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iOS 6 Adoption Tops 25% After Just 48 Hours
An anonymous reader writes "iOS 6 has seen rapid adoption among iPhone and iPad users, reports developer David Smith. Smith's applications like Audiobooks get around 100k downloads weekly and he's taken to mapping the adoption of Apple's software releases over the last couple of years. This update's data shows a 35.4% adoption of iOS 6, with iOS 5.x holding court at 71.5% adoption. That's a pretty rapid pace, eclipsing Android Jelly Bean's 2-month adoption levels of 1.2% easily."
Yes, because comparing the release of Jelly Bean on a multitude of manufacturer, carrier, and hardware platforms is an entirely reasonable comparison to the release of an iOS locked to specific hardware, from one manufacturer.
That's a pretty rapid pace, eclipsing Android Jelly Bean's 2-month adoption levels of 1.2% easily
Of course Jelly Bean's adoption level is very low because what, 3-4 devices support Jelly Bean officially? And those 3-4 devices are a small percentage of all Android devices. Heck, even the "flagship" Android phone the Galaxy S III won't be getting Jelly Bean until the end of September or later. While all iOS devices are Apple phones/tablets/media players and the iOS 6 update is available for all of them made within the past couple of years.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The good news about living in a walled garden is that you benefit from Steve Jobs's obsessive need for state of the art. The bad news about living in a walled garden is that you have to live with his obsession for control.
And yes, I know he's dead. But his obsessions live!
I hate doing updates for my iOS devices. Every time I've ever done it it kills the device and I wind up wiping it and doing a reinstall. It has always worked so far but why does an update brick the device every time? It's happened with every touch I've ever owned and the tradition is alive and well with my "New" iPad/iPad 3. You'd think Apple who normally has a reputation for seamless upgrades would be better than this?
That's great?
No, but wake me up when it hits 125%.
Well when you're Apple and have a unique position among the handset vendors where the carrier doesn't insist on fucking with your device software and lets you treat the end user as the customer, and interact with them directly to provide support, then it's a lot easier.
When you have the mistaken perspective (easy to make in the US) that the carrier is your customer and you should cater to them, shit happens like ancient devices without updates. Not that it'd help blatantly irresponsible companies like Motorola, who repeatedly abandon handsets after a year or so, but may be they'd be more willing to do a better job (or more directly feel the effects) if they weren't protected by contracts and buffered from reality by the carriers.
For those that haven't already seen it, there is a growing collection of iOS 6 map glitches on The Amazing IOS 6 Maps
>35.4% adoption of iOS 6, with iOS 5.x holding court at 71.5% adoption
So, iOS 5.x and 6.0 have reached 106.9% adoption on his site? That's impressive.
And there was also this, spotted in the London Underground:
http://www.tomshardware.com/gallery/A3QARhSCIAA2R9U,0101-353576-0-2-3-1-jpg-.html
... the really funny part is it also eclipses the over-one-year-old Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) as well.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
But is that how it should be? The best comparison is Android to Windows/Linux, where we see old hardware being upgradeable, by the user, without rooting the device. There is no technical reason a one year phone cannot be upgraded to JB. But thanks to Google/device manufacturers handing so much control to carriers that does not happen. This is a situation where Apple really does lead the way.
iOS upgrades and Android upgrades are not comparable.
Most android devices aren't even eligible to upgrade to the next major versions. My droid charge for example is stuck at 2.3.x.
Isn't that the point?
Using what appears to be WW2 survaliance photos, placing streets in the middle of rivers and lakes and moving towns a great distance away from their actual location (see GP's link) are Beta or even alpha features, this should not have replaced a working app which a large number of people rely on for directions. In Aus it dosen't even recognise any toll roads.
null
There was no reason to have a native YouTube app included in the OS, was there? I can count the number of times I opened that app on one hand in the 4 years I've owned an iPhone.
I downloaded the new YouTube app, opened it once and then deleted it. It's the same shit you get on the web and it's mainly for finding new videos rather than anything truly useful. It's not like you need the app to view the videos.
This is really a non-issue.
No, it is comparing apples to oranges as usual. I wonder what is the adoption of JB on Google devices. For me, it is about 100%, as all my google android gadgets run JB.
No, there is plenty to see here.
Maps and navigation are a big deal on smartphones. Phone calls are their most important function, but Internet browsing and maps/navigation vie for the second most important feature.
And no, Google Maps doesn't even begin to approach this failure. Not even close. Aside from the horrific rendering, missing roads, and an inability to find what should be obvious searches, it doesn't even attempt to duplicate useful functionaly present in Google Maps. Public transportation? Use 3rd-party apps. Walking directions? Lol who walks these days?
Apple fans agree.
Misinterpreted destinations, sure, and those glitches aren't obvious if you don't know the area, so they can be very time consuming to find and correct. If you page through the Amazing Maps collection, you'll find a lot of stuff that is obviously messed up even to someone that doesn't know anything about geography, like clouds, warped roads, and complete mutilation.
Anyway, I don't have a horse in this race -- I just thought it was interesting to look at.
The difference is in the sheer magnitude of glitches. When your map software shows Golden Gate bridge and Washington monument off by several miles, it begs the question of who even tested it, and how.
Don't forget to get the new youtube app, since apple dumped the native one for no good reason.
And thank God. The old one was really outdated--a relic from when Apple needed a custom solution in order to even play Youtube videos (during the whole "no Flash" debacle)--and borderline terrible. The new one on the App Store is loads better.
And yeah, the license they had with Google expired. Sounds like a good reason to drop it. Besides, if you don't want it, why should it be taking up space on your screen? (Now, if only I could drop Stocks and Newsstand. They just added Passbook, but it looks like it has some potential.)
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Apparently there is a bug in Safari for IO6 that causes caching of POST requests, which is causing all sorts of web developers to scramble like crazy to implement cache busting in their apps.
Thanks apple.
Johnkoerner.com
The big problem for me is I mostly use the google map for its *excellent* bus and train routing. I can just drop in an address, let it pull my current location from the GPS and have it give me really great bus/train combinations. Apple has dropped this feature
Until theres an alternative I simply cant upgrade. Which is a problem for me, being a full time IOS developer and all that.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
You know what would be even nicer than acknowledging the problem? Allowing their users to choose which map program they want to use, instead of forcing them to be pawns in Apple's war on Google.
Yawn, call me when Google Maps starts misspelling or misplacing capital cities of several countries around the world.
Man some of you guys have been severely blinded by the shiny. Steve is dead, you can come back to reality now.
Sure their implementation is new and Apple deserves some slack for thaT
They deserve slack for replacing a well known, well tested, highly reliable and popular service with their in-house verison which is apparently poorly tested and unpopular-- all in the name of a popularity contest?
No, they took a gamble to try to marginalize Google, and apparently its half baked. I see no reason anyone would give them slack.
Isnt IOS 6 a free upgrade? And compatible across ~90% of apple devices?
Im gonna guess THAT is why the adoption rate is so high, not because Apple is good at bilking money out of users (which is irrelevant if the update is, in fact, free).
That would be nice, but this is Apple we're talking about. They've proven over and over how petty and vindictive and what control freaks they are. If you continue to be a customer of theirs, you have to know what you're getting into, and expecting good behavior from them is naive in the extreme.
Not clear how a product-planning fuckup on Apple's part constitutes an emergency on Google's part.
You don't understand... Steve was dying, and Google mocked him by making a hydra in the shape of his greatest brain child. That damned Android just wouldn't die, and the more heads Steve cut off, the more the damn thing would grow. He had to crush Google and its Gawd forsaken Android. He had no choice but to jettison every bit of Google from the AppleSphere. If it hurts Apple, so be it, Android must be obliterated or the space time continuum will shatter!
So clearly you must see it was a simple business decision.
WTF happened to the trolls here? I used to kill time reading Adolf_HitTroll, the GNAA, etc. Love 'em, hate 'em, they filled that gap until the real content came in.
Now there are hippies in my trolls!
Not cool.Not cool. Vegetarian trolls can't even make dick jokes, so it's really just a waste of time.
I think that if Apple, Google and Samsung were countries we would have World War 3 today. Why do Apple and Google try to solve their disputes over the backs of their customers? I thought I'd use Google Maps in Safari to get Street View back, but even that doesn't work. Google Earth on the iPad is just a shadow of what it is on the Mac. why is that? And I didn't even mention YouTube...
-- Cheers!
Apple maps is still a little raw. But I've had Google direct me to closed stores, and to THREE imaginary Arby's when driving through Nevada.
Apple maps will get better too, now that they are crowdsourcing map errors. That's what Google had to do also.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's what my fanboi friend said (not implying that you are a fanboi). But the truth is, Apple broke my iPad with iOS 6 and I want my money back. Why would I download some third-party apps to get back the fuctionality that I had?
-- Cheers!
I'm not so sure you can do everything in ICS on a Gingerbread phone using just apps. Things like notification swipe-to-dismiss were added in AOSP gingerbread builds, but you won't get Jelly Bean's extended notifications, or "Project Butter", or even hardware-accelerated UI.
I had a sig once. It was lost in the great storm of '09.
The RDF is strong here. Now Apple invented the mobile browser?
I guess Opera will be getting letters from Apple's lawyers for that ACID2 compliant SmartPhone browser that was available a whole year before the iPhone even launched.
I know that one: mix brown rice, lentils, onions, garlic, yams, plantains, green peas and jamaican jerk flavor until it becomes a vegetable stew.
lucm, indeed.
All I can guess is that IOS5 must have REALLY, REALLY sucked!
Three Squirrels
Except it's not just innaccuracies: the first thing I did was switch to satellite view and, instead of the pretty decent satellite/ariel imgery of my local area on the previous data, I get a murky, low res, black-and-white mess, in which the local city centre is shrouded in cloud. Apart from a handful of major cities with the fancy 'flyover' feature, every where I've tried so far has cruddy satellite imagery. How are they gonna crowdsource that?
Then there's major missing functionality: no street view, which was really useful for getting an idea of what your dstination looked like from the street. No public transport - I get 'recommended' a list of Apps the only credible one (i.e. doesn't have a 1-star review and clearly covers my area) costs £50 - and probably more if I want to get coverage of Europe and N. America too (all free in the old app)..
Walking directions are there but (unlike the old map) you can't toggle between modes, but have to select transport mode from the start/end dialogue, and have to start again if you want to change mode. The fact that people have missed this and are saying that there are no walking directions suggests that someone skimped on their user testing.
By way of return, we get turn-by-turn (which I was quite happy to have as a separate App because it needs a different UI anyway, plus - unlike Maps - it's useless on a WiFi iPad) and a 'flyover' gimmick that Google Earth has offered for years. Oh, yes, and now I can rotate the map just in case I have a spatial reasoning dysfunction. Whoopie.
Yes - its hard to set up your own international mapping service, but then Apple aren't some struggling startup and they're not creating something brand new: they have more money than God, branches around the world and a clear 'minimum standard' to aim for in the old Apps. iOS is supposed to be a stable system - they've suddenly yanked major functionality and switched to significantly inferior data. Whatever the reason, that's a fail.
PS: Yes, Google may release their own App, which Apple may or may not approve, but Crapple Maps will still be the default for integration with contacts, canlendar, web etc. Apple have also undermined people's confidence in their quality control.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Google maps for iPhone doesn't have turn by turn directions. Apple couldn't afford not to have that feature. It's as simple as that.
Nor could they afford to fuck up the rest of Maps' functionality just for the sake of turn-by-turn. There are turn-by-turn Apps available, free and paid, and Apple could have probably produced their own turn-by-turm App in parallel with the old Maps app (AFAIK the App itself was always written by Apple - it just used Google's mapping services/API). Quite honestly, it doesn't matter that much if turn-by-turn is separate: it needs a unique UI anyway, plus it's not much use for the millions of people with WiFi-only iPads.
We don't know what the contractual spat is between Google and Apple or whose fault it is - but since Google makes their money from web services/ad targeting (and mainly makes 'platforms' as a loss-leader to promote those services) while Apple makes its money by designing nice platforms and selling premium-priced hardware to run them, it's hard to see why they can't make a mutually beneficial deal. Someone is being a dick, and risking ruining their reputation in a misguided attempt to muscle in on the other's business.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
You don't have the capacity to read numbers right and are too stupid to work with them
Here is a clue: That 71.5% is out of the 35.4%.
I know ... you are probably too dumb to understand that direct response too. After all ... it has numbers.
I'm too dumb to understand that. 71.5% out of the 35.4% are running ios6? and the 35.4 are running either ios6 or ios5? WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF REPORTING IS THAT??
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You want petty and vindictive? Wait until Samsung has television ads comparing people navigating with iOS 6 vs navigating with Android 4.
"His name was James Damore."
It doesn't need a unique UI. When you get directions in maps, it will automatically guide you as you're driving.
The claim that they've fucked up the rest of Maps' functionality is largely overblown. I'm a developer, and I've been using the maps application since the beta was released to developers. I haven't even noticed any errors in it, let alone been inconvenienced by them. On the other hand, I've found the 3D maps useful for finding hiking trails, as strange as that sounds, because the image quality in the national parks is amazing and it's easy to pick out trails, even ones that aren't on any map.
Also, when I was using Google maps, I got burned more than once on their "unverified" listings. Many of the restaurants and small businesses they list are no longer in business. I had taken to calling the numbers listed to make sure the listings in google maps were legitimate. I haven't noticed that with Apple maps, because they get their listings from Yelp. Though maybe as it matures it will become a problem.
If I was using public transit, I may feel differently. But then again, I found the google maps public transit directions to be flawed when I did live in the city. I was always having to tweak the start and end location because the directions it gave me didn't let me choose how far I was willing to walk before I started/after I finished. Even so, I hope Apple does add it in the future.
As far as who is responsible, that's hardly relevant. The fact is that there's no excuse for a modern phone not to have built in, free turn by turn directions. Apple really didn't have a choice but to switch. From a business perspective, it was also unwise for them to have a core feature of the phone provided by a competitor. It would put them in a precarious situation whether or not they were on good terms with Google.
Yes it is – it means that developers are likely to be able to target iOS 6 very soon, giving them the ability to use more features and not have to make hacks to have things work on earlier OSes... great!
Opera mobile is full fledged and was out much earlier than the iPhone
To make it clear, the Google Maps app on iOS did not provide turn-by-turn navigation.
The iOS app for google maps provides a map which shows your route and has two arrow buttons to switch back and forth between turn points. But there are neither voice directions nor "signs" where you have to drive, you have to derive all info from the top down view, which is basically unusable if you have to drive and navigate yourself.
This isn't turn by turn.
Only on Slashdot does this inaccuracy and borderline lie get modded as 5 insightful.
Well, there is certainly plenty of fault to go around:
1. You don't have to break maps to deploy security updates.
2. The android practice of not deploying security updates is one day going to lead to a massive cataclysm. If somebody manages to come up with some kind of email worm for Android you're going to see some fun times as the vendors tell everybody to just throw out their six-month-old phones and buy new ones.
It sounds like what you are saying is that you didn't bother to check out what the advantages and disadvantages of the new iOS version before updating (even though there were articles about it all over the net even before the upgrade came out), and you are too lazy to download 3rd party apps, and you blame Apple.
Apple's apps are nice, but if you don't take advantage of apps other than Apple's, you are actually missing out on much of the functionality of your iPad.
If you really miss Google Maps all that much, here's an easy way to get it back, which doesn't even require downloading a 3rd party app.
1. Start Safari
2. Enter www.maps.google.com in the address field
3. Tap the middle icon at the bottom of the screen (the box and arrow)
4. Tap "Add to home screen"
In fact, there are numerous map programs available for iPhone, including some free ones, so users are indeed free to choose whatever map program they want to use. Personally, I like Navigon, which isn't free, but which is quite reliable (although I've never used any GPS mapping app or device that didn't occasionally make routing errors, sometimes ludicrous ones).
The Google-based version of Apple Maps had some nice features, but it hadn't really advanced with the times, and no longer met user expectations for a mapping app. It seems likely that Google was not highly motivated to produce an up-to-date mapping app for iOS, because its improved version was a selling point for devices using their own Android OS. So Apple had little choice but to produce their own mapping app, and deal the problems that will inevitably arise when there are suddenly millions of users, because no amount of testing is going to catch every glitch worldwide.
In the meantime, most of the functionality of the Google version of Apple Maps is still available at www.maps.google.com.
Right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mobile#History
Served me very well, even on my Sony Ericsson P800 in 2003.
It may well be true of the majority. Just because the reviewers are looking for errors and find them (perhaps by googling for them), doesn't necessarily mean that they are so common the average user will notice them in general usage. Back in the day, people used to have fun finding the most ridiculous errors in Google maps too. But it didn't mean that Google maps was problematic for the average user in those early days.
They deserve slack for replacing a well known, well tested, highly reliable and popular service with their in-house verison which is apparently poorly tested and unpopular-- all in the name of a popularity contest?
I wonder about that. Apple must have had a pretty strong reason to drop such an important and widely-used app from their most popular product, so what could that have been? Petty spite is possible, but it doesn't seem plausible. Maybe Apple decided it's not good to be dependent on their only competitor in the mobile space? Or maybe Google refused to put any significant work into updating Maps; I don't recall any major new features appearing for it in recent years)? Perhaps Google hinted that it's an awfully nice mapping app they've got there - it'd be a pity if something were to happen to it. Or maybe it was just a combination of those and other factors that made Apple say, "you know, this isn't going to be any less painful if we put it off. Let's bite the bullet and get started with a self-hosted app sooner rather than later."
I can imagine quite a few reasons why a company might not have wanted to be in the position that Apple was with Google's Maps app. A popularity wasn't one of them.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Google has already submitted their app to the app store, it's pending Apple's approval. Now who's being petty?
I upgraded just to see what all the maps bitching was all about, and was surprised to discover that the Apple maps were actually quite superior for my area. Google maps actually got street names wrong, where Apple had them right, and the Google satellite views were 3 years old, showing construction zones where Apple showed fully occupied developments. And I'm in Canada where I would have expected them to skimp on data quality for first release.
And the 3D map view with compass turned on is beyond sweet - it's like bird's-eye augmented reality.
Google insisted they couldn't do turn by turn navigation on the iPhone, then went and did it in Android. That alone should have been enough.
How much do you want to bet Google is madly working on an iOS maps app right now, with all the features of their mapping service on Android? Wait a few months and iPhone users will likely have much better free mapping solutions than they did a month ago.