![]() ![]() Nobody can do everything all the time, not even Apple. Despite the size of their bank account they still face resource constraints. Providing updates for older devices is a lot of work for Apple. Phones and tablets that never get updated avoid the potential for slow down, but they also avoid getting new features, security updates, and the ability to run apps that require those updates. Apple updating older devices means you can play that next hot game or use that next big social network, even if they're using the latest technology. Developers who want to use new features can adopt them quickly. Likewise, because Apple updates are so well distributed, at the time of this writing 90%+ of iPhone and iPad customers are currently on the latest version. However, new forms of attack will always be discovered,so getting those updates out in a timely fashion, for as many devices as possible is incredibly important for maintaining that security. Apple has gone great lengths to keep iPhone customers safe from common forms of attack. IOS is a security-first operating system. ![]() When older devices get the latest version of iOS, they get all the latest updates for the Safari browser and related web viewers, and they get the ability to run all the new apps that will be updating in the App Store. The two most important aspects of software updates for older devices are security patches and compatibility with new apps. It's a no win situation when it comes to conspiracy theories, but it can be a win-win when it comes to customers. That was exactly the charge back in 2009 when Apple didn't provide video editing for the iPhone 3G because they believed performance - 15fps vs. If Apple didn't update older devices, instead of being blamed for overloading them to force updates, they'd get blamed for withholding features to force updates. What if Apple didn't update older devices? Rather than trying to get people to upgrade the hardware, however, Apple went into high gear and pushed out updates that greatly improved performance and made owners of those older devices happier. iOS 4 running on the iPhone 3G and iOS 7 running on the iPhone 4 both had issues at first. There can also be legitimate issues new versions of iOS running on older hardware. If and when they slow down or otherwise misbehave, it's easy to blame the operating system. Third party apps sometimes don't update as expeditiously as we'd like either, and some aren't great citizens to begin with. (New features can often be turned off in preferences if you don't want to make use of them.) Since that never happened before the update, but does happen after the update, again it can compound the perception. These can also consume more resources when, for example, they're downloading new content or updating timelines. New versions of iOS also add new features, like background refresh in iOS 7. That can consume a lot of resources and impact performance for a short period of time, compounding the perception. All sorts of background tasks run during and immediately after an update. You're looking for what's new and what's different so any little tick, pause, or skip tends to stand out.Īnd there's likely to be some, because iOS updates change things. ![]() Likewise when you update to a new version of iOS, you know you're changing things and you become more sensitive to change. And perception, as the old saying goes, seems like reality. It's that you've become more sensitive to that color - you notice it more. It isn't that everyone else went out and bought that same color as well. Suddenly you start seeing that same color much more often than ever before. There's a phenomena that occurs when you buy a new color car. However, someone with a Galaxy S3 on T-Mobile in Germany is almost certainly on a very different update schedule than someone with a Galaxy S4 on AT&T in the U.S., never mind someone with an HTC One Mini on Vodafone in the U.K. In other words, someone with an iPhone 4s on Rogers in Canada is on exactly the same update schedule as someone with an iPhone 5c on Orange in France is on the same schedule as someone with an iPhone 5s on Verizon in the U.S. ![]()
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