New Features in iOS 6 Receive Spotty Support from Older Devices
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
As someone who has used Apple products for a while, I'm not overly surprised. Remember the MMS scandal when they decided that the original iPhone 'couldn't' handle it? Same thing, just more features.
And no, this isn't fragmentation. What this is, annoyingly, is device boundaries. We've got to a point where Apple needs something to encourage users to move up to the next price point. Want turn by turn but thought you'd just get an iPhone 4? Come aboard the 4S train. We can all go 'well that's shitty of Apple', but businesses do actually need something to use as a demarcation between two phones that ostensibly the same thing.
Still, where's my turn-by-turn and 3D mapping? I was looking forward to them.
If the hardware can't handle it, then ok, that's a limitation. Artificial boundaries are a business reality in a world where the software is the phone, but Apple should consider people in two year contracts when they create these fake limitations.
There are a lot of people who bought a 4S between it's launch (June 2010) and the 4S launch (October 2011). All of them are still stuck with that phone. Screwing them over with artificial boundaries is not very friendly...
These people bought the latest and greatest at the time, they didn't skimp at the store and get the 4 instead of the 4S.
I bought an iPhone 4 in july of 2010. It came with iOS 4, which had just been released. A year later, it received a free upgrade to iOS 5. This fall, iOS 6 comes out – the iPhone 4 will be able to run iOS 6 and it will be free for all users. That's 3 major releases over the lifetime of the phone, all for free. And for about a year after iOS 7 is released, Apple will provide updates to iOS 6.
The new iPhone is likely to be released somewhere in the fall, at the same time as iOS 6. Last year's iPhone launch was on October 14. This means that if you bought an iPhone 4 between June and October 2010, your contract will be up before you can buy the new iPhone. And if you didn't buy your iPhone within 4 months of its release, you probably aren't someone who has to have the new iPhone on the first day when it's available anyways.
To be clear, i don't think it's a problem, i only hate to see those "android (and symbian and windows and all others) are too fragmented!!!!1", when this is just the way it worked for many years. Of course you'll have fragmentation eventually. Only that the manufacturer with the smallest portfolio has it easier then many manufacturers with many more devices. Fragmentation was not seen as a major problem long before iOS or Android (on Symbian for example.. do you know how many different Symbian versions exist? Nobody cared and nobody complained).
I think the claim with iOS being "less fragmented" has to do with developers having a relatively solid set of APIs that they can call.
There are a couple of APIs that degrade on older hardware but the number is small enough that a senior developer could write you a list in a job interview.
A fair comparison would be fragmentation on symbian devices vs fragmentation on android devices (for example).
We're not living in a dream world, many are trying to be realistic and compare the two most vibrant and important platforms because they have to make a call in their startups: Do I want to develop for iOS, or Android, or both, or first iOS and then Android. Most people on HN are developers and try not to be as stupid as average commenter on Engadget, falling into pointless, grad-scholl-link arguments about whose platform is cooler.
My whole discussion thread is about being realistic. Is it realistic to have exactly one OS version deployed worldwide on hundreds of differenct device models created by dozens of different manufacturers with dozens of different hardware configurations ranging from low-end to high-end?
No, it is absolutely not. And so noone should complain about that ghost named "fragmentation" because it's a stupid discussion and it's an unfair comparison.
It is all about the ability of developers to target the latest APIs. Even thought iOS6 doesn't support turn by turn on all devices all of the APIs are available e.g. Passbook. Which combined with the high upgrade rate of iOS users means that I can safely target iOS6 for my next app.
Contract this with Android where I will for at least the next two years be forced to target Android 2.3 despite whatever new APIs are available in ICS/JB/KLP. Throw in the testing effort (so many device types) and app store piracy makes Android far less appealing for developers.
* Coming to the iPhone 4.....iOS 6 Basic Edition
* Coming to the iPhone 4S.....iOS 6
* Coming to the iPhone 5.....iOS 6 Premium Edition
Even though there's probably no technical reason to prevent older devices from receiving these new features, I can't help but be quite surprised by the sense of entitlement everyone here puts on display.
When you bought your old iPhone 3GS / 4, did you expect to be delivered Flyover, Turn-by-turn and Facetime over 3G after a year? Or are you just mad that after Apple spent $X million in R&D, you're not getting a free ride?
The only thing that's quite annoying with iOS6 is the end-of-life'ing of the iPad 1. Which means that app developers can't move on to the latest and the greatest SDK without either doing a lot of testing and weak linking, or deciding to cut off old device owners. That kind of "fragmentation" is nothing compared to Android, though!
The iPad 1 corroborates this. It's got the CPU power of the iPhone 4 and the RAM of the 3GS, both of these devices get iOS 6, the iPad 1 does not. There's no apparent technical limitation, they're doing it to differentiate product lines.