“At Apple’s recent March event, Apple touted the 80% installation rate of its latest version of iOS (9) on compatible devices. While this is commendably high compared to Android, the strategy of providing broad backward compatibility has probably backfired by slowing iOS device replacements,” Mark Hibben writes for Seeking Alpha. “Apple clearly needs to accelerate device replacements in order to stimulate sales. At the upcoming World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), we may see a change in the current policy.”
“When iOS 9 was rolled out at WWDC in 2015, it was made backwardly compatible with iPad 2 and iPhone 4s, both introduced in 2011,” Hibben writes. “Backward compatibility has been a mixed bag to say the least. As a developer, I’m forced to keep the old devices around for testing. iOS 9.3 works surprisingly well on iPad 2 and iPhone 4s, yet it’s total crap on the 3rd gen iPad, the first with retina display. iOS 9 works best on any of the later devices using Apple’s 64 bit SOCs (A7 and later for iPad Air etc.)”
” I often encounter statements by analysts that the processor upgrade of the 6s was “incremental”. This is complete nonsense. By virtue of design improvements as well as moving to the 14-16 nm FinFET processes… Apple was able to achieve impressive performance gains of 70% in CPU performance, and 90% in GPU performance over the previous generation,” Hibben writes. “But there is a grain of truth in the description of the upgrade as ‘incremental.’ The performance gains were not that apparent to the user. There were no killer features that relied on the higher performance of the processor. Apple could have implemented multitasking on the 6s generation (some features on the 6s, all of them, including split screen multitasking on the 6s Plus), but chose not to. In effect, the 6s was burdened by a dumbed down version of iOS that didn’t fully leverage the advantages of Apple’s processor leadership.”
“The obvious conclusion is that Apple needs to scale back device compatibility to shorten the replacement cycle for iOS devices, as well as provide a better user experience for the devices that are supported,” Hibben writes. “Almost certainly, this year’s WWDC will see at least one of the above issues addressed.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What we wrote last April regarding iPad can be applied to iPhone, too:
Apple simply made and continue to make iPads too well for their own good. iPads last and last and last.
Furthermore, as we wrote in February:
Here’s the thing: The iPad saturated its addressable market so quickly and the iPads are so well made and last so damn long that unless Apple provides a really compelling reason to upgrade, most people are just not upgrading yet. We handed off our original iPads to relatives a couple years ago and they’re still being used! Yes, they lack sensors to support many modern iPad games, but they are still in use. We also have immediate family members still using perfectly working iPad 2, iPad 3, and older iPad Air and mini models. The obsolescence cycle for iPad rivals that of the Mac. It’s very long.
The iPad is not a niche product. It had unprecedented uptake and the devices have such long, useful lives that the replacement cycle still hasn’t really kicked in. When it does — and when the macroeconomy improves to the point where users can consider adding the joys of iPad to their computing lives — then we’ll see iPad unit sales growth again. In the meantime, Apple should redouble their efforts at improving iPad – adding Apple Pencil, Smart Connector, and multi-user support (to mention just three things) that will make the iPad even more appealing to buyers.
And, in closing, as we wrote last month:
If we didn’t work for MacDailyNews, we’d have skipped the iPhone 6s Plus and held onto our iPhone 6 Plus units with no qualms – and we’re the most rabid Day One iPhone buyers you’ll ever find. Why have an annual iPhone upgrade program, if you’re not going to wow us annually with new iPhones?