iOS 9 installed on over 50% of users' devices | Hacker News Reader

iOS 9 installed on over 50% of users' devices

apple.com

Remove Apple or iOS from this entirely and just look technical achievement involved with these numbers.

Apple sold 1 billion iOS devices as of Jan 2015. They don't all support iOS 9, but looking at the cumulative sales graphs, let's just say there 700 million iOS 9 compatible devices.

Getting 350 million people to download and install software on 350 million devices in 5 days is pretty freaking amazing.

Is it?

Most software autopatches these days. Is this any different than the latest version of Chrome installing itself and working almost flawlessly on a huge number of different hardware platforms (rather than < 100 distinct device types)?

If nothing else it's impressive that over a quarter billion people were able to download a file that large in such a short period of time.

I might argue the same things is true about getting everyone in North Korea to switch from wheat to growing cotton. An amazing technical achievement perhaps, but is it the right thing to do?

That's not to say that upgrading to iOS 9 is the same as forced labor, but when you control the market as tightly as Apple does, and then fan the flames of the "the new new thing" as something you have to have ("nothing has changed except everything"?), yeah, it's not gonna be a really hard sell.

I think the most impressive part of it is that a lot of people are reticent to upgrade due to fear of bugs, and it's a testament to Apple that the vast majority of folks trust them to roll out quality releases. Of course, it could be their audience doesn't give a shit about quality and just wants the new new thing. Not really a single variable study here.

Yeah, and I'm kind of angry that I updated my iPad. It looks like they let the latest crop of interns redesign their apps again and I can't !@#$%^ find anything... like how to _turn off_ audio playback in the Podcast app.

Not on this guy's device. I JUST updated to iOS 8, and it's been an absolute failure. My phone is near useless now. Crashes and hangs have become so prevalent that I actually avoid using my phone.

What device do you have?

iPhone 5. Not the greatest, but still, it's redonk.

I had it on a 4s. It worked, but was a little wonky. Make sure you are on the latest, it got better. Then I got a the next gen phone.

I think 9 doesn't bring a lot of new features, more bug fixes and refinements. If 8 is that bad 9 might be worth a try after a couple revisions.

I'm on the latest 8, but it probably can't make anything worse to try 9 to see if it fixes anything.

Good luck. I was kinda mad at 8 on the 4s initially.. really took any snappy performance and pleasure out of the device. I'm hoping 9 is like the "snow leopard" of iOS releases, very stable and not a lot of flash.

odd - I've got ios8 on my 5 and no problems. Something odd up perhaps.

Probably one of the ones Apple wants you to throw away after two years.

Every year or so when a new iOS releases it's the same thing, what exactly is surprising here? Apple has a homogeneous eco-system and the ability to push updates on all devices regardless of region specific or carrier locks.

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