iOS 6

[Grall]

Not sure what exactly impresses me most about iOS 6. There's some really major additions here, but the Passbook feature really is quite ingenious. It doesn't jump at you and wave its arms, but it's a great addition. Too bad there's no support for it in Sweden (yet). Guided mode is another such fairly anonymous, but very very useful feature. I don't care about all that tweeter and facebork integration crap, but it's there for those who desire it.

Maps though... Wow. It shows a lot of really, REALLY good functionality. It's now a true turn-by-turn navigation GPS, SIRI enabled, and with vector graphics. Rotating maps on retina iPad with 3D mode looks fabulous. Flyover mode = EFFIN DRROOOL!

What I'd really like to see however they did not show, and that was WIDGETS for the home screen. That's what I'm most envious about with Android. I also want my CALENDAR to show the next upcoming event on the LOCK SCREEN. Is that really too much to ask???

Also, I don't know if they've done anything with the clunky text input; I saw a really incredible adaptive on-screen keyboard demo on Youtube some years ago and Google ended up buying that company, while Apple's OSK is just utter pap really. I also have difficulty moving the text cursor. I almost always end up getting the cut-and-paste tool instead. A better OSK would be much much needed. Maybe iOS 7 then...

And Apple continues showing how you should do mobile OS: iOS6 EVEN SUPPORTS THE iPhone 3DS. (*Edit: 3DS? The Nintendo phone??? 3GS, I meant to say!) This is why Apple has 80+ percent of users using the latest release, when Android only has 7% of its users using its "dairy product".

 

[Arwin]

Yes, Android should hire some good skin designers instead of letting vendors handle that individually, as that holds back OS upgrades.

 

[silent_guy]

Yes, Android should hire some good skin designers instead of letting vendors handle that individually, as that holds back OS upgrades.

Isn't it simply a case of missing incentives to spend a lot of time backward compatibility? Why would Motorola hurry to upgrade a sold phone if the likelihood of the same customer staying with the same brand for his next purchase is very small?

Maybe it is different for Samsung, since they are starting to have the critical mass...

 

[Grall]

The likelihood of a customer staying with your brand in the future is going to be even smaller by pissing on said customer by not providing value in the form of OS upgrades.

Apple obviously understands that, and since Steve Jobs hated creating a tiered product line for different price groups, Apple continues to offer older models as cheaper alternatives to their flagship offering, it makes sense to develop OS releases even for older phones. After all, they're still being manufactured and sold.

Also, it's a developer incentive to know customers are likely to have the latest OS release, so it'd make economic sense to develop specifically for those new features and APIs in that OS release. If only a tiny fraction of your installed base even has that OS, why would you spend the time and the money on using the new features?

Google is both blessed and cursed to offer its OS to many different handset makers (which are a shrinking number due to market forces, but that's a different topic); Apple however has full control of its ecosystem. It cannot be held hostage by either service providers (whom apparantly are balking at the thought of providing over-the-air updates for Android phones) or device manufacturers. Apple sets the terms and doesn't let anyone else compromise its vision, and that's why I own an iPhone and nothing else.

Apple's not perfect, and far from it, but IMO, the alternatives are even less perfect.

Biggest letdown with iOS6: no Siri support for older devices. THAT would have been nice.

 

[silent_guy]

The likelihood of a customer staying with your brand in the future is going to be even smaller by pissing on said customer by not providing value in the form of OS upgrades.

Sure, but especially if you developed an Android device that wasn't very successful in the first place (e.g. Xoom), you're not going to piss off a lot of customers anyway. That's why it's so much more important for Samsung to get this right.
A second factor is that Android buyers are more likely to be unaware of what they bought: they entered a Verizon store buying a phone and were a smartphone thingamabob. They don't really care about which version their Droid phone is running either. Less incentive to provide upgrades once again.

(I fully understand that there is an opposite spectrum of buyers who go Android for technical/political reasons, but they are an obvious minority.)

 

[Scott_Arm]

I don't understand why Apple is getting into the maps business. Not an interesting feature at all.

Overall, this was probably the least interesting iOS release I can remember.

 

[ltcommander.data]

So given the iPhone 3GS is still supported in iOS 6, do we think that it'll keep selling for yet another year post iPhone 5 release? Or will it finally be discontinued and this is simply a generous year of software support (probably security support being the primary motivation) for recent buyers?

It was disappointing the rumoured Siri developer APIs haven't come to pass. Siri support comes to the 3rd gen iPad, but not the iPad 2, so I guess they're using mic quality as the explanation? Flyover in Maps requires the iPhone 4S or iPad 2/3, which is probably due to GPU requirements, but is there really a technical limitation to not supporting turn-by-turn on the iPhone 4? I was also expecting OpenCL support, but perhaps they are waiting for the iPhone 5 launch along with a showpiece first-party app for that.

 

[RudeCurve]

Limiting turn by turn on the iPhone 4 is lame I agree, but the 4S replaced the 4 so maybe it was a marketing reason. Apple knows that a lot of people who own the original 4 are in a position to upgrade so having this artificial limit will nudge them to do it? Personally I'll be upgrading to the iPhone 5 this year so the absence of turn by turn on the original 4 doesn't really matter to me. Maybe that's what Apple wasn't thinking?

 

[Grall]

My contract on my iP4 ends in december, so I'll probably upgrade too. Depends on if there's a substantial upgrade to the hardware in iP5, or if they'll just modify the shell (re. ongoing rumors of a 5" display and whatnot.) I can't use most features of Siri anyway even if I wanted to so not having access to that doesn't really matter to me.

 

[silent_guy]

My contract on my iP4 ends in december, so I'll probably upgrade too. Depends on if there's a substantial upgrade to the hardware in iP5, or if they'll just modify the shell (re. ongoing rumors of a 5" display and whatnot.) I can't use most features of Siri anyway even if I wanted to so not having access to that doesn't really matter to me.

I think the iP4 was the first phone with a reasonably complete feature set. The only thing really missing is LTE. All other HW upgrades are incremental in nature: faster CPU, somewhat better camera etc. Useful stuff, but nothing that will rock your world if your use is mostly limited to text related apps. If the 5 doesn't have LTE, I may will sit it out for another year.

 

[pcchen]

I don't understand why Apple is getting into the maps business. Not an interesting feature at all.

IIRC it's because Google refused to provide turn-by-turn navigation for Apple, citing "licensing" reasons.

 

[Pressure]

I'm still trying to figure out why Siri only is available to the new iPad and not the iPad 2, considering they have the very same processor power.

Suppose there are differences in the SoC that enables Siri just for the new iPad, much like the iPhone 4S vs iPhone 4.

 

[wco81]

IIRC it's because Google refused to provide turn-by-turn navigation for Apple, citing "licensing" reasons.

I heard there were "disagreements" of some kind.

Anyways the concern is that Apple maps won't have the wealth of data and metadata that google maps have accumulated over the years. Especially outside of big US cities.

Wondering if Google will try to publish their own app. so that people have a choice.


As for Siri presumably it's about selling the current higher margin products and possible infrastructure constraints which may prevent offering it to a higher number of devices.

 

[Arwin]

I'm still trying to figure out why Siri only is available to the new iPad and not the iPad 2, considering they have the very same processor power.

Suppose there are differences in the SoC that enables Siri just for the new iPad, much like the iPhone 4S vs iPhone 4.

Siri isn't available on the new iPad either. There is only voice dictation, and I am not sure why that is only available on the iPad 3 as it sends data to a server, does no local procressing (save perhaps some data compression, but I doubt that couldn't be handled by the old iPad, or even the iPad 1).

And voice dictation isn't available for my language - I have to set it to English to even see that option. It works quite well for us, but I haven't found it useful yet at all.

 

[Mariner]

The fact that original Siri app (which admittedly wasn't as well integrated into iOS), worked on pre-4S devices would tend to indicate to me that the lack of support for the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 is a marketing-led choice, not a hardware one.

 

[Mize]

I don't understand why Apple is getting into the maps business. Not an interesting feature at all.

Overall, this was probably the least interesting iOS release I can remember.

massive pissing war with google...apple felt google let the iOS version of maps fall behind. Also, a modern smart phone without maps and nav just isn't competitive.

Overall I think iOS 6 looks to be a pretty massive improvement, particularly the social integration in which which WP7.5 was taking a lead. That and the icloud sync.

My Galaxy S3 arrives today though

 

[Grall]

I think the iP4 was the first phone with a reasonably complete feature set.

Aye! ...With the caveat that you add the word "Apple" inbetween "first" and "phone"; there were of course other phones that had the same - or more! - features before IP4 of course. Except for the retina display, where Apple is still one amongst the few to offer such a good display. There's a couple other premium phones, but not that many.

I hopped on Apple's bandwagon with the iP4 due to it finally being feature complete. Previously, iP:s had missed one thing or another; 3G was missing from the original one, front-facing camera and autofocus missing from other models and so on. iP4 brought so much new stuff to the table all at once; gyro sensor, front camera, retina display, noise-cancellation mic, twice the RAM compared to before and probably more.

If the 5 doesn't have LTE, I may will sit it out for another year.

Yeah, LTE/4G is the one big missing feature right now, the dealbreaker for me. There's no real, genuine reason really to upgrade from an iP4 to another 3G phone, unless one has some kind of compulsion to only own the very latest gadgets.

massive pissing war with google...

Not sure that was the ideal picture to have forming in my mind just before lunchtime... Thanks a LOT man!

 

[french toast]

Look I'm sorry but ios 6 is as sleep worthy as you can get.

Apple reinvented the smartphone os, but it's essentially an updated 2007 Os.

Apple's competition is not really android, believe it or not its wp8, it's just as fast if not slicker than ios, has the same instant worldwide upgrade scheme, same lack of fragmentation, and wp7 is much newer and intuitive.

With the metro store hopefully uniting all windows devices, and some 100,000 apps already on the table, windows phone 8 will really test the waters imo.

 

[Jubei]

Look I'm sorry but ios 6 is as sleep worthy as you can get.

Apple reinvented the smartphone os, but it's essentially an updated 2007 Os.

Apple's competition is not really android, believe it or not its wp8, it's just as fast if not slicker than ios, has the same instant worldwide upgrade scheme, same lack of fragmentation, and wp7 is much newer and intuitive.

With the metro store hopefully uniting all windows devices, and some 100,000 apps already on the table, windows phone 8 will really test the waters imo.

WP7.5 was just as fast, had the same upgrade scheme, same lack of fragmentation and was new and intuitive with over 80 000 apps available today. Yet its essentially a failure (with rumours of MS abandoning them in terms of upgrades to WP8) but unifying the OS is going to make it sell like hotcakes? That assumes the average consumer cares about legacy software in the first place.

As for competing with Apple, not likely. Apple competes in profits, not marketshare. Thats why despite having less than 20% of the X86 marketshare, Apple makes more profit in laptops than any other OEM. Same in the mobile space, they only have 30-40% marketshare but make the most money.

Assuming WP8 sells, it will be a threat to Google, not Apple

 

[Scott_Arm]

So, they're doing their own maps because google maps on Android was better? Who else does maps? Seems like a really expensive proposition to cover an app that could be handled by a third party.