When Android came along as a strong competitor to iOS, I remember reading about OTA updates and thinking "How come we are still updating via freaking iTunes? I hate this shit from Apple..".
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.
I have never owned an iOS device, but this is the one area that competitors have not been able to match, and I don't fully understand why. Google tried with the Handset Alliance but that basically didn't work at all. Microsoft tried to make carriers allow them to release updates directly but they couldn't get that to work either.
It seems like only Apple has enough money-making power for carriers to tell the carrier to go screw themselves.
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).
> 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.
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.
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.
I think the fragmentation of the Android ecosystem plays a large part in that. Apple only has to worry about a few models and can push updates all at once with very few variations in firmware.
Before anyone starts drawing conclusions and making claims about OS superiority based on this comment, it's an absurd comparison to make. iOS 7 adoption rates are measured across eight devices manufactured by one company. Android adoption rates are measured across thousands of Android devices made by countless manufacturers. The continuous return to the fact that Apple can get its latest OS onto a majority of its own devices faster than other manufactures can get another company's OS onto their devices completely ignores the fact that the Android and iOS ecosystem is fundamentally different.
The reason why fragmentation occurs is irrelevant. The negative effects of fragmentation on developers and their user bases will still exist even if your platform is fragmented for "good" reasons.
It's not relevant why Android fragmentation occurs when the point is that it occurs at all. After all, what good is an OS update that the majority of users never see?
And that fundamental difference leads to some advantages - More devices to choose from, cheaper hardware, side loading.
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.
Exactly. I just feel that some people look at the adoption rates and completely ignore the decisions that were made that allows Apple to achieve those numbers. At this stage in the game, and with the guiding principles of Android, achieving those numbers are impossible for Android. I just want people to understand that the comparison is more complex, for the exact reasons you've stated.
You seem to be saying that it's not valid to compare adoption rates simply because there are reasons behind the fragmentation. People on HN already know why Android is fragmented. It's just a statement of fact to compare the adoption rates of the two operating systems and the effect it has on developers and users.
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.
That is the sole reason I chose iOS this time around is that the software is same across the board. Interoperability within apple ecosystem is bar none.
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.
They gimmickify it because they don't want to be just making commodity devices on Google's behalf. They want people to notice a difference between their handsets and others and to be deterred from switching to something that looks unfamiliar.
These comparisons though are becoming meaningless. Google is doing major upgrades to all the key apps on Android at a super fast clip. I think they realized they'd never get close to doing it the Apple way and then wondered why they were doing it the Apple way anyways?
Should we compare the percentage of macs running OSX 10.8.5 against the percentage PCs running windows 8? I think fragmentation is just the nature of a distributed hardware environment. I'm not sure what that means really, but there seems to be parallels here.
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.
I'm sorry, I fail to see how Android is designed has anything to do with carriers not updating their specific hardware's OS version. My devices are kept up-to-date quite nicely, so I guess Android on those is the one that Google designed correctly?
That's more about Google's negotiating capabilities with the carriers than how they design software.
Totally a fair comparison because the impact that updating nexus devices has is negligible. Better comparison would be how long it takes to get the latest on say the Galaxy S 3 or 4 phones. Or any of the Galaxy S phones.
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.
Cool! I'll be staring at this all night :) Countdown until it hits 45%...
<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?
I took a break from dealing with an in-band null problem in image data to check HN, and here’s this. Oof.
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.
You're not just grumpy. I think this is a good practice in general. Or maybe it's just you and I; when someone does not do this, I go cross-eyed.
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.
It looks like it broke around 1600 and 1700. I just thought it was because there was just no data past that (it's currently 1600 EDT,) but the post above said the times are UTC.
What annoys me is that it feels unpolished. The system options screen, app buttons with stock looking icons placed on ultra vibrant gradients, poorly spaced typography... it's flat taken too far.
I've had the update downloaded for a few hours now, but it keeps failing on "Verifying update..." After a couple minutes of spinning, it says "Software Update Unavailable".
Each developer account can register 100 devices. People would sign up for a developer account, then go on eBay etc and sell "get iOS 7 beta for $10!", register the customer's UDID on their dev account, and send them a copy of the ipfw.
It was possible to install the betas on non developer iphones by using the upgrade button in itunes (it doesn't require activation). Also, the GM doesn't require activation.
Could be that the active user base of mixpanel has dropped slightly while people are offline to upgrade. Would depend on exactly how their metrics are being gathered.
None-the-less I find it amazing that ~20% of their sample base is already upgraded.
Looks like Apple's activation servers are down now from all the people updating at once.
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.
Windows XP checking in, and I know of at least one other lab still using 2000 (for, IIRC, a thermogravimetric analysis machine). The problem is drivers: Lots of very spendy equipment (test, measurement, fabrication, etc) needs a host PC to run, and often needs a specific OS version because the manufacturer decided to EOL the product.
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.
Looks like XP is the 2nd most common variant of Windows according to this page on Wikipedia[1]. I'm sure there are ways to criticize/pick apart the different sampling techniques used, but none have XP above 7 anymore. Certainly not a non-trivial amount of XP machines out there though.
[1] http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html