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iOS 11 Passes 50 Percent Adoption In Under 2 Months (venturebeat.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the one-in-two dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: After a longer wait than usual, Apple today finally released the first official numbers for iOS 11. The various figures and estimates released by marketing and research firms are no longer relevant, as we now know for certain that iOS 11 has passed the 50 percent mark in less than two months. In other words, the latest version of the company's mobile operating system is now on one in every two of its mobile devices. iOS 11 was released on September 13, meaning it took less than seven weeks to reach the majority of users that Apple tracks. While this is certainly impressive, keep in mind that iOS 10 took less than a month and iOS 9 took less than a week to hit the same adoption milestone. Sure, the number of iOS devices is growing, but Apple also cuts down the number allowed to get the latest updates.

8 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. iOS users are more conditioned to upgrade by ErichTheRed · · Score: 1, Informative

    iPhone users (in the US at least, not sure what's going on elsewhere) are conditioned to upgrade their devices. Even though carrier subsidies are gone, they've been replaced by a series of "lease/loan/trade-up" programs that keep people in contracts with their carriers until the equipment loan is satisfied. That, and iOS users tend to have more disposable income to go upgrade their shiny devices, so even if the cost of the device is hidden they don't really care.

    Software-wise, it's the same thing driving the Windows-as-a-Service thing that Microsoft is doing with Windows 10. People are just conditioned to click "Restart Now" and accept whatever update appears because all of the complexity has been hidden away. One thing I can say about Windows 10 is that upgrades are much safer than they were back in the Windows 7 days...but that comes with the drawback of not knowing much about what is in those update packages. Microsoft used to break out exactly what changed in each update but they are increasingly tight-lipped and reverting to Apple-style "makes your PC faster, easier and more enjoyable! (...and fixes these 247 security holes)"

    1. Re:iOS users are more conditioned to upgrade by jittles · · Score: 4, Informative

      And what the hell is up with the native Podcast app. It is all but worthless now. I guess the Apple QA folks don't use it or have switched to an AppStore replacement.

      My experience with iOS 11 suggests that Apple does not have any QA staff anymore. Certainly no QA staff that does something as silly as type the word "I" anywhere.

    2. Re:iOS users are more conditioned to upgrade by MikeMo · · Score: 4, Informative

      You, sir, are completely uninformed. The reason iOS users update more frequently is precisely because the update does not come through the carriers. It comes directly from Apple. In all cases, no exceptions. And, of course, the update is completely free and always has been.

      Even people with hand-me-downs and resales do updates.

    3. Re:iOS users are more conditioned to upgrade by mlw4428 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Patently untrue. iOS 11 supports back to 5s. That's for a phone released in September of 2013. Meaning the Galaxy S5 which was released in April of 2014 will not be getting the upgrade (from Samsung). From a support model perspective, Apple wins hands down. It supports the devices longer with more frequent updates than even the best Android manufacturer.

    4. Re:iOS users are more conditioned to upgrade by Gr8Apes · · Score: 5, Informative

      The battery drain is definitely there - it's between 2 and 4 times as bad as with iOS 10. This would be after disabling all background processing, and removing cellular data from most apps. My suspicion is the mail app is still processing in the background, based on the fact that the battery drain shows mail in the top 2 at 10% drain in "background"... and mail is supposed to not run in background at all, and does have access to cellular. I've noticed that in weak cell service areas, the battery drains like you're mining bitcoin, so it's likely that mail is the primary culprit in my case, I'm considering testing by removing cellular data from mail just for a short while.

      I installed iOS 11 to test a few things, on my personal phone, in a moment of forgetfulness. I normally don't install an update until the x.1 version comes out, because that's usually the beta, IMNSHO. Everything before that is not ready based on personal experience and testing since the iOS 9 release. Before that iOS was reasonably solid. If I could, I'd actually run on iOS 8, it was rock solid and didn't have any of the irritating bugs that really bother me with 10 and 11.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  2. Android for Comparison by mlw4428 · · Score: 3, Informative

    The highest adoption rate is Marshmallow at 32% and Lollipop (with API 22) at 21%. That's the one big benefit of Apple: you get updates (for at least a handful number of years).

  3. Ummmm, moron. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you were 1/1000th the "power user" you claim to be, you'd know you can turn off the update nagging.

  4. Re:Not adopted by jittles · · Score: 3, Informative

    I love my Apple stuff, but sometimes it really feels like nobody tried to use it out in the street before shipping it.

    Sometimes? Just about every single issue in the past few years could have easily been spotted by any QA or dev who just used their own tool. Even the calculator issue in iOS 11 shows that no one at Apple has bothered to use the calculator on their phone in the year or so that Apple has been working on the release.