Hacker News Reader

Comment by mjs | Hacker News Reader

1. Graph is a bit suspicious--why does the adoption rate sometimes go down? (Some quite large drops as well.) 2. Any equivalent graphs for other versions? 3. Adoption rate pretty flat since about two weeks after the iOS 6 release. 4. What percentage of devices can be upgraded to iOS 6? (Probably 95%+, since the 3GS is supported--?)

View on HN

Since this is "the % of our app's users using iOS6", the rate going down it probably means that in a given day the rate was 70% and the other less than that (meaning more total users, or just more active users that day with less than iOS6, etc).

Nothing to be suspicious about, that's just we are seeing, can't tell you if it's representative of what others are seeing (although the %'s seem to be in the right ballpark to what others have reported). Spikes seem to be related to when an update for one of our apps come out, e.g. around the 2nd (the big spike) is when our update to Discovr Music came out (https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/discovr-music-find-new-music...) I guess people who updated to that are more likely to of updated to iOS 6. In that actual release (2.6) we are seeing more like 75% iOS 6 usage.

Yeah, that would be interesting to also show what percentage of people are on the latest version of your software. A lot of less techie people just never update anything, unless it breaks.

If this were an adoption rate, then a rate can certainly drop. Imagine 5% of current users upgrade on Monday and then only 2% upgrade on Tuesday. A rate is not "raw user numbers."

In the case of this article, additional new users on an older version of iOS would cause a drop in the percentage of users on iOS 6. For example, I have not yet upgraded my iPhone 4 to iOS 6. If I start using this app today, I'd increase the number of users, but cause a decrease in the precent of users on iOS 6.

It's not a rate, though, it's "adoption". How can it drop? Unless users tried iOS 6 and went back to 5 en masse.

I submitted before I was finished editing. Apologies for that. I noticed your reply after I was finished. I address this above.

I can see your point, I guess an accurate description of the graph would be the percentage of people using our app on iOS 6 on each particular day

Reply on news.ycombinator.com