Watch how fast people are upgrading to iOS 7
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[1] http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
At some point I got an Android, had to root and install CM to upgrade after waiting a long time for OTA update. Then I got a Lumia 920 last year to see the development opportunity on WP8, had to wait for an update (Portico?) to roll out on my carrier for months after it's US release. Got rid of it sometime later.
My iPhone 5 is downloading the iOS 7 update right now.
It seems like only Apple has enough money-making power for carriers to tell the carrier to go screw themselves.
Apple didn't always offer the stream the updates over the air, and they've always been good about getting the new OS pushed out. I think another part of it is that iPhone users are more likely (or at least were) to plug their phones into their computers, use iTunes, and be prompted to update their phones. That part didn't deal with the carriers at all.
It's pretty simple - Apple owns the hardware and software they're pushing updates for. Sure, they don't own the carriers, but that's not the problem.
In Google's case they neither own the hardware nor all the software because each third party phone manufacturer slaps in its own stuff and maintains its own fork of android.
Microsoft might own the software, but they don't fully own the hardware. Microsoft is a lot closer to managing it than Google though.
This isn't that Apple has more power over carriers and it isn't hard to understand - it's simply that they have more ownership of all the devices and there are far fewer types of devices (very limited set of software/hardware combinations).
Which is a problem because these forks take substantial time to update to the newest version of each OS. And then they take more time because sometimes vendors make modifications to the core OS that breaks Google or other core apps (see e.g. EVO and Gmail) so the whole system has to be QA'd rigorously to prove that nothing is broken.
And some disadvantages - most users have an outdated operating system, and developers have to deal with fragmentation of OS versions and hardware platforms.
The fact that Apple can get its latest OS onto a majority of devices ignores nothing.
Apple can do this because of a strategy decision they made. Google cannot because they chose a different strategy that has different priorities.
If you want an ecosystem where users have up-to-date system software, Apple has chosen correctly.
Apple prioritized getting updates into the hands of customers. Google did not, since as you say their design decisions make what apple has achieved impossible for them.
I like standard Android OS from google and I don't know why vendors try so hard to gimmickify standard Google UI. There are things that they should be able to do. But they should be there upon request, not by default and with no obvious way to opt out of crappola of vendor modifications.
Right now they are moving important apps to the appstore, so they can be upgraded without changing android version.
My iPhone 4 can get iOS 7 today. That's as old of a device as a Galaxy S or S II I believe. I'm pretty sure that the S and S II are both in Android 2.2 or 2.3 land.
It's a side effect of the two different approaches to ecosystem for sure, but it's not an unfair comparison.
Windows 8 has been polarising and comes at a time when PCs in general has seen almost no growth. You are better off looking back at the Windows 95 days. In which case Microsoft allowed OEMs to customise parts of the OS whilst still allowing updates.
Google has just poorly designed Android. End of story.
That's more about Google's negotiating capabilities with the carriers than how they design software.
<HN overly negative nitpicky mode>
Times with no timezones are really useless. I'm not quite sure if this graph has been broken for the past 8 hours or if if the 0% areas are time that hasn't passed. Logic says the former, but in that case, I can't even figure out what timezone this is supposed to be. Hawaii?
</nitpick>
Don’t represent missing data with a value in the same domain as real data.
Maybe I’m just grumpy, but that seems like a clear, persuasive, and generally realistic goal. In cases where you’re constrained to break that rule, at least approximate it. For example, if you’re stuck using strictly floats for a percentage like this one – without recourse to an undefined/null/none type – you can still use -1.0 or Inf or NaN and not draw the lines.
It does introduce the null reference problem, but that's what it's there for and if you're not going to invent a nil-object, let's not try to paper it over. IMHO it's better to make it explicit.
I think this graph is awesome, BTW; I just liked your comment. I sympathize with folks putting something together quickly, for fun, and of course we've all written bugs into our programs. I also enjoy discussing programming philosophy.
This mixpanal page never got passed the loading data display, but I also saw a bunch of errors in the dwev console too.
Sorry? how does that work? When you get a developer account (for $100) you can distribute to up to 10 devices right?
Are you saying you can pay extra for more devices? Is that possible?
None-the-less I find it amazing that ~20% of their sample base is already upgraded.
Currently iOS 7 is at 4.6%
My girlfriend had to reset her phone for the iOS 7 update, and now it won't activate. She needs it for work today, bad timing... Twitter is full of similar stories.
And on my end, the whole iTunes store seems down. iTunes desktop will load pages after a minute or two, but on the phone it just times out.
> 1 year after release Windoze 8 adoption rate ~ 7%
It is not unusual for a $50 OS upgrade to necessitate hundreds of thousands of dollars of software and hardware upgrades. So we just don't upgrade the OS.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system_usage_share
if (post is CasualObservation):
user.prepareFor(HN_WRATH)