wish I had stuck with iOS7. Everything got pretty sluggish.

Anyone running iOS8 on a 4S should change some settings: Settings->General->Accessibility->Increase Contrast Set to On Settings->General->Accessibility->Reduce Motion Set to On

Honestly, it doesn't hurt to do that on iOS 7 either.

Re: iOS 8 Adoption Stalls at 47% of Users After Three Weeks

#84

Post by archagon »

rqebmm wrote: post #74
archagon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an app you bought in the past doesn't support the latest iOS version, I believe you now have the option of downloading the last version that still supports your current OS.

This is only true if your _device_ does not support the latest iOS version. i.e. if I have version 1.0 that supported iOS 7, and just released version 2.0 that only supports iOS 8: User on an iPhone 4/iOS 7 will see 1.0 in the App Store. User on an iPhone 4S/iOS 7 will see 2.0, and "you must update to iOS 8" if they try to download it.

Ah, good point.

Re: iOS 8 Adoption Stalls at 47% of Users After Three Weeks

#85

Post by soylentcola »

NDizzle wrote: post #19

My iPad2 runs worse and worse with every new version of iOS. I wish I could go back to 6.

That is actually my only iOS device at the moment and it certainly has been slower with each update. I do understand the benefit of building an OS to more current specs but unlike a desktop PC where you can add a stick of RAM or a newer GPU for $50-100, it seems to hit mobile devices a lot harder.

On one hand, nobody wants to buy a shiny new device and find that the software isn't taking advantage of the hardware you paid for in order to preserve performance on older models. On the other hand, the more rapid pace of mobile hardware development and the inability to add inexpensive upgrades can make it seem like you have little choice but to replace the things every couple of years.

It doesn't help that there's no official way to downgrade if your experience is unsatisfactory (no reinstalling XP on that old beater PC because it doesn't have the RAM to run Vista well, etc) and applications quickly start to require the latest version of the OS for program updates.

Re: iOS 8 Adoption Stalls at 47% of Users After Three Weeks

#86

Post by soylentcola »

untog wrote: post #75
mhurron wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not really sure those comparisons are accurate any more They never were accurate because it's mostly not in the users control if/when they upgrade. The carrier has to 'bless' you with the privilege of even being offered an update. This is one of the reasons I just switched to an iPhone.

It's as if you totally ignored the rest of my post. Was this in the Android 2.x era? That was awful, I agree. But like I said, these days it doesn't matter very much. Almost every single core app is updated via the Play Store, out of the control of carriers.

I'm definitely more familiar with the Android side of things than with iOS but it really has more to do with the OEM. Sure, if you buy a carrier branded device then they will stick their approval process after the OS release and OEM porting but in general, it's more a firmware/driver issue a lot of the time.

Apple's strength is that they provide the hardware and the software so they are responsible for building any new version of iOS with applicable drivers and firmware for each device.

Core apps are one thing but if you want to update to the latest version of Android, you're mostly out of luck without the OEM's involvement. Third parties regularly work on building current versions for all manner of devices as soon as Google publishes the source but without driver source from the maker of the actual chips and other hardware, they're left cobbling together unoptimized drivers for important things like the cellular radio or the camera or reverse engineering their own. If it was just a matter of carrier interference, there would be a "vanilla" build available for every device shortly after release.

Re: iOS 8 Adoption Stalls at 47% of Users After Three Weeks

#87

Post by rqebmm »

archagon wrote: post #84
rqebmm wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true if your _device_ does not support the latest iOS version. i.e. if I have version 1.0 that supported iOS 7, and just released version 2.0 that only supports iOS 8: User on an iPhone 4/iOS 7 will see 1.0 in the App Store. User on an iPhone 4S/iOS 7 will see 2.0, and "you must update to iOS 8" if they try to download it.

Ah, good point.

Yeah, learned this one the hard way :)

Re: iOS 8 Adoption Stalls at 47% of Users After Three Weeks

#88

Post by acdha »

wlesieutre wrote: post #81
acdha wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the performance claims are exaggerated – unless you're obsessively stop-watching or switching apps all the time, the difference in Safari startup isn't significant and the newer WebKit means that Safari is actually faster once you actually use it, noticeably so on JavaScript-heavy sites. A fraction of a second startup time is lost in network overhead or render on the first page you visit. In general, it feels…

Oh my. I don't even want to imagine what Google Voice looks like with the full keyboard. On iOS 7 it's already down to two lines of text messages, because it's more important that they tell me the name of who I'm talking to three goddamn times . If Google's trying to help Apple sell more new phones, they're doing a pretty good job of it. http://i.imgur.com/QHL8FeN.png Does anybody have GV on iOS 8 with a 4S for compa…

Regular:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sbvsh037htjbq1m/2014-10-07%2014.42...

With word predictions collapsed:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/efvxfw7laib8adl/2014-10-07%2014.42...

Re: iOS 8 Adoption Stalls at 47% of Users After Three Weeks

#89

Post by wlesieutre »

acdha wrote: post #49
wlesieutre wrote: post #6

I'm in that remaining 53%. I still have an iPhone 4S, which works fine, and the new features in iOS 8 aren't enough for me to justify the performance hits. Safari launch goes from 1.25 to 2.16 seconds, and I use that all the time. Not worth it, as much as I'd like 3rd party keyboards and 1password integration. Plus there's the fact that everything is being designed for iPhone 5 and iPhone 6 screens now, so it gets te…

Most of the performance claims are exaggerated – unless you're obsessively stop-watching or switching apps all the time, the difference in Safari startup isn't significant and the newer WebKit means that Safari is actually faster once you actually use it, noticeably so on JavaScript-heavy sites. A fraction of a second startup time is lost in network overhead or render on the first page you visit. In general, it feels…

I'm past the edit window on my previous reply, but I should also point out that the 4S has 512 MB of RAM, while the 5 and up have twice that.

So given some consistent amount for OS overhead on every model, the 4S has well under half of the RAM available for running applications. Background apps are killed much more frequently as a result.

Launch time might not matter for newer phones, but it's a huge deal for us. I actually had an experience (on iOS 7) where I couldn't log in to a Google app because switching to Google Authenticator and back caused the first app to unload, and I couldn't get back to the login page before the TOTP code expired.

Re: iOS 8 Adoption Stalls at 47% of Users After Three Weeks

#90

Post by rqebmm »

untog wrote: post #55
andrewljohnson wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have sympathy for any developer who supports just the latest iOS. Because: * you need to maintain a stable of test devices on all iOS versions * it's time-consuming to support legacy OS versions * it leads to more support * it has dubious economic value Also, to be angry at app developers because they act rationally seems misplaced. Particularly with HipChat, you want them to support what exactly... every version o…

There's a sliding scale here. I don't think anyone is expecting app developers to support every OS version that ever existed. But iOS8 doesn't work on the iPhone 4, and according to comments on here works pretty terribly on the 4S, and even on the 5. Supporting the current version and the most recent version doesn't feel like the biggest imposition. As a web developer we've adopted it - we just phased out iOS6 suppor…

The difference is that as a web developer you don't have to drop roughly ~$2k on devices to test the older versions of browsers, you just fire up a VM.

Apple developers can't roll back the OS version, and need to have at least one 4/4s, one 5/5s, and one iPad for each OS they would like to support. Let alone the new screen fragmentation.

The inability to roll back iOS is inconvenient for customers, but it's a HUGE middle-finger to developers. Customer are caught between "don't update a few of my apps" while we are caught between "don't support a number of new users" and "spend a lot of extra time and effort"

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