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IOS Handhelds Iphone Upgrades

Ask Slashdot: Is iOS 8 a Pig? 504

kyjellyfish writes I've been using iOS 8 for several days and aside from a few gimmicks and add-ons that attempt to achieve parity with Android, my experience has been overwhelmingly unsatisfactory. My chief complaint is that the vast majority of my apps are slow to boot and noticeably sluggish in operation. I want to point out that all of these apps have been "upgraded" specifically for iOS 8 compatibility. Previous operating system upgrades have been relatively seamless, so I'm asking whether other slashdotters have experienced this degraded performance.
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Ask Slashdot: Is iOS 8 a Pig?

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  • Alright smart guy (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ColdWetDog ( 752185 )

    What did you load it on? An iPhone 1? A 4? An Osborne Executive?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It would still be a problem because Apple shouldn't allow the upgrade to be installed on a device which can't run it properly.
      • by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @06:07PM (#47961021)

        Apple shouldn't allow the upgrade to be installed on a device which can't run it properly

        Humbug! Let Apple recommend whatever it likes, but let me make the final call. It's still my device, remember?

        • by plover ( 150551 )

          It's still my device, remember?

          If it was your device, you could install whatever you want on it. No, the device belongs to whoever holds root access to it.

    • iOS 8 seems even faster than iOS 7 on my 5S. Haven't seen that happen yet after an update from one major iOS upgrade to the next. Very happy with it.
    • Re:Alright smart guy (Score:5, Informative)

      by macs4all ( 973270 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @02:16PM (#47959793)

      What did you load it on? An iPhone 1? A 4? An Osborne Executive?

      Interestingly, I haven't seen any significant gnashing-of-teeth, complaining about slowdowns, etc. on the sites where a majority of the posters are actually iOS Users.

      In fact, as per usual, I am waiting a few days to see if there are horror stories, particularly regarding my two iOS devices (iPhone 4s and iPad 2), which are at the bottom of the Compatibility List; but, other than one person with a 16 GB iPad complaining about slowness (and without others piling-on), this seems to be a very reasonable and stable Upgrade; especially considering how much has been added.

      • Re:Alright smart guy (Score:5, Interesting)

        by wwphx ( 225607 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @02:36PM (#47959873) Homepage
        I updated my 64 gig 4S on Friday, and it's been stable and crash-free. I especially liked the Health app as it's accessible from the lock screen, assuming emergency responders know that it's there and how to get to it. I have an immune disorder so this is of interest to me, obviously not to everyone. I really like the one motion swipe delete for mail, and the Siri voice dictation in real-time is pretty cool. The funny thing is that I had more trouble upgrading my new iPad Mini Retina than I did my 4S. One other thing that was interesting, and I need to verify this: I was listening to some podcasts yesterday and when I got home, before syncing, they were already marked as played on my iMac. I'm not sure what's up with that as I try to have my phone to only sync music and podcasts via cable.

        Issues: first and biggest, battery life. I noticed this yesterday when I got up and last night when I went to bed, I logged that my battery was at 66%. Eight hours later, 54%ish. I already turned off most of the background stuff that eats juice that was posted when iOS 7 came out, so I'm not sure what's up. I'm going to try putting it in airplane mode when I go to bed tonight to see if that stops whatever is eating it. Also, I'm still pissed at the way they screwed up the podcast app when 7 came out last year. I need to get back to studying Objective C/Swift and write my own.
        • by Anonymous Coward

          I saw a significant battery drain the day I upgraded, but this wasn't repeated the following days. Whilst I initially thought it was the soaps, it might merely have been transient - a combination of using the phone a lot more playing with new features , and perhaps some background activity associated with an upgrade in place. After the first day it's been normal.

      • I updated my iPad 3, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5S on release day, and haven't noticed any issues on them. Granted, the 5S is my day-to-day device, so it gets the majority of my usage, but the others seem to work fine (iPad as a gaming/reading/couch-surfing device, 4S mostly as a jukebox on my sound system). Heck, I've got my 3GS hooked up to my alarm clock, running iOS 6 and it's able to run the latest Pandora app still!

    • by ildon ( 413912 )

      An Apple Newton.

    • Re:Alright smart guy (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jhon ( 241832 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @04:12PM (#47960459) Homepage Journal

      I have an Ipad Mini Retina. I honestly don't notice any major slow-downs (a wee bit longer to launch an app -- and noticeably longer to boot the device). However, some apps no longer worked (awaiting an update) -- and this is somewhat minor.

      The MAJOR issue I have (and it's appearing a lot on the apple forums) is 5ghz wifi. For many users it's pretty much unusable. I had to switch down to 2.4 (my router has up to 4 SSIDs, 2 for each frequency). I don't LIKE 2.4 because it gets a fair amount of interference, but it's a suitable work around. I'm hoping this gets resolved in the next update.

      My main complaint is (and I kick myself in the butt over it) *THIS* complaint was registered while IOS8 was in beta by many users. I SAW those complains and figured they were resolved before they released the update. I should have known better. I had enough sense *NOT* to update my phone (iphone 5).

      That said, I don't notice much of ANYTHING worthy of real "hoopla". 'Hey siri' is neat, but I'm still unsure if I will find actual utility from it once the novelty wears off. Certainly not enough "new" stuff to warrant it's size and bulk.

  • iPad 3 (Score:3, Informative)

    by tsa ( 15680 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @01:51PM (#47959621) Homepage

    On my iPad 3 it works fine.

    • Glad to hear. I've been holding off on updating to see if there were any serious performance issues. However, I wish someone would release a comprehensive benchmark list for some of the older devices just so I can have a better idea of how much of an impact it will have on performance. Ideally I'd like to think it might improve a little, only if because iOS 7 felt rather rushed and they've likely been able to tune some of the code.
      • by wwphx ( 225607 )
        I upgraded my iPad Mini Retina on Friday and it was kinda weird. After it was done updating and rebooted, it went into recovery mode. I did a restore from iTunes and it came up as an uninitialized iPad under 8, another restore took care of putting my apps back in place. I was afraid it was bricked and that I'd have to drive to El Paso to get it serviced, fortunately I didn't have to make the trip. The thing that I found very curious was that my iPhone 4S updated seamlessly.

        Performance seems the same.
    • by HnT ( 306652 )

      I notice that iBooks rather frequently hangs when scrolling through the text while reading. I am in night mode and the font is at the smallest possible size, it is AFeastforCrows bought on iTunes, so there is a lot of text visible on the screen and every 4 or 5 pages or so there is a small "hiccup" where it suddenly hangs while slowly scrolling... then continues. That's on my iPad3. It is there on the iPhone5s too but the hang is much shorter, so it's barely noticeable but it is there.

      All of a sudden it has

  • No... (Score:2, Informative)

    I haven't seen that at all on my iPhone 5!or my iPad 3 ("new iPad"). Some things are snappier, even. What device are you using?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21, 2014 @01:52PM (#47959629)

    I love it on my iPhone 4S. I can't use ApplePay so I may upgrade to a six, but honestly, my nearly three year old 4S works great and has great battery life. I haven't noticed really anything negative. In fact, it prompted google to upgrade their bad Google Voice app, so that in and of itself is a plus. FaceTime audio is also pretty great.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21, 2014 @01:55PM (#47959643)

      Wanted to add - if you have 1700+ pictures (like my wife).... your phone will bog down. Make sure you have the space on your phone. iPhones do notoriously get slow when they start running out of space.

      • by wwphx ( 225607 )
        I wonder if you upgraded on your phone or via iTunes? I have about 4 gig free on my 64 gig 4S and it upgraded fine and doesn't bog down too much, seems to be mainly when I'm hitting the home button and it's zooming back to the icon display. I probably don't have more than 100 or so pictures.
    • I love it on my iPhone 4S. I can't use ApplePay so I may upgrade to a six, but honestly, my nearly three year old 4S works great and has great battery life. I haven't noticed really anything negative. In fact, it prompted google to upgrade their bad Google Voice app, so that in and of itself is a plus. FaceTime audio is also pretty great.

      Ditto, iPhone 4S, iPad 3 no issues so far and only the usual gripe: This is iOS 8 and they still haven't put a collapsable menu in the little 'add bookmark' wizard in Safari.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by thoth_amon ( 560574 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @01:59PM (#47959691)

    I've been running iOS8 since pre-beta on multiple devices, including phones and iPads. I've had no problem, nothing at all like you describe.

    If you're so inclined, I'd try a fresh install and see if that makes things run better. You can always restore from backup later.

    I assume there was nothing strange about your iOS7 install, like being jailbroken, right?

  • Less filling.
  • by calmdude ( 605711 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @02:02PM (#47959719)
    I upgraded a few days ago and I haven't noticed any sluggishness issues. I have an iPhone 5. I also have an iPad Retina that I haven't bothered to upgrade, but I'm hoping it'll work as well as the iPhone.
    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      I find it to be a bit slow on my 5. It is very slow on my old iPad. This, I think is normal, and it has gotten faster since I upgraded.

      As far as the updates, most applications seem to update when a new iOS comes out. I have not seen an inordinate number of updates. As the Apps have to not only deal with a new OS but also new screen sizes, Apps that are not written to run on many screen sizes will obviously have to be updated.

      My problem is that Apple is reintroducing the cloud disk service, a la iDis

  • it's a you problem (Score:4, Informative)

    by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @02:07PM (#47959753)

    Installed across my devices, it seems fine.

    iPad 2, 4, air, iPhone 6, 5.

  • by celeb8 ( 682138 )
    Wow I love how the OP gets called a troll just for asking if Apple's version of iOS is bloaty and mentioning that he's used Android. Then I look at the comments and everybody who agrees that its slow on older hardware is scored low, and everybody who posts that its just fine are scored up. OP this is your fault for blaspheming.
    • Willfullly blind? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Uberbah ( 647458 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @05:09PM (#47960793)

      The Fandroid talk starts in his first sentence:

      gimmicks and add-ons that attempt to achieve parity with Android

      You could of course say the same thing about every Android device evah while pointing at the very first iPhone, save the screen size of the Galaxy.

      Zombie Jobs isn't holding a gun to your heads. Just try buying what you want, that does what you want, without pretending that your personal product preferences came carved on tables sent down by God.

  • Wifi issues (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I haven't had the issues described here, but iOS 8 definitely crippled my wifi across several devices, including an iPhone 6+. I'm not alone: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1781815

  • by Dorianny ( 1847922 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @02:14PM (#47959785) Journal
    The lack of any mention of the device he is running it on strongly makes me suspect it is one with a A5 processor. Apple supports even very old devices because it helps the developers a lot having to debug for only a single version of the os, by contrast android development and the short support cycle is a complete nightmare as one has to support accross major and even minor releases. Android app reviews are filled with "It crashes at startup" comments, this is typically not the case for apple users the tradeoff being that their devices might slow down with each new release.
    • by ducomputergeek ( 595742 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @02:44PM (#47959915)

      As a developer it's been a problem developing for Android. It's one of the reasons why at work we charge more to develop android versions of apps usually as we'll only QA test against Nexus devices. If our clients want QA on any additional handsets basically increase the development costs by 50% per device. Usually if clients add any other devices it's will be Samsung, but we charge QA per model on Android devices. So Galaxy S4, S5, Note could double the price we charge for an Android app vs. iOS.

      Personally I no longer develop apps for Android. I used to, but Android apps were less than 25% of my revenue and accounted for about 90% of my support requests. In particular "App crashes on startup" and on a handset I've never heard of before. Especially problematic seemed to be the number of prepaid android devices. Their OS's never seem to be kept current or running some tweaks that may cause compatibility issues for whatever reasons.

      • by jareth-0205 ( 525594 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @07:26PM (#47961319) Homepage

        Frankly, as an Android developer since the 1.6 days, I find your numbers highly suspect. I have worked in several small teams with equal Android and iOS resources, and on every one the Android team has a much lower crash rate, no significant difference in bug rates, and has the same development times as iOS. There is absolutely no way it's as expensive as you're quoting to add devices.

        Maybe I'm just an amazing developer, but I doubt it. Stick to the documentation and understand the system you're programming for, and you don't have to tweak for every device that exists. It's a pretty consistent platform in my experience.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

          I think I know what the problem is. I've seen iOS developers who want to develop exactly the same way on android, and they always fail. They are used to targeting specific resolutions and fixed hardware, unlike say Windows or Mac developers who know how to do portable, flexible apps.

          At work I had problems with this on the past. We had to switch to a different developer who had no trouble, even though we were using Bluetooth extensively.

  • by maccodemonkey ( 1438585 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @02:15PM (#47959787)

    The iOS 8 app upgrades are pretty much for things like being able to target new/any screen sizes. If you're on an existing device, that doesn't mean much. I don't think there is anything in the new SDK that would imply a performance decline in apps that adopt it.

    The X.0.0 upgrades are pretty well known for including slower/unoptimized drivers and code paths. Apple is usually in a hurry to get the release out the door and they don't do all the optimizations they should. Usually by X.0.1 or X.1 they get things cleaned up. So it doesn't surprise me that 8.0 is a little pokey. 7.0 had basically the same issues.

  • by berj ( 754323 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @02:16PM (#47959795)

    I've got it on an iPhone 5 and an iPad Air and both work very smoothly. Haven't had any OS crashes or glitches (a couple apps are a bit more crashy but I hope an update from them will fix that) and speed and battery life don't seem to have had any reduction.

    So far the things that make iOS 8 really attractive (handoff, continuity, new document picker) are waiting for either Yosemite or updated apps so I wait patiently but am satisfied with the upgrade as far as it goes

  • My complaint about iOS 8 is that it appears to have broken some (but not all) magazine subscription apps. Numerous people has posted to the Apple Support Community that the Scientific American app crashes. Reinstalling the app does no good -- it simply doesn't work. It will be interesting to see how quickly this issue is addressed.
    • Someone should invent a general purpose app that could read internet served magazines in a universal markup language format. We could call it a Web Peruser.

  • upgrades baby (Score:2, Interesting)

    by saleenS281 ( 859657 )
    This is standard practice for Apple. While they will continue to support your phone, they have this habit of making the new major OS rev run slowly right about the time your phone is 2 years old. I struggle to believe it's a coincidence as it has happened with literally every revision they've released.
  • Yes (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Tridus ( 79566 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @02:31PM (#47959851) Homepage

    I put it on my iPad 3 and it's noticeably slower. The big thing I'm seeing now that I never saw before is typing lag. That is annoying. I've also seen extra delay in some cases with the screen realizing it needs to rotate, and a bug in one specific app with keys on the keyboard disappearing entirely. On the performance end it's not that impressive in any way.

    That said, having extensions in Safari has been nice, keyboard swapping is handy, and the family sharing feature is really great. So I'm not going to be rushing to roll it back, but I really don't understand how simple things like typing could get so much slower on the same hardware.

  • it's not Verizon slowing down your phone because your contract has expired?

  • by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @03:13PM (#47960089)

    So you can't afford the Apple lifestyle, get a better job you fucking hippie.

  • It's about focus (Score:4, Informative)

    by KingOfBLASH ( 620432 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @03:47PM (#47960297) Journal

    Prior to releasing an iOS, the focus on development is implementing the shiny new features.
    Post release, the focus on development is to fix bugs and make the iOS work faster.

    In each of the past few versions of iOS released you saw within a month a 0.01 version increment that got rid of bugs and made things noticeably faster.

    You therefore have the choice of jumping on the band wagon, or waiting until the incremental release.

  • by Kris_J ( 10111 ) * on Sunday September 21, 2014 @06:42PM (#47961133) Homepage Journal
    My favourite remote control app crashes on connect, the keyboard support doesn't feel ready for prime time, particularly in the mail app where alternate keyboard mostly don't show up and running my iPad as a noise generator overnight it appears to charge only about half as much as it used to.
  • by Cloud K ( 125581 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @07:12PM (#47961259)

    Especially if people complain loudly enough, they might even name the build after them
    "Disgruntled Edition"

  • by INT_QRK ( 1043164 ) on Sunday September 21, 2014 @07:50PM (#47961407)
    Not that I can tell after only 2 days. Are you a troll?
  • by gnasher719 ( 869701 ) on Monday September 22, 2014 @03:20AM (#47962705)
    After reading the headline, the answer is obviously "yes". What other headlines do we expect? "Is Google run by criminals"? "Does Microsoft Office kill productivity"? "Are Facebook users rapists"?

I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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