iOS

Apple: iOS 7 on 74% of devices

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Apple on Thursday answered a question that many people have wondered: How is the adoption of iOS 7 going? According to data on Apple’s Web site, I’d say pretty well. […]

iOS 7 adoption rate outpacing iOS 6

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Chitika research:

One week following its release on September 18, 2013, iOS 7 users were generating more than 51% of all iOS-based Web traffic within North America. Growth has continued through the following two months, with iOS 7 usage rates surpassing the 70% mark within the continent. This makes it very likely that iOS 7 will continue to substantially outpace iOS 6 adoption, which reached 83% close to six months following its release in September 2012.

Meanwhile, Android is poking along:

Google’s latest OS dashboard reveals that 1.1 percent of active Android devices are running the new platform roughly a month after it became available. Not that its arrival is slowing down Jelly Bean’s growth, mind you. The older software now represents 54.5 percent of all Android use.

When you release a new version of your OS, the older version should drop, not gain in popularity.

URL schemes and security

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Guillaume Ross takes a look at the popular use of URL schemes in iOS and some security concerns he has with them.

iOS 7: It’s the details

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Admittedly small things in such a large OS, but these are the types of details that Apple thinks about.

New settings in iOS 7

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The major changes in iOS 7 have been written about for a few months, but Dave Hamilton focused his attention on some lesser known settings that could be helpful to you.

iOS development in India

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There’s an interesting bit about halfway through talking about Apple’s increased presence in India of late. That’s a potentially huge market for Apple.

95% of developers working on iOS 7 updates

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Craig Hockenberry asked developers if they were actively working on an update for their app to add iOS 7 features and compatibility—95% answered yes. What’s more, 52% of developers are going to require iOS 7 for their app. In other words, they are dropping support for all other operating systems.

I’ve been asked a lot about this strategy over the years and I’m in favor of it. Developers should offer their customers the latest and greatest as soon as they can. The only thing that would hold back a developer from doing that is the adoption rate of the operating system. Judging from the fast adoption rate of Apple’s operating systems, that doesn’t appear to be an issue.

iOS 7 dynamics

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Rene Ritchie:

It’s not pixels painted so much anymore as particles placed, and not areas touched so much as directly manipulated.

Rene’s right in saying that there’s a lot going on with iOS 7 beyond the design. The way the operating system interacts with things around it is amazing.

The failure of Android’s open

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Daniel Eran Dilger:

Open Source enthusiasts love to tell you Android is winning, and that it is winning because it is open. But they’re wrong on both counts. The history of computing makes that abundantly clear, as do the current leaders in profitability.

Some great points in this article.

iOS 7 and education

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iOS 7 provides powerful new ways to configure and deploy devices across institutions and features to help schools purchase, distribute and manage apps with ease. App Store license management, seamless enrollment in mobile device management (MDM) and single sign on are just some of the capabilities in iOS 7 that make it ideal for education.

Apple owns the future of mobile

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Apple owns the future of mobile devices, not because it has erected a near monopoly market position protected by major barriers to entry like IBM in 1970s or Microsoft’s DOS and Windows in the 80s and 90s or Google’s search and Adobe’s Flash in the 2000s; Apple sells its products within a very diverse and openly competitive market and maintains minority unit market share in smartphones.

It just happens that Apple is making the vast majority of all the profits in mobile hardware, software, media and services. And the mobile segment happens to have much brighter prospects than the rest of the consumer technology market, particularly WinTel PCs.

Very well thought out and lengthy article from Daniel Eran Dilger.

Misguided iOS 7 wrongness

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R. E. Warner:

Second, I have great respect for Neven Mrgan as a designer. He’s an accomplished artisan and not to be trifled with. However, his post on how the design of iOS 7 icons is “wrong” is misguided and I feel the need to address why I think that is, because I often see designers get caught by this particular hobgoblin of consistency—that a design just “feels” right to them without offering any rational justification.

It’s interesting watching designers hammer this stuff out.

iOS 7 icon grid is wrong

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Neven Mrgan:

Just about the most asinine, presumptuous, hubris-filled thing a designer can say is that someone else’s design is “wrong”. That word is reserved for judgments of absolute truth or ethical guidance; for flawed mathematical proofs and crimes. And yet, allow me to declare the following: Jony Ive’s icon grid in iOS 7 is wrong.

The deception of “photorealism”

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Matt Drance on iOS 7:

Now the hardware has caught up, and the Apple design team has a new leader. We don’t need the deception of “photorealism” anymore. Despite the loss of these tricks, iOS 7 feels more real. The parallax effect conveys an entire living world under that glass, not just abstract pictures and icons. This is reinforced by the launch and quit animations: your eye never loses sight of where you’re going, or where you came from.

Don’t worry about iOS 7

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Judging from my inbox, Twitter and Messages, people are losing their minds over iOS 7 and some of the changes Apple introduced at WWDC last week. Here is my advice to you—sit back, take a deep breath and relax.

iOS 7’s lack of shadows

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Peter Alguacil:

One could argue that by making the user interface behave as if it is backlit, Apple is treating iOS 7 as a more integral part of the device itself. It’s not a mock front-lit interface with shadows and textures, it is a representation of the actual physical screen.

Some interesting thoughts in this article.