“When iOS 8 rolled out last September, it was shaky. Updates came fairly quickly. One, 8.0.1, lasted barely an hour before Apple pulled it. You see, it nearly bricked an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus by making it impossible to make calls and use Touch ID. Apple got a torrent of negative publicity as a result about this, but only a small number of users were impacted,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “Some media pundits exaggerated the situation beyond belief. It’s not as if Google and Microsoft haven’t released broken updates. It also had little to do with any skepticism over Apple’s current management, since problems of this sort have occurred from time to time over the years.”
“Regardless, it was perceived that iOS 8’s issues resulted in fewer upgraders, with the migration rate falling somewhat behind iOS 7,” Steinberg writes. But, “as of this week, some 85% of those visiting the App Store, according to Apple’s stats, are using iOS 8. To be fair, people with older gear may not be as quick to visit the App Store, thus skewing the numbers and making them somewhat higher than the actual user base. At the same time, Mixpanel Trends, a mobile analytic firm, keeps a running total, and it’s exceeded 89%.”
“In contrast, the user base for the various versions of Android Lollipop is about 18%,” Steinberg writes. “Most Android users never see any OS updates, or if they do, they will appear months after the actual release. Google has a broken upgrade system. They promised some years back to do something to fix the problem, and nothing’s happened.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Success! Many of the remaining 10% are iPhone 4 and older iPhones, iPod Touch fourth generation and older and the original iPad. We’d bet that very few users (~5%) with iOS 8-capable devices have failed to upgrade and those are basically tech illiterates who’ve packed their devices full of photos and videos, who never back up or clean/maintain or even bother (or know how) to reboot their devices (but who often complain the loudest that their “iPhone doesn’t work right”).
Android is just a total joke. A toxic hellstew, indeed. A platform that can’t deliver timely security updates to the vast majority of saps who’ve shackled themselves with it is a broken platform.
No OS is perfect including iOS and no OS developer tries harder to achieve perfection than Apple. I know if I encounter an iOS problem on my iPhone Apple will correct it as fast as they can and I will download it as soon as it is available.
That’s good news, and Apple if you’re listening, please can you iron out the numerous annoying bugs that still exist in the most up to date version. The most annoying is when I rotate my iPhone 6plus to landscape mode in Safari, 50% of the time I cannot click on a link, I am forced to place the phone in portrait mode click the link then return to landscape mode. One of the key reasons for buying the 6plus was because I wanted the screen real estate so not being able to browse in landscape mode is really annoying. Also, I have my auto brightness permanently turned off, however the phone occasionally approx 20% of the times I use the phone will dim for no apparent reason and stay dimmed and even though the brightness is on max, I have to reboot the phone to reset the brightness. It’s these glitches that make for an unpleasant user experience and it’s something that seems very un Apple like, who’s in charge of quality control at Apple these days? Anyway I really hope these and other glitches get sorted out before Apple officially release iOS 9. Thanks in advance Apple, ps I have already logged these issues with Apple months ago, I did some research and there are other iOS users experiencing the same problems. Pps other than the above I love my iPhone 6 Plus, #gripe over.
Gaagle: “They promised some years back to do something to fix the problem, and nothing’s happened.” Our Lady of Perpetual Beta.
I updated an ancient ipad2 to iOS 8 yesterday and it works perfectly – including AppleMusic.