5 ms·
The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine. Safari, for example, is at least as fast as before. More annoying are third party developers
by dubya 12y ago
The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine. Safari, for example, is at least as fast as before. More annoying are third party developers testing only on new hardware. A phone that can run "Infinity Blade" should not take two minutes to start "Threes".
- slantyyz 12y ago>> The initial release was pretty bad, but subsequent ones are fine. Well, it seems there is some variability on this, so the better response may be "YMMV". iOS7 on my iPhone 4 (including the latest updates) -- just made it unusable -- and keep in mind, most of what I do are just the core apps, Safari, RSS and Read Later. I basically had the same issues with the last supported iOS versions on the original iPad and iPhone 3G. The pattern I notice is that Apple tends to offer one OS upgrade too many on older devices, which is basically what led me to leave iOS. The refreshing pattern I've experienced on Android is that most of the upgrades have featured performance improvements.
- Karunamon 12y agoApple can't win here. They don't release the update, and people bash them for not supporting expensive devices. They release the update, and people bash them for some kind of forced-planned-obsolescence.
- mikeash 12y agoThey could release the update and make sure it actually runs well. Note that it's not a given that a new OS release must run slower. Mac OS X had many releases that got successively faster. The trend only stopped with 10.7 or so.
- Karunamon 12y agoIt's also not a given that older hardware has the ability to support whatever changes and new features were made in the new OS.
- mikeash 12y agoPossible, but that stuff is mostly artificial and performance-targeted. To take another example from the Mac world, Apple's hardware requirements have almost always been artificially inflated, with people having great success in applying gentle tweaks to make them run on older computers. Anyway, you certainly could build something that really can't run on older stuff, or can't run well. My point is merely that the dilemma you propose is wrong: there are at least three options (don't support old stuff, support old stuff badly, support old stuff well), not just two.
- dubya 12y agoThey could just let ios 6 continue to be installed on the iPhone 4, or let you restore from your own back-ups. I think this was actually possible for the first few weeks of ios 7 release, but then they "unsigned" the older versions.
- Karunamon 12y agoThere are reasons for their heavy-handed update policy that have nothing to do with malfeasance. Look at the world distribution of Android OS versions in the world for a case study in what happens when you don't force people to upgrade. So I guess they have three options: * Release upgrade, people complain * Don't release upgrade, people complain * Allow any random OS release to be installed, people complain Every single one of these options have their own pros and cons. Apple seems to have just selected the first one.
- mikeash 12y agoApple doesn't force people to upgrade. They just don't allow people to downgrade. Android's fractured version numbers have nothing to do with forced upgrades or any inability to downgrade. They're simply a result of Android upgrades being the responsibility of individual phone manufacturers, and those manufacturers having little incentive to ship upgrades. At this point, I'd wager that iOS would see better uptake of new versions if they allowed downgrading. As it stands, if you merely suspect that the new version will make your phone suck, you need to stay with the old version, because once you upgrade there's no going back. If they let people downgrade, then you could try the new version with no worries.