Why are Apple iPhone Users Slow to Upgrade? | Hacker News Reader

Why are Apple iPhone Users Slow to Upgrade?

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2 pointssachinag5 comments

I imagine it also might have something to do with the difficulty of upgrading a jailbroken phone. I try not to upgrade more than necessary because I don't want to go through the hassle of having all my settings potentially erased after upgrading, only to have to put everything back the way I want it afterwards.

There's also the issue that jailbreaks aren't always available right away for the latest version. They usually take a few weeks to appear after releases.

iOS and Android, in terms of upgrades, are two very distinct beasts. iOS is closely tied to the generation of iPhone it debuts on, where Android is (per the nature of the OS and hardware separation) a living, growing entity. Android upgrades are incremental and often specialized for each device by its' manufacturers (HTC, Moto). iOS is designed to run on that generation's hardware, and the next generation has new hardware and new software. It's an expiring product by design, whereas Android has a longer lifespan.

Compare HARDWARE upgrades to iOS4 devices and software upgrades, and you'll understand the disparity. Apple users are more likley to buy the next generation of phone than upgrade their last-generation device to the newest software.

Not to mention the elephant in the room that is iOS4's initial horrible performance on last-gen devices.

This article is a bit naive.

iOS4 is definitely not designed with the 3G or 2G versions of the phone and suffers horrible performance on both versions. However it is only 1 of the about 15 different versions of iOS that have been put out, all of which have had MUCH higher adoption rates per device in the field in general per version of Android there is, as Apple versions are rolled out at once, where Android takes at least a quarter, if not more like 3-5 quarters to roll out updates to everyone for a particular version of android, if the handset/carrier even chose to release that version of the OS at all.

The "you must update to run this software" appears to be what makes most apple people update (after buying appstore apps), NOT buying a new phone like you claim.

However as a matter of general OS upgrades, the centralized model (Apple) is working much much much better than Android's reuse of the old carrier based one on average.

The G1 took forever to get new versions, and the Cliq (one of the more popular phones, especially on TMobile) hasn't gotten an update to a modern version of the OS yet (version 1.5 baby...). Android OS fragmentation is all over the map due to poor investment by the handset makers/carriers.

The platform update model of Apple is being copied by the Windows 7 Phone people exactly because of the Snafu that is Android OS version update, if you ask their evangelist/developer training people.

(As an ex-Linux kernel developer/driver developer, I am saddened to see the mess that is Android OS fragmentation. I really really really would prefer to see it be the dominant platform, but the tools and platform unity aren't there. I actually am Cheering for adobe to get an android compilation target that works worth a flip)

In short, I view this "Android users update faster graph" to be "fibbing with statistics", as the Real delay in the android world is the months it takes to get each handset manufacturer/carrier to put out the new version, not the actual release-install time of the individual user.

iOS4 is not really suitable for the 3G version of the phone, and the 2G version of the phone can't run iOS4 at all.

So the graph is skewed by both of those.

Additionally, android is OTA updates, where they don't even notice there is an update available on iOS until they jack in. The article make it sounds like laziness, when I expect it's more not knowing an update is available

I can't imagine all the bad press iOS 4 got for its performance on the 3G had nothing to do with it, even if the study tracked the 3GS.

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