

New Features in iOS 6 Receive Spotty Support from Older Devices - jrnkntl
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/12/new-features-in-ios-6-receive-spotty-support-from-older-devices/

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nicholassmith
As someone who has an iPhone 4, and is locked in contract until next May, I'm
a little annoyed some of the features aren't coming.

As someone who has used Apple products for a while, I'm not overly surprised.
Remember the MMS scandal when they decided that the original iPhone 'couldn't'
handle it? Same thing, just more features.

And no, this isn't fragmentation. What this is, annoyingly, is device
boundaries. We've got to a point where Apple needs something to encourage
users to move up to the next price point. Want turn by turn but thought you'd
just get an iPhone 4? Come aboard the 4S train. We can all go 'well that's
shitty of Apple', but businesses do actually need something to use as a
demarcation between two phones that ostensibly the same thing.

Still, where's my turn-by-turn and 3D mapping? I was looking forward to them.

~~~
furyg3
I think your contract is the most interesting part of your comment.

If the hardware can't handle it, then ok, that's a limitation. Artificial
boundaries are a business reality in a world where the software _is_ the
phone, but Apple should consider people in two year contracts when they create
these fake limitations.

There are a lot of people who bought a 4S between it's launch (June 2010) and
the 4S launch (October 2011). All of them are still stuck with that phone.
Screwing them over with artificial boundaries is not very friendly...

These people bought the latest and greatest at the time, they didn't skimp at
the store and get the 4 instead of the 4S.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_"There are a lot of people who bought a 4 between it's launch (June 2010) and
the 4S launch (October 2011). All of them are still stuck with that phone.
Screwing them over with artificial boundaries is not very friendly..."_

I bought an iPhone 4 in july of 2010. It came with iOS 4, which had just been
released. A year later, it received a free upgrade to iOS 5. This fall, iOS 6
comes out – the iPhone 4 will be able to run iOS 6 and it will be free for all
users. That's 3 major releases over the lifetime of the phone, all for free.
And for about a year after iOS 7 is released, Apple will provide updates to
iOS 6.

The new iPhone is likely to be released somewhere in the fall, at the same
time as iOS 6. Last year's iPhone launch was on October 14. This means that if
you bought an iPhone 4 between June and October 2010, your contract will be up
before you can buy the new iPhone. And if you didn't buy your iPhone within 4
months of its release, you probably aren't someone who has to have the new
iPhone on the first day when it's available anyways.

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buster
This makes me wonder what people have to say about fragmentation now ;)

To be clear, i don't think it's a problem, i only hate to see those "android
(and symbian and windows and all others) are too fragmented!!!!1", when this
is just the way it worked for many years. Of course you'll have fragmentation
eventually. Only that the manufacturer with the smallest portfolio has it
easier then many manufacturers with many more devices. Fragmentation was not
seen as a major problem long before iOS or Android (on Symbian for example..
do you know how many different Symbian versions exist? Nobody cared and nobody
complained).

~~~
drewcrawford
None of these are developer features.

I think the claim with iOS being "less fragmented" has to do with developers
having a relatively solid set of APIs that they can call.

There are a couple of APIs that degrade on older hardware but the number is
small enough that a senior developer could write you a list in a job
interview.

~~~
buster
Yes, my point just was, that this is one manufacturer with one operating
system and a small set of devices. It's always compared with lots of
manufacturers and lots of completely different devices. I don't see the
problem. Of course, different hardware, different software, but it's so much
more devices, it's not fair to compare.

A fair comparison would be fragmentation on symbian devices vs fragmentation
on android devices (for example).

~~~
pooriaazimi
The number of developers giving a damn about Symbian, compared to those who do
Android and iOS is probably less by 4 or 5 orders of magnitude, that's why no
one is talking about Symbian.

We're not living in a dream world, many are trying to be realistic and compare
the two most vibrant and important platforms because they have to make a call
in their startups: Do I want to develop for iOS, or Android, or both, or first
iOS and then Android. Most people on HN are developers and try not to be as
stupid as average commenter on Engadget, falling into pointless, grad-scholl-
link arguments about whose platform is _cool_ er.

~~~
buster
You had me at "We're not living in a dream world, many are trying to be
realistic".

My whole discussion thread is about being realistic. Is it realistic to have
exactly one OS version deployed worldwide on hundreds of differenct device
models created by dozens of different manufacturers with dozens of different
hardware configurations ranging from low-end to high-end?

No, it is absolutely not. And so noone should complain about that ghost named
"fragmentation" because it's a stupid discussion and it's an unfair
comparison.

------
scorpion032
* Coming to the iPhone 3GS.....iOS 6 Lite

* Coming to the iPhone 4.....iOS 6 Basic Edition

* Coming to the iPhone 4S.....iOS 6

* Coming to the iPhone 5.....iOS 6 Premium Edition

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spobo
Or just wait for the jailbreaked version of iOS6. I can't believe they omitted
turn by turn on iPhone 4's. That's just ridiculous.

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0x0
Usually not an Apple apologist, but...

Even though there's probably no technical reason to prevent older devices from
receiving these new features, I can't help but be quite surprised by the sense
of entitlement everyone here puts on display.

When you bought your old iPhone 3GS / 4, did you expect to be delivered
Flyover, Turn-by-turn and Facetime over 3G after a year? Or are you just mad
that after Apple spent $X million in R&D, you're not getting a free ride?

The only thing that's quite annoying with iOS6 is the end-of-life'ing of the
iPad 1. Which means that app developers can't move on to the latest and the
greatest SDK without either doing a lot of testing and weak linking, or
deciding to cut off old device owners. That kind of "fragmentation" is nothing
compared to Android, though!

------
solutionyogi
iPhone 4 is a very powerful device and I am really surprised that Apple would
not push 'Map Upgrade' to them. I have tons of friends who own iPhones and few
who own Android. The only single thing where iPhone lacks compared to Android
is turn by turn navigation. My feeling is that there will be shit storm about
this and Apple will change their stance. [None of my non techie friends care
about any of these other features.]

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k-mcgrady
Most of these features are restricted on older devices due to hardware
requirements. Facetime over 3G is the only one I would imagine should work
well on all devices.

~~~
NiekvdMaas
I'm surprised that turn-by-turn navigation won't work on the iPhone 4, I don't
see how hardware requirements are the reason there. Same counts for the
absence of Siri on the iPhone 4 and iPad 2.

~~~
mjhall
I don't think the majority of the feature exclusivity is hardware, it's about
differentiating the devices. iOS hardware seems to have hit a convergence
point. Although the specs are different, the perceived difference due to the
hardware is slight (if there even is one). That means Apple needs to do
something else to encourage people to buy a more expensive device, software is
now the discriminator instead of hardware.

The iPad 1 corroborates this. It's got the CPU power of the iPhone 4 and the
RAM of the 3GS, both of these devices get iOS 6, the iPad 1 does not. There's
no apparent technical limitation, they're doing it to differentiate product
lines.

~~~
unixbeard
iPad 1 has the same amount of RAM as the 3GS, but it has 5x the number of
pixels to push.

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simonh
Does this mean the New iPad has the fancy new Audience signal processor from
the 4s to support Siri?

