Ask Slashdot: Is iOS 7 Slow? 488
New submitter PopHollywood writes "Is iOS 7 slower than version 6? After upgrading, myself and a few others notice slow, choppy experience when scrolling, changing apps, etc. Is this common?" For those using iOS in general, what's been your experience with the new upgrade?
Dude, (Score:5, Funny)
you're scrolling it wrong.
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It took all night, but it feels less laggy than iOS 6 was at the end. Also, some have complained about the useless animations, but if my actions are acknowledged immediately, I don't end up assuming the phone ignored my input, trying again, and taking eleven pictures of the floor in front of me while trying to start the camera.
Protip: Consider doing a clean install.
Re:Dude, (Score:5, Informative)
My (i)phone (4) hung in the middle of the upgrade, so I ended up having to do a clean install.
It took all night, but it feels less laggy than iOS 6 was at the end. Also, some have complained about the useless animations, but if my actions are acknowledged immediately, I don't end up assuming the phone ignored my input, trying again, and taking eleven pictures of the floor in front of me while trying to start the camera.
Protip: Consider doing a clean install.
That's the thing, I installed iOS7 on my test/backup iPhone 4S, so I could explore it before installing on my iPhone 5. The overall UI remained smooth as I used the browser, various apps, etc for a couple hours... no appreciable stuttering or lag, which was impressive.
However, the feel of the UI itself is definitely slower. The lockscreen fade-in and fade out, while nicer than the instant on/off in earlier iOS, takes too long. The animation that happens after exiting the lockscreen to Homescreen, which while running prevents me tapping on an app to launch it, is over 1 second, whereas my iPhone 5 on iOS6 is half that.
Also, after pressing the home button in iOS6 it's about 1/4 second before an app exits, which still allows time for starting double- or even triple-press functions. In iOS7 this delay is a full second! This is the epitome of actions NOT being acknowledged immediately, and there's no obvious good reason why this additional delay was put in.
It's not just because it's installed on an older device or because it wasn't a clean install, I verified iOS7's longer, built-in UI response times on an iPhone 5S in the store.
I can get used to the visual changes, I really don't appreciate the additional lag times that seem to be built-in to the OS itself, since the whole idea was to simplify and improve the interface!
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I don't have a lifeproof case, but they look like they cover the bezel. Might make swiping difficult.
Been seeing lots of issues on upgraded phones (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in a field where I see a lot of mobile devices and we've been seeing a lot of issues with iPhone 4/4S/5 units that had iOS 6 and were upgraded to iOS 7. Haven't come across too many 5C/S units yet but the few we have seem to be doing okay (no real issues with the 5S, 5C seems a little stuttery at times but not bad).
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In my case i had a whole slew of issues that showed up with IOS6. MMS stopped working, iMessage over data didn't work, data dropped constantly and I had to toggle roaming to regain it - just lots of stuff. None of this occurred with my iPad 2 just my 4S. I had been told that a "hard reset" would fix it and indeed the Apple store did it - which pretty much wiped out EVERYTHING on the phone but it worked great except I'd pretty much burned down my house to get there. So I pulled a backup and restored it - pro
Re:Been seeing lots of issues on upgraded phones (Score:5, Funny)
A 'hard reset' is just a cold boot- it forces all apps and the OS to shut down immediately, and reboots the device. You do it by holding the Home and Sleep/Wake buttons down.
You seem to be referring to a Restore- that resets the device to factory settings, wiping all content. That's done through iTunes.
And if the problems came back when your backup was restored, then obviously there was something wrong with what was restored.
Or if you are really adventurous just stick a paper clip into your lightning connector and wiggle it around.
wouldn't be the first time.... (Score:2, Informative)
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That Apple has pushed out updates to hardware that couldn't really handle it. They've done this both to computers and I phones.
Actually I've always been impressed how the osx updates worked so well on my old hardware. I some cases there wasn't much change, and in some cases there were definit improvements. I can't think of any upgrade where I felt bogged down afterward.
I agree about the phones, but remember that the phones are improving like at 2x annually. Hard to make an os. That takes advantage of new phone hardware but runs well on a phone that is 3 years older and 10x slower!
Yep (Score:5, Informative)
There seem to be two different kinds of slowdown. The first is due to the new animations for things like going back to the home screen. The second is more intermittent, and happens mostly when task switching. Both of them are annoying. The whole reason I went with iOS over Android was the snappier UI.
The disappearing Safari toolbar also drives me crazy. I wish I had held off on upgrading. Hopefully Apple will have some tweaks and patches out soon.
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Re:Yep (Score:5, Informative)
The whole reason I went with iOS over Android was the snappier UI.
This may have been true a few years ago with Android handsets generally being underpowered, but the hardware caught up a while ago already.
I have a Nexus 4 and, aside from the rare hangup which happens on any OS, everything is just instant. Transitions are smooth and clean, apps load effortlessly, scrolling is incredibly responsive.
My dad's iPhone feels sluggish and cumbersome by comparison.
Re:Yep (Score:5, Informative)
The N4 (which has been out for about a year) does not have this issue at all. In fact, I've not seen it on any android phone that came out the last year.
The last time I experienced a small UI lag on times was with the 3 year old HTC Desire. It kind of helped that 4.0+ went with HW accelerated UI.
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They show a difference of ~30-50ms between iOS and Android. Based on previous discussion about input lag in LCD monitors, that seems to be a range that some people find very annoying and others don't notice at all.
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Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
Android has done it properly from scratch simply riding on the shoulders of linux. Apple wanted to make sure the experience is guaranteed so it slowly introduced task switching, and now it has to hack it in.
What exactly does this mean? What is Android getting from its Linux pedigree that iOS doesn't get from its BSD UNIX pedigree?
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Background apps are suspended, thus using no battery life.
How is THAT multi-tasking? That's just saving a program state somewhere and pulling it back up on demand. Multi-tasking is when you are actually RUNNING a program in the background, although with fewer percentage of CPU cycles.
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For those replying, I quote: "The other side of multitasking is the way apps run in the background. Apple added a strictly prescribed form of app multitasking a few years ago, but it is expanding in iOS 7. Apps will be able to update in the background based on intelligent scheduling at the OS level. If you always use certain apps at certain times, iOS 7 could allow them to be ready in the background. That sounds great, if it works.
Android has always taken a laissez faire approach to multitasking. You want t
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The part that really bugs me is how they implemented the "scroll up = reappear" part. If I drag the page up, stop, then lift up my finger, nothing happens. I have to fling the page so that it keeps moving on its own momentum to get the toolbar to reappear. How do you screw that up? Was anyone really upset about not having those pixels to begin with?
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But really, just use one of the nicer 3rd-party browsers. I'm partial to Atomic Web but there are a lot of other popular ones available.
to the grandparent, the animation isn't distracting at
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Didn't realize I could do that. Googling, it looks like I'm too late -- Apple has stopped signing the old firmware versions. :-(
Not new (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's normal. ;)
Almost seems purposeful (Score:5, Informative)
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However, foregoing the update had negative side effects of its own. I was unable to install many apps because they required the new version of iOS and old
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They fixed that the other day too; now the App Store will warn you if the current version won't run on older iOS, and will offer you the last version that will run on your system [techcrunch.com].
Of course, now people are bitching about that... [arstechnica.com]
But at least it fixes some of the more stupid fuckups - for example, iOS happily updating core apps like iBooks on old hardware to incomp
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I'm not sure if all of that is still required, but it certainly didn't seem to live up to Apple's standards for being user-friendly.
Fortunately not; you no longer need iTunes for updates and you are able to download older versions of apps that are still compatible with your older OS. And luckily none of the updates has been as terrible on older phones as iOS 4 was on the 3G, even though they do all (unsurprisingly) tend to tax the hardware more.
Apple OS Upgrade Expectations (OSX & iOS) (Score:3)
When upgrading my mac computers I have always seen a significant boost in performance on the same hardware (obviously).
When upgrading the iOS devices I have found the opposite to be true. Each new version, on existing hardware, is slower but the feature set expands incredibly.
I think this is because iOS started out as an infant and did what it was supposed to do really well and performed really well on the hardware it was designed on, and had features that only worked on the existing hardware. But as iOS has matured, so has the feature set.... There are incredible search engines, graphics engines, Siri, and tons more... this has required increasing hardware capabilities to keep up with the features. .... So the trick with iOS is don't expect to get performance gains with iOS updates unless you update your hardware at the same time. Each new iOS version brings new bells and whistles, but not performance. With each iOS capable hardware device you should expect significant performance boosts.
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When upgrading my mac computers I have always seen a significant boost in performance on the same hardware (obviously).
That has not always been my experience. I upgraded my maxed out 5 year old iMac from Snow Leopard directly to Mountain Lion and it's noticeably more sluggish. But going from Leopard to Snow Leopard was a big improvement, probably because of the 64-bit kernel. It seems that unless the OS takes advantage of some hitherto unused hardware capability it's slower.
So, my conclusion is this: Upgrade == New heights in the development and marketing of Bloatware.
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I did a great job of writing this article. The first line is a the quote, the rest is my alleged contribution to this discussion. And I properly looked at the preview this time.
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I hate to be Captain Obvious here, but isn't it true in general that the more advanced the operating system, the better (newer) the hardware it needs to run well? Nobody who values their time or sanity tries to run Windows 7 on a Pentium Pro computer.
So yeah, older iPhones will run the new iOS more slowly than they ran the older iOS.
Control Center (Score:2)
However, there does seem to be an issue with the new Control Center. I have noticed sluggish responsiveness from buttons on the bottom of the screen in certain apps, presumably due to a conflict with the Control Center which can be activated by an upwards swipe from the bottom of the screen. Turning off the Control Center within apps (Settings/Control Center/Access within apps) fixed this issue for me while still retaining functionality from the mai
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Actually faster... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not so much slowness (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on your hardware of course! (Score:2)
I seriously doubt iOS7 is slow on iPhone 5s/5c. Now on iPhone 4, you should only be upgrading if you really need new features or must have consistency with your other devices, not with expectations of great performance. I the later case, you should probably have stuck with iOS5.
It's perfectly fine for me on iPhone 5 or iPad 2.
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There's some software glitchy-ness going on here and there (going back to the 'home' screen 'jitters' at the end of the animation as it resets the image for the parallax effect), but I expect that to be resolved in updates. Some inconsistencies with the keyboards too, but devs will have to update their apps to use the new 'flat' style.
What I w
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Yes, but only on older devices (Score:2)
Nope (Score:2)
I was using the Betas of iOS since b3, and have the current version on my iPhone 5. It's as fast if not faster. And the battery life has been a LOT better.
I also installed iOS on an iPhone 4 for someone, and they noticed right away that it seemed a whole lot snappier.
Re:Nope (Score:4, Insightful)
choppy slashdot (Score:2)
The choppiest site I've visited on my 4S with iOS7 is slashdot's mobile site. The background of each story is "active" in the sense that when I thumb-down to scroll, the story's background dims to grey. The regular white background returns when I lift my thumb. This, combining this action with scrolling really makes for a choppy experience!
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iPhone 5 (Score:2)
Of course it's slower on older hardware (Score:5, Informative)
iOS7 should be fine on an iphone 5 or 4s, but there definitely should be a noticeable slowdown on an iphone 4. That hardware is a bit old by now, and iOS7 is designed for the newer hardware. E.g. the iphone 4 still has a single core A4 CPU, while the 4s already has the dual core A5. The newer phones (5 and up) also have twice the RAM. Still, upgrading to iOS7 is a user option, and it's better to have that option than not to have it. Not many 3 year old Android phones still get OS upgrades.
Re:Of course it's slower on older hardware (Score:5, Informative)
FWIW, and I know this is anecdotal, but I upgraded my iPhone4 to iOS7 and found the moderate slowdown to be acceptable. Personally, I really enjoy & appreciate many of the changes.
One thing in particular that I appreciate, now when I take a photo, the screen isn't unresponsive for a couple seconds after taking the photo. Said another way, the camera feels much "snappier" (no pun intended), even for taking single photos. I found this surprising and a bit odd, since some other things are actually a tad less responsive after the udpate.
I'm not a moth that's drawn to bright lights, but iOS7 looked interesting enough that I figured it was worth a try. (That, and the fact that I'll replace my 3-year-old phone soon enough anyway, be it an iPhone or something else.)
Mind you, I've been around the block, and I was burned badly when I upgraded my iPhone 3G to iOS4 a few years back. Talk about an update bringing the phone to its knees! There were times when I'd press a button (usually while typing on the keyboard) and the phone wouldn't respond for 20 seconds. Talk about fucking the dog, that release had no business running on the 3G. Sure, it might have been a ploy to force people to upgrade their phones, but it really soured me.
Anyway, caveat emptor and all that, but if you've got an iPhone4, and you are on the fence about upgrading to iOS7, I would recommend you go for it. Just understand that certain things might not be quite as fast (power up being one of the most obvious, I haven't timed it but it's noticeably slower).
apps start a little slower, otherwise ok (Score:2)
Haven't really noticed a slowdown (Score:4, Informative)
I haven't really noticed a slowdown on either my iPhone 4S or iPad 2. It gets a little choppy occasionally on my iPad 2, but that happened with iOS 6 at times as well. The biggest issue I've seen is decreased battery life because of all the background tasks being done. That and the constantly reloading of apps do to more memory being used by iOS 7.
I did have another issue on both devices, where somehow all my music (iTunes Match downloads), somehow got flagged as "Other Data" and couldn't be removed. I fixed this on my iPad 2 by turning off iTunes Match and doing a hard reset. For my iPhone 4S, nothing short of a restore fixed it. Both devices updated from iOS 6.1.3 OTA.
am waiting (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
is Linux slow? (Score:5, Insightful)
When i started using Linux, it would run just fine on my 486DX33 with 8 MB of RAM. Now when I try to run it on machines with 50x that spec it is slow.
Newsflash: hardware requirements increase with new features. Supporting end of life hardware that hasn't been made for multiple generations in new platforms holds back said platform. Whether it is iOS, WIndows, Linux or whatever.
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Seems snappy enough to me.
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There already are.
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So could I. It would have no new features. Which brings up the crux of the issue: why bother to support zero new features? Security fixes? Maybe, but again the hardware has been EOL'd for some time now and most likely no longer works due to battery expiry, damage, etc.
Peachy once iCloud is off (Score:5, Interesting)
Update went well on my iPhone 4 (not S). Still am getting used to some elements. For example, the "ok" to unlock is kind of really unclear, and as such, I have doubts on putting nondescript text as buttons instead of having them shown with a rounded rect button frame.
I had MAJOR slowdowns everytime I was writing some line of text. I mean major MAJOR, like the UI freezing for 10 seconds, then putting all the text I was blindly writing, and then freezing for yet another 10 seconds. Then, Mr. Interwebz found the solution, which is to disable iCloud synchro for documents & settings ... and from that point on, no more battery hug, no more slowdowns, and everything is quite responsive.
So far, like it!
It's slow and just plain ugly (Score:5, Interesting)
It's definitely slower and I regret upgrading.
There's not enough white space to provide any visual separation on a device so small when there is not even an attempt at drawing lines or separating elements. Almost everything is smaller and harder to read, and it's not obvious what is a "button" and what is just text in a corner somewhere. In fact, many of the improvements are simple knock offs of Android has had for a while. The world will soon be divided into Upswipers and Downswipers.
I was thinking about updating my 4S, but while 7 was a step forward for some usability cases, I'm not sure I want to stick around for whatever is next. I am tired of not having full access to the hardware, and when I heard Ives was going to cut out cruft, I didn't imagine he was going to replace the whole system with the Office 2012 theme. Unfortunately for us, they're both based upon the premise that everyone wants to live in pure white Helvetica purgatory, and I don't think most of us do.
It's probably a consequence of his background in hardware. When you cut elements out of real materials down to their simplest possible form, there is still depth and innate information because it is a physical object. When you remove all delineation and depth from two dimensional representations, new users cannot even guess at your purpose when it looks like a blank sheet of paper with text and small iconography scattered around randomly on top of it. While the elements look much better on larger screens (as found in this informal poll [polarb.com]), things like the slot-machine style picker are not very obvious when you're scrolling around. I don't think they did much real world testing with new users on actual devices.
tl:dr; If you're a first year art student, you will absolutely love iOS 7. If you prefer to have some visual cues on what is content and what is part of the interface, you may want to hold off until Apple allows graphic designers capable of using more than one color back on the team.
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I agree with your criticisms. I have found a way to fix one thing, if it helps:
Almost everything is smaller and harder to read, and it's not obvious what is a "button" and what is just text in a corner somewhere.
In the accessibility options, turning on "Bold Text" will make the app names in the home screen bold again, which makes them much easier to read. Unfortunately, the other problems seem to be unfixable so far.
Not Too Surprising (Score:2)
To the Asker (Score:2)
What iPhone are you and your friends running? Model makes a big difference - for instance, I'm on the 4. My performance is somewhat choppy at key animation points in the OS, but that's expected. So?
After the update it becomes too slow (Score:2)
Much Faster for Me (Score:2)
My experience: Every operation is, or at least seems to be, much faster; and the UI seems much more responsive than iOS6.
Have been using iOS7 for ~3days.
Yes, slow (Score:2)
Subjectively slower on my 4S, but Safari bookmarks are so slow to edit there is no doubt a bug there (type> wait 10 seconds > character appears in field).
Icons (Score:2)
It seems I'm the only one but I feel the change of those icons is horrible. Flat design might be ok for windows, etc, while the blur and other effects are cool, but the fonts are thinner and even when you use the Bold option in accessibility, it still doesn't read as good as it read before. I guess with a shiny Retina display it is awesome, but for an iPad mini it doesn't work extremely well. I really can't wait until the industry hit The Next Big Thing TM and focus away from flat design. It might be cool f
iPad 3 (Score:5, Informative)
Feels a little faster in some areas like web browsing, generally about the same, but I prefer the old UI.
Not on my iPad 2. (Score:4, Funny)
I'm running iOS 7.0 on my iPad 2 and did not experience any slowdown issues--in fact, Safari in iOS 7.0 renders web pages a lot faster than before.
However, I did see one noticeable issue: the graphical design--especially the text fonts--don't look good on an iPad 2 with its lower-resolution screen. I've seen the final iOS 7.0 on an 4th-generation iPad and thanks to its "Retina Display" resolution touchscreen, it does look really good.
On an iPad 3, slow no. Slower. Yeah. Somewhat (Score:3)
Yes there is a slight... delay here and there. Dunno. It does not feel slow, but it is not butter-smooth
anymore either.
That said, I like the new UI.
I am still a bit hesitant to upgrade my iPhone 4, because of my experience a few years ago with an upgrade on
an iPhone 3 which definitely was not pleasant.
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That said, I notice no slowdowns on my iPhone 5 or 3rd gen iPad. Everything runs quite smoothly (though unsurprisingly it didn't during the betas).
Re:yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I can see there is a *lot* more eye candy (and I'm not talking about the icon changes) - it seems like the decided they needed to animate every single action and control in the OS now. Not to mention transparency, animated blur effects (especially in the camera), etc.
I don't notice any slowdown from it, though - seems like they are using the 3D HW to do it, and the latest devices have pretty decent graphics. In fact, the perception is often that it's faster (which is the point of transition animation) but that's just a subjective observation...
Re:yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
All these new animations drive me batty.
Sure, you see something happen right away in response to an action, so in a sense, you have instant feedback. If that makes you think things are happening faster, lucky you.
Because my iPhone 5, when it was running iOS 6 felt faster to me because any action I took translated to a change of UX paradigm right away where I could take yet another action. Hence, I'm working faster. Now with animations, I have to wait for each animation before I can take my next action. That feels slower to me.
Worst offender is the new lock screen. Why did they decide to make me wait an extra 1/2-1 seconds after hitting the power or home button to turn it on so that can "gracefully" fade in from black before giving me access to the "slide to unlock"? It's maddening.
Re:yawn (Score:4, Insightful)
If the Apple way is so important to you, then I guess you have to accept it. For me, it was a simple choice.
Re:yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to admire apple for their ingenuity. What better way to force people to ditch that old phone than to update the OS, make it more resource hungry...
That's been going on for as long as there has been a computer industry.
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Not always with forced updates though.
Could you imagine turning on your old 486-DX266 and being told it was now installing windows 7
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Re:yawn (Score:5, Informative)
My iTunes just tells me there's an update for my iPhone and asking if I want to install it, with the option of doing it now, doing it later (which is just "bother me next time I sync"), or never ask me about this again. I'm not sure how that's a forced update.
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I'm not sure how that's a forced update.
Because you can never go back to 6.1.3 now. (officially .. w/o jailbreak, etc). If you have any problem with your phone and you need to reinstall the OS .. you are screwed - you *have* to install iOS 7. Or if you decide to upgrade to 7 just to "see what it was like" and found it slow on your particular hardware, too bad, you cant go back. - This is especially bad for "dated" hardware like the iPhone 4.
Liar (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Liar (Score:4, Informative)
I downgraded my iPad back to 6.1.3.... It's perfectly doable.
You must have an iPad 1. It is impossible to downgrade any iOS device after the iPhone 4S/iPad 2. You cannot do anything meaningful with the SHSH blobs. So its perfectly doable for you, and a handful of people on older hardware. But it is not perfectly doable in general.
Brief window where both 6 and 7 can be installed (Score:5, Informative)
I downgraded my iPad back to 6.1.3.... It's perfectly doable.
Its temporary. When new iOS versions are introduced there is generally a brief window of time where Apple's servers approve both versions for installation. After a little while the previous version will be removed from the approved list and only the new version will be approved from that point forward.
If you with reinstall iOS 6 do not delay.
iPad 1 only runs iOS 5. (Score:3)
I downgraded my iPad back to 6.1.3.... It's perfectly doable.
You must have an iPad 1. It is impossible to downgrade any iOS device after the iPhone 4S/iPad 2. You cannot do anything meaningful with the SHSH blobs. So its perfectly doable for you, and a handful of people on older hardware. But it is not perfectly doable in general.
The first generation iPad won't upgrade past iOS 5.1.1.
Downgrades are generally possible for a very brief time period when a new version is introduced. Apple does not seem to disable installation of the old version immediately upon release of the new version, it will happen, but there is a delay.
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Not always with forced updates though.
Which IOS7, for all its faults, is most definitely not.
You do not have to update to the newest version and - as far as I know - you can't /automatically/ update anyway (the device will check and download the update, but you still have to manually start the installation). Your device will continue to work with the older version of iOS, and so will your apps (although some app updates may require later versions of iOS, they will not install if you have an incompatible op
Re: yawn (Score:3, Informative)
Re: yawn (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm still using an old version of XCode. Never upgraded XCode past the point where I started using it to develop apps; so never had to drop support for old versions, either iOS or OSX.
The problem -- at least as it seems to me -- is primarily developers jumping on new versions of XCode, and using new, OS-level specific APIs, which in turn make old devices unable to run the code unless you're *very* careful and catch every instance of new API and make an alternate, home-brewed version available to do that job (or disable a feature.) That's possible, but not easy. And most developers don't do it consistently, which again seems to indicate it isn't all that easy (with Objective C, you can actually tell if a particular call is available to you, and of course, you can just pay attention to the OS rev level.) But basically, the more OS levels you concurrently support, the larger your support load is. No matter how you do it.
To a lesser extent, but still problematic, Apple deprecates or breaks older APIs. That can be a real problem. Sometimes they never fix bugs, too; they just leave an older OS behind, bugs and broken features as-shipped, and wander off into the sunset with a new version, as if that was appropriate behavior. It's not: if you advertise X as having Y feature under, or as, Z OS, as far as I'm concerned, you're on the hook to make it work as advertised and you can't get off the hook by saying "oh, we fixed that in the next version (that doesn't work with a lot of your stuff, sucker.)"
I've been able to keep earlier applications up and running and relatively healthy by simply not upgrading XCode. Do I miss some functionality? Yep. But my customers and users can at least count on their apps continuing to work as long as it remains in my power to manage that. And they don't have to upgrade their OS to make it happen, although they can still do so if they choose to without my stuff breaking.
I went through this with Windows, but in the end, Microsoft so radically changed the way Windows worked -- from window metrics to internal operations -- that it became impossible. That's when I abandoned developing for Windows.
Something that has shown considerable promise is Qt. They're still on the "we don't need to fix bugs, we'll just upgrade" train, but as a cross platform development tool, it really has potential. I've got a software defined radio application developed with Qt 4.7 (Qt 5 was very seriously broken last I looked) that makes some pretty serious demands in terms of CPU and a broad swath of APIs, and have been able to keep it running under both OSX and Windows, which I think says a lot for Qt. Again, staying away from the "upgrade" is one of the things that has kept my users in working software.
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I used to own an iPhone 3 a few years ago, and when they forced an update onto it ...
How did that happen? Updates have always been voluntary... Though of course you would be volunteering to quickly become incompatible with newer software, so I'll grant you it isn't the most convenient of choices.
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OTOH my phone is going on 4 years old now and it's been functional and handy, and I like the os, so I'm probably gonna buy an iPhone 5s pretty soon.
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Re:yawn (Score:5, Informative)
It's not that I don't think ios 7 puts more strain on the hardware - it does, especially with the translucent blur (which is why the blur is disabled on the iPhone 4). I just don't think it qualifies as "more eye candy." Mostly *different* eye candy, the worst of which is disableable if you need to improve performance.
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I like how they changed the pop up message boxes. Used to be a bubble that would bounce into focus. The animation for the new versioning much shorter, and it feels much more responsive.
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It's not that I don't think ios 7 puts more strain on the hardware - it does
Interesting decision by Apple there. They could have banked the battery life improvements they made, but instead decided to spend them on new eye candy.
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I could go through dozens of examples (and many are small, but that's kind of the point of "eye candy"). Here are a bunch more (that did NOT exist on the old one, so definitely "more" eye candy):
- messages - each message animates independently in its own bubble so they "bounce" around (I have no idea WHY they bothered with this...)
- weather - the background weather/clouds/etc is animated (this was subtle but kind of cool). But if that's not the definition of added eye candy what the heck is!?
- clock - the
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we tested it on a ip4, too. Weirdly, we hat performance problems. It behaved like android 2.0. Choppy scrolling everywhere, laggy interface and so on. Mind you this was just installed and no configuration except activation was done....
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And you're proof of this is what?
I installed iOS 7 on a iPhone 4 about a week ago (the GM version) and the user of the phone has noticed nothing bad, and in fact says it seems faster than iOS 6 was. PLUS they love a lot of the new features of it.
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That's a false equivalency. Apple controls the whole process, they design the hardware and set the specifications, they write the software for iOS and they decide which devices will receive upgrades. Plus, Apple doesn't typically release dozens of different models at any given time.
Whereas neither Android nor Windows mobile is so vertically integrated.
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