IOS 6.1.2 is the Most Popular Version of iOS Less than One Week Following Launch | Hacker News Reader

IOS 6.1.2 is the Most Popular Version of iOS Less than One Week Following Launch

chitika.com

50 pointsdan123446 comments

I can't pinch zoom this site from an iPad? Why do sites go out of their way to disable useful features?

You can create a bookmarklet to reenable zoom on sites that disable it: http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/46973

QR Selection bookmarklet: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5331319

On a related tangent, when I load this site I get 58 requests total for just this page. 42 of those are for CSS or JS assets. [1]

That is a ridiculous number. Caching does not save requests, only bytes.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/t4QSO3w.png

This is common with un-optimized Drupal sites.

I knew it was Drupal before I checked your image.

I think the word "popular" is a bit misleading. I was eager to get the latest update because of the battery issues I've been having since I got iOS 6. It's kind of like saying the java exploit patch was the most popular java patch ever.

That said, wider adoption of the latest iOS does make life a littler easier for developers.

You're just using a different (and correct version of popular).

Popular = most prevalent Popular = liked

Question for the iOS devs out there: is it acceptable/wise to launch your app for iOS 6+ only? (i.e. not support iOS 5)

Yes. However, you probably give up 10-15% of the current iOS market as you can see on that page who are using iOS 5.x.

There are also considerations like the most active users would be on iOS 6.

Also consider iOS 6 is on 300 million+ devices (as of late January 2013).

All this tells me is Apple should pay more attention to enterprise needs. Obviously this is IT dept hammering their users to update due to the bug.

Yeah, Apple really should be more attentive to enterprise needs rather than burdening IT departments with deploying annoying 0-day vulnerability patches. The quick adoption of this patch only highlights how intractable Apple's update process is for enterprise. /s

Wonder if the sample skews towards user with jailbroken devices. The community has been encouraging upgrades in case 6.1.3 kills evasi0n.

"iOS 6.1.2, was launched on February 19th, 2012" - given it's had more than a year I'm not surprised it's this widespread. (ok really just pointing out the typo for the author)

Thanks jusben. Fixed :-)

iOS 5 user here: What is the state of maps in the new release? [Luddite attitude, but it's the #1 reason for my phone, more than text/mail of any variety.]

Maps are fine, searching still isn't as good as google. However, since google maps is available as a separate app now, that is better than iOS5 maps, there's no reason to not upgrade.

Yeah, maps are seeing constant updates. I recently noticed that the area I live is now in 3D. Also I've noticed directions get fewer and fewer erros, so I'm pretty impressed how much it has improved despite there being no fanfare about it. No reason not to upgrade these days.

Google Maps was made available about a week after the iOS 6 update.

It's better than the one that was native to iOS 5.

> It's better than the one that was native to iOS 5.

I'd be curious as to the details: How so exactly? (I see friends copying and pasting to google maps from mail/txt app? which leaves me nonplussed.)

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-maps/id585027354?mt=8

Turn by turn directions.

It is highly dependent on the location. In Tokyo, Google Maps was much better. In Australia, Apple Maps is better in the cities and worse in country areas. And apparently around California, Apple Maps might be better.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2416321,00.asp

So long story short it is likely you will have a few map apps on your phone.

Well this is good news, I've started working on an app and couldn't find any good stats on iOS6 coverage but if it's hit 85+% then that's more than enough to make it a good decision.

The upside of Apple really, really pushing updates out like this is developers can keep iterating with the newest API choices and refine their products, which is good for devs and good for app quality.

Check out http://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/

You know, I spent a good half hour on Google trying to find someone with the stats and didn't hit that at all. That's awesome thank you!

Here's two more. Marco Arment also used to share his stats on a regular basis, but unfortunately he hasn't done so in almost a year.

http://chitika.com/ios-version-distribution

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/ios-6-now-on-300-mill...

I just just submitted an app as well and really didn't have any second thoughts about using APIs only available for iOS6. While a few users may miss out at first, users are upgrading fairly quickly and meanwhile testing and developing is so much easier on my end.

for myself i upgraded to get out of a battery drain issue (GPS was always on, brightness was not auto-controlled, etc ... all leading to battery drain). i read a lot of similar complaints in forums and i figure this is why people updated.

Does anybody have a break-down by device? I'm interested in knowing how many active older iPads and iPhones are used these days.

Now if we could just get automatic app updates and defaults ios would be the clear winner

How would they benefit the lowest user? The dumb parent who is rarely on wifi, not even with an 8year old often enough to deal with all the badge numbers on the first home page?

As much as I love my Galaxy Note II (and boy do I love it), I miss day one updates. I miss even knowing IF I'd get an update, and if the answer is yes, then when I'd get that update.

I hate knowing that I own one of the highest end and best selling devices and I literally have zero date or knowledge of whether or not I'm getting 4.2. Even the hacker community hasn't released decent 4.2 roms for me (that support my hardware like s-pen, etc).

Apple does updates right.

That's why I bought a Nexus 4.

My two year on the Nexus S on sprint is coming to an end soon. So you recommend just buying the 4 directly and that will resolve the updating issues (Sprint was always behind the other major carriers due to 4G or something similar. I'd wait 2 - 3 months post major announcement)

You'll have to switch to a GSM carrier like ATT or T-Mobile though.

Yes, but I buy phones every two years and I'd rather know I'm getting the top technology available at the time when I make my purchase.

The N4 is lacking LTE. Maybe not a dealbreaker for some, but it is for me.

Eh the Nexus 4 is a good chunk smaller than the Note, doesn't have a Wacom based pen digitizer built in and doesn't support LTE.

I guess I'm paying for the features I wanted with a currency made of "waiting for updates".

I'd argue that Google does updates right as well. Both my Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 were updated a few weeks ago within a few days of the update being released.

It's Samsung, HTC, etc. who are doing updates wrong (though carriers may have some part in that).

Edit: I should say Google is getting better with updates. I'm still a bit disappointed with how they handled the Nexus S update to 4.0.

With the one exception of the iPad 1 getting left behind a little early. I guess it couldn't handle the memory requirements. This will force developers to support iOS5 another year, or so. Personally, I'd like to move to the new layout stuff in iOS6.

The iPad 1 was effectively the most memory-constrained device that was supported by iOS 5. It had the same amount of RAM as the iPhone 3GS, but about 5x as many pixels to drive. It really needed to ship with 512MB. Not too surprising that iOS 6 left it behind, but as you note, annoying.

I disagree. They had a bug where push email was broken. They didn't even recognize it for months. That's unacceptable. Push email in corporate is huge, but again they really don't care for their enterprise customers and it shows. This update was very late as well.

I don't agree that apple does updates right. for example, downloading the entire OS binary each time is incredibly wasteful of bandwidth and my time

It is true that not getting updates at all is significantly less wasteful of time and resources.

iOS does delta OTA updates since 5.0, released in October 2011.

6.1.2 was 12.8MB: http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/02/ios612-100...

iOS 5 implemented delta updates along with ota updates. iTunes updates are the ones which download full binary.

It's also much easier to release updates when all devices that run your OS are consistent, or at least largely homogeneous. Android smartphones have so much variety, both in terms of features and technical specifications, that it must be difficult to have updates released so quickly after Google pushes out a new version of the AOSP. AndroidCentral had a good article about this several months ago (link: http://www.androidcentral.com/why-you-ll-never-have-latest-v...)

I know one will argue it's not a viable solution for the 99% of Android phone owners out there, but the modding community for Android is very quick to update most flagship phones on most carriers, and even develops on phones that carriers have stopped pushing updates for. My Galaxy S1 had Ice Cream Sandwich on it when I finally traded up to a Nexus 4. It's not as convenient as Apple releasing the official update and rooting+customrecovery+clockworkmod+customrom is a process complicated enough to bar many people from entry, but for those capable folks, we can get updates almost as quickly as those on the Google flagship phone-of-the-day.

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