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Which was the worst iOS version released ?


  • Total voters
    230
  • Poll closed .

keysofanxiety

macrumors G3
Nov 23, 2011
9,539
25,302
iOS 6 with the Apple Maps disaster. The tirade of mocking map memes really hurt Apple's reputation. It also rendered my iPhone 4 near enough unusable. iOS 7 was the final nail in the coffin for my 4, though. :(

iOS 4 was one of my favourites. The OS ran like absolute butter on the iPhone 4. That phone was so ahead of the competition at the time; it was completely untouchable.

iOS 10 has been the most impressive one to date, in my opinion. It runs beautifully on my aged 5S and it's surprisingly smooth on the 5 as well. With the sheer amount of devices out there, it's a testament to Apple's software team for how relatively trouble-free it's been.
 

the1payday

macrumors 6502
Jun 19, 2007
294
102
Amarillo, TX
I would say I had the most problems with iOS 6, 8 and 9. They just seemed buggy on a regular basis throughout both the initial beta's as well as the lifespan of the OS's.
 

AppleFan91

macrumors 68000
Sep 11, 2012
1,813
3,827
Indy, US
I'd say iOS 7. Looking back at it, they made a huge change to the way iOS looked and it was quite buggy even on new hardware. Also in my opinion it wasn't very good looking with all the bright pastel colors. Since then they have refined it further and now we have iOS 10 which was one of the stronger releases easily. I'd put it right behind iOS 5 (iMessage and iCloud) in terms of my favorite
 
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gigapocket1

macrumors 68020
Mar 15, 2009
2,410
1,925
Man, iOS has come along way.. the days of not having MMS, or not being able to use messages in landscape lol. It's just crazy to think about. Even the days when you couldn't set a wallpaper on your phone behind the icons.
But iOS 7 was by far the worst release of all. The switch to 64 bit was brutal. Especially on the new hardware
 
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BenTrovato

macrumors 68040
Jun 29, 2012
3,049
2,223
Canada
iOS 1 was the worst. Bought the original iPhone but could only use it for games and media until iOS 3 came along and it was finally a fully functioning phone.
 

teddybearstand

macrumors regular
Jun 17, 2013
168
109
I jumped into the Apple ecosystem at late iOS 3. From my experience iOS 7 had the rockiest start. 7.0 was an absolute disaster; but, surpsingly, iOS 7.1.1 is my all time favorite.
 

LordQ

Suspended
Sep 22, 2012
3,582
5,653
iOS 6 as it brought nothing exciting after the massive update that was iOS 5 IMO.
 
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MacDevil7334

Contributor
Oct 15, 2011
2,552
5,816
Austin TX
7 was by far the worst IMHO. Especially on the iPad (even the brand new at the time Air) it was a horrid buggy mess. 7.1 helped but not enough. It also marked the start of Apple drastically lowering their standards for software QC. It boggles my mind that Apple tolerates so many bugs in publicly available versions of its software these days.
 

KALLT

macrumors 603
Sep 23, 2008
5,380
3,415
Maps can't be blamed on iOS 6 because the data was coming from online, not stored locally. Technically iOS 6 map data nowadays is the same as iOS 10's.

The problem was not with the Maps app itself, but with Apple’s purging of a decent working maps app that was hitherto powered by Google Maps. It took months before Google published Google Maps on the App Store and even longer for it to match the capabilities that it used to have. All of a sudden, all apps that had linked to Apple’s maps framework in Cocoa Touch adopted all the same problems and had to modify their apps to use Google’s own frameworks instead in order to mitigate the backlash.

It was a PR disaster for Apple and there was simply no way out for them. Along with iOS 7, iOS 6 was the most controversial update due to the fact that Apple forced itself into a position of no return and the weren’t delivering on the quality that customers were expecting.
 
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MacDevil7334

Contributor
Oct 15, 2011
2,552
5,816
Austin TX
The problem was not with the Maps app itself, but with Apple’s purging of a decent working maps app that was hitherto powered by Google Maps. It took months before Google published Google Maps on the App Store and even longer for it to match the capabilities that it used to have. All of a sudden, all apps that had linked to Apple’s maps framework in Cocoa Touch adopted all the same problems and had to modify their apps to use Google’s own frameworks instead in order to mitigate the backlash.

It was a PR disaster for Apple and there was simply no way out for them. Along with iOS 7, iOS 6 was the most controversial update due to the fact that Apple forced itself into a position of no return and the weren’t delivering on the quality that customers were expecting.
Completely agree with you about the poor execution regarding the switch from Google to Apple Maps. But Apple really had no choice but to make the switch. Google hadn't added new features to the built in Maps app since iOS 3, and it refused to bring headline features like turn-by-turn navigation to the iPhone in order to give its Android OS a competitive advantage. Apple wasn't switching Maps just to stick it to a Google. It was really the only way to grow the feature set of the Maps app going forward.
 

Peter Franks

macrumors 68020
Jun 9, 2011
2,090
97
For me, the current one. I never had the phone locking on me, and the visual voicemail bricking the phone on any of the previous versions. And also whichever iOS started the banners showing me phone number only when a text comes in, whereby prior to this, it ALWAYS showed the contact name (when they were in my contacts obviously), but that bug still is present to this day, and I think that was about 2 or 3 iOS prior when that kicked in. Never was sorted out. I still get text alerts without contact's name, and I've no clue who it is, until I open the app, which is not terrible, but it should be fixed!
 

C DM

macrumors Sandy Bridge
Oct 17, 2011
51,392
19,461
The problem was not with the Maps app itself, but with Apple’s purging of a decent working maps app that was hitherto powered by Google Maps. It took months before Google published Google Maps on the App Store and even longer for it to match the capabilities that it used to have. All of a sudden, all apps that had linked to Apple’s maps framework in Cocoa Touch adopted all the same problems and had to modify their apps to use Google’s own frameworks instead in order to mitigate the backlash.

It was a PR disaster for Apple and there was simply no way out for them. Along with iOS 7, iOS 6 was the most controversial update due to the fact that Apple forced itself into a position of no return and the weren’t delivering on the quality that customers were expecting.
At least we were able to get navigation and traffic and transit and all that essentially due to it all.
 
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keysofanxiety

macrumors G3
Nov 23, 2011
9,539
25,302
Wasn't it great when Apple were ahead of the competition, instead of 3 years behind it? ;)

They were only so far ahead of the competition because the competition was so poor. I'd much rather it as it is now; lots of great devices available for whatever platform you want, so you don't need to be in the Apple ecosystem to get a half-decent phone/tablet experience.

And I don't think Apple are behind the competition by any means. :)
 

Math889

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 7, 2016
1,052
422
I am wondering how iOS 11 will perform on older devices like iPad Air 1 . It will be the first iOS to support only 64 bit devices
 

foxconn

Suspended
Sep 6, 2016
421
506
www
i honestly can't say because i've never had any major issues with any of them, and they've always worked as expected.

i never had to 'restore as new' that's always recommended on here when anyone has a problem either. i used to have texts dating back years until i deleted them to make space.
 

PurrBall

macrumors 65816
Oct 25, 2007
1,015
54
Indianapolis
I'm not sure what the criteria for "worst" is, as a lot of it could be opinion based. However, iPhone 2.0 software was the buggiest turd I have ever laid my fingers on. For example, it wasn't until a couple point releases later that they fixed a bug that required you to reboot every few days for 3rd party apps to launch properly.

Granted, the software was a huge change in the system, so I can understand the growing pains with it. But gosh, while there have been plenty of buggy releases (3.0 also had quite a few issues, as well as 5.0 and on) none have hampered daily usage for me as much as 2.0.
 
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