iOS 9 vs iOS 6

[DoctorKrabs]

Microsoft is doing just that with Windows 7 (and I think 8.1 also) and Skylake chips. They officially came out and flat out said they will not going through the effort to add code to Windows 7 to support Skylake.

*EDIT to add link*
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/16/10780876/microsoft-windows-support-policy-new-processors-skylake

Not really the same thing. Those skylake chips NEVER ran Windows 7 and will thus be sold as machines running Windows 10, where as the iPhone 5 was sold running iOS 6. Its obvious that iOS devices can not be downgraded below the OS that they came with, though PCs have traditionally been allowed to do this. People have issues with iOS devices where you can't go back to the shipping OS, and with these skylake chips, people will be able to go back to the shopping version of Windows in the future if they want.

It really isn't the same. Not only did Windows 7 never have support for Skylake, it's not being blocked for install and use. You just won't get the most optimized drivers for the newer hardware, but you will still be able to use Windows 7 on them (which people are already doing since Skylake is out). In fact, since Skylake has been around for a bit and people have already been using Windows 7 on it, I can't imagine Microsoft and Intel doing that for any reason other than to just get people on Windows 10 to get people on Windows 10.

It's possible right now to natively install Windows 95 on a Sandy Bridge Intel machine. The only reasons that it wouldn't work in some cases are RAM and disk space since it was not built for the newer hardware. It's not any artificial blockage by Intel or Microsoft.

Many people excuse the worse performance of iOS 9 on the iPhone 5 by saying that iOS 6 was built for iPhone 5, meaning it must run better. If that is the case, why are no users allowed to install the operating system that was built for their device unless they have the latest one, which won't be the latest a year from now? You can't say iOS 9 is excusable for old devices because it's made for new ones while also arguing that people shouldn't be allowed to downgrade.

 

[dk001]

There's a lot you can live without. Do you not use control center? That really adds some convenience rather than having to opening Settings.

It does however unlike Quick Setting on my Note, I cannot modify what settings. On CC there are 5 settings I use out of the 14 displayed. That is a wasteful percentage and a waste of a potentially critical user resource.

Like you said, "some".
[doublepost=1455639042][/doublepost]

Did you use 7.0? It was atrocious. 1.5-2.0 second delays for every animation.

I still remember years ago when people compared Apple touchscreen responsiveness compared with other manufacturers and they would be 10-150 ms more responsive, and everyone went on about how great it was.

But then nobody cared and many were in flat out denial when the animations ignored your touch input for 2000 ms. Then when 7.1 came out and halved that time, people went on about how great the performance suddenly was.

I think the fact they "fixed" 7 has allowed mellowing of the memories a bit. Still, it was a serious "WTH!?!" of a surprise.
[doublepost=1455639531][/doublepost]

All updates for any software contain some level of bug fixes. You're completely ignoring the fact that iOS 8 saw 4 (and iOS 9 soon to be on the third) major updates because of feature additions and hardware support. NOT because it needed so many major updates for bugs.

Have to disagree. Apple took advantage of the functionality updates to load in bug fixes. Then again separate updates for just bug fixes looks bad especially if there are more than just a few.
It's about appearance and perception.
[doublepost=1455639783][/doublepost]

Quite a lot actually. I would never go back to iOS 6. Apple has added many useful features since that time. I love the fact that I no longer need to bother with the hassle of jail breaking... I really don't notice any smoothes or animation issues with iOS 9... Also I think iOS 1-6 are ugly compared to iOS 7-9.

As much as I like the look/feel of iOS 6.x, there are far too many functions and apps today that cannot properly utilize it. One of my biggest upgrade drivers is missing or limited functionality in apps that require the latest and greatest to give you (the customer) the latest / greatest / safest experience.

 

[Zirel]

Now imagine Microsoft blocking Windows 95 from being installed on those Pentium machines after releasing Windows XP.

Microsoft actually did that with the newer Intel CPU's.

However, Windows is not a complete OS, it's only the base, for it to work on a computer, it needs appropriate drivers. Hardware manufacturers (who make the drivers), may impede you from updating to the newest or older version.

 

[RiddlaBronc]

Bought my desktop at the end of 2014 with windows 8.1 and it was decent. Upgraded to windows 10 and everything is so much faster now. On my 6+ i wish i had stayed at 8.4.1 or whatever the last firmware of ios8 was. I am noticing a lot more " the unexpected error" on more websites or sometimes it will freeze when scrolling some pages.

 

[logicstudiouser]

Not sure whether or not this is more a hardware or software compliment, but i was able to run in -23C for 10K over the weekend up here in Canada (coldest weekend this winter) which I tracked running the Nike + app (with GPS on) without the phone shutting down on my iOS 6 iPhone 5. That would never be possible on my previous 4S iOS 8 device.

 

[Danilo - Italy]

Is AWS vs AAS (Apple with Steve vs Apple after Steve).

 

[Tehpsyc]

I'm frustrated that there's so much confusion and misinformation on this topic, here is my attempt to clarify:

There are two components to what is currently going on with iOS

One is that the new transparency and blurring effects used in the UI are costly on the GPU. On older hardware in certain areas of the OS this results in dropped frames dipping below 60fps. A big reason of why 6+ and 6S+ users are frequently left with performance issues as well is because the new larger screens have identical cpu/gpu hardware compared to their smaller counterparts but render at 1242 × 2208 and are downsampled to their native 1080x1920. This causes more GPU strain as it is a large increase in rendered pixels per frame and in certain circumstances, this results in dropped frames which feels to users as a loss of responsiveness and fluidity of the UI. The same is true for older hardware which even though runs at a lower resolutions, does not have the raw cpu/gpu power to handle a consistent 60 fps in various areas. You can easily test this by enabling 'Reduce Transparency' and see the operating system fluidity improve in areas where it was previously poor. Its the same reason that on older hardware when iOS 7 was released the transparency effects were force disabled. They are GPU intensive and costly to performance.

The debate as to whether fluid 60 fps matters or is important is certainly one that can be had; many would argue the fluid UI was a strong selling point and a staple for iOS over Android, which has always been notoriously laggy, since the first generations of iOS. Its is certainly a matter of preference and perceptibility however. A brief search in the video game world will lead to an always heated debate over 30 fps vs 60 fps and which is more ideal, and what priorities should be. But to debate whether this performance change exists is silly; using XCode you can easily and objectively measure the framerate of the device and see there are areas where it dips, it is present and not up for debate as it can be reproducible measured. (I'm surprised no one has made a video about it yet.)

The second issue is that since the iOS 7 redesign the animation times and ability to interact with the UI while animations are taking place on screen has changed. It in no way reflects the performance of the phone or efficiency of the operating system. Its simply a design choice; whether you agree with it or like it is certainly subjective and up to the user, but the iOS 7+ animations are longer, more involved, and generally disable user UI interaction until they are complete.

I personally would like to see iOS 10 return to a place where animations were more optimized and able to run at 60 fps on old and high resolution hardware, and were quicker without disabled UI interaction, but that is my personal preference. I'm just hoping this post can clear up some of the misconceptions.

Edit: Just did the math, the 6+ and 6S+ have to render 2.7x more pixels than their non-plus counterparts

 

[trifid]

The second issue is that since the iOS 7 redesign the animation times and ability to interact with the UI while animations are taking place on screen has changed. It in no way reflects the performance of the phone or efficiency of the operating system. Its simply a design choice; whether you agree with it or like it is certainly subjective and up to the user, but the iOS 7+ animations are longer, more involved, and generally disable user UI interaction until they are complete.

I disagree it's 'subjective', the end result of disabling user input during animation results in user having to potentially tap 2-3 times until the UI responds to input. How do you justify this as being subjective? I realize not everyone notices or cares about this, but have you ever seen anyone complain in iOS6 when animations didn't block user input?

I also disagree with you downplaying this "design choice" as something that's minor and that doesn't affect how the OS is perceived in terms of performance. The fact is usability is severely affected, my workflow in iOS is not fluid, iOS constantly makes me stop and makes me wait because it won't register my input. Again many users probably have adapted, or interact with the phone slowly enough where this doesn't affect them, but it doesn't mean this 'design choice' doesn't have issues.

We've discussed the input-blocking extensively here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-9-vs-ios-8-4-1-unresponsiveness.1942001/, so far no one has been able to come up with an objective explanation why input-blocking is any good at all, even though there are many that don't care or aren't affected by it, no one has tried to fight in favor of input-blocking to remain and to keep overtaking the rest of iOS.

 

[C DM]

I disagree it's 'subjective', the end result of disabling user input during animation results in user having to potentially tap 2-3 times until the UI responds to input. How do you justify this as being subjective? I realize not everyone notices or cares about this, but have you ever seen anyone complain in iOS6 when animations didn't block user input?

I also disagree with you downplaying this "design choice" as something that's minor and that doesn't affect how the OS is perceived in terms of performance. The fact is usability is severely affected, my workflow in iOS is not fluid, iOS constantly makes me stop and makes me wait because it won't register my input. Again many users probably have adapted, or interact with the phone slowly enough where this doesn't affect them, but it doesn't mean this 'design choice' doesn't have issues.

We've discussed the input-blocking extensively here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-9-vs-ios-8-4-1-unresponsiveness.1942001/, so far no one has been able to come up with an objective explanation why input-blocking is any good at all, even though there are many that don't care or aren't affected by it, no one has tried to fight in favor of input-blocking to remain and to keep overtaking the rest of iOS.

Seems like that (the bolded part) is the subjective part essentially.

As for whether or not it presents issues or anything like that, that doesn't change that it (or at least a good part of it) appears to be a design choice (again, whether good or not, or justified or not).

 

[Tehpsyc]

I disagree it's 'subjective', the end result of disabling user input during animation results in user having to potentially tap 2-3 times until the UI responds to input. How do you justify this as being subjective? I realize not everyone notices or cares about this, but have you ever seen anyone complain in iOS6 when animations didn't block user input?

I also disagree with you downplaying this "design choice" as something that's minor and that doesn't affect how the OS is perceived in terms of performance. The fact is usability is severely affected, my workflow in iOS is not fluid, iOS constantly makes me stop and makes me wait because it won't register my input. Again many users probably have adapted, or interact with the phone slowly enough where this doesn't affect them, but it doesn't mean this 'design choice' doesn't have issues.

We've discussed the input-blocking extensively here https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-9-vs-ios-8-4-1-unresponsiveness.1942001/, so far no one has been able to come up with an objective explanation why input-blocking is any good at all, even though there are many that don't care or aren't affected by it, no one has tried to fight in favor of input-blocking to remain and to keep overtaking the rest of iOS.

I agree with you 100%, I think it was a poor choice and I think it impedes workflow and perceived performance, but that's still my subjective opinion. I also don't think I was downplaying it either, simply stating the facts that its not a result of poor optimization regarding cpu or gpu utilization, but rather a design choice. Just trying to facilitate an informed discussion and perhaps calm some of this hostility that seems to crop up anytime anyone mentions UI performance. Clearly didn't work though. But no need to attack cause I also feel its a design choice I'd like to see reverted in future versions of iOS.

 

[trifid]

Seems like that (the bolded part) is the subjective part essentially.

As for whether or not it presents issues or anything like that, that doesn't change that it (or at least a good part of it) appears to be a design choice (again, whether good or not, or justified or not).

Fact is we can't even know for sure if it's a 'design choice', some suggested the new input-blocking in iOS9 may be the result of the new Metal framework. If that's the case it could be a technical oversight.

Furthermore, if we look at which animations are blocked and which aren't, there seems to be no consistent methodology that Apple chooses on which to block. For example why is my input blocked during the notification panel animation, but not blocked during the control center animation? It doesn't make any sense why Apple censors input in one but not the other.

 

[Tehpsyc]

I believe there was quite a bit of input blocking added to animations starting with iOS 7 that weren't present in iOS 6, I remember many people discussing it at the time, which would make me suspect its not related to the metal framework which came much later

Metal certainly introduced its own set of performance issues though

 

[lagwagon]

You really believe what you´re writing here?
Have a look at the IOS9.3 update:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...changes-and-performance-improvements.1955231/

Just some little bugs?
You´re kidding?


iOS 9.3 beta 3
Build: 13E5200d

Critical Bugs

• Setting your device date and time to 1st of January 1970 on 64-bit devices (iPhone 5S and up) will brick the phone forever, even a DFU won't fix this (known to affect iOS 8 and iOS 9).
• Restoring from a backup from either iTunes or iCloud will result in failed verification of iCloud account, which causes sync issues and incomplete restores.

Bugs (new to beta 3)

• Swiping between open apps via 4-finger-gesture causes the screen to go blank for a second on iPad Air 2 and iPad Pro.
• Feedback app appears to be missing in some cases.
• Time missing on status bar for a number of seconds after unlock to Home screen.
• App icons continue to shift when returning to Home screen from current app or Notification Center.
• Swiping right on a notification on the lockscreen does nothing. It only takes you to the homescreen.
• Airplay doesn't work with Apple TV (tested with: Apple TV 3, iPad Air 2, iPhone 6s)

Changes

• iOS 9.3 beta 3 now scores 419 on HTMLTest.com compared to 409 for iOS 9.0.
• Verizon Wi-Fi calling (new).
• New News toggle under iCloud settings in countries with unsupported News app.

Bug fixes

• CrashSafari website no longer does anything.
• Landscape Control Center no longer cuts the right side of icons.
• Animation snap in Task Switcher when closing multiple apps is fixed.
• 3D Touch trackpad issues fixed.
• Bookmark links toolbar on iPad Air 2 in Safari now rendering correctly (was broken in beta 2)
• Fixes bug that causes the device to consume large amounts of cellular data. Settings > Cellular > System Services > Documents & Sync showed over 8 Gbyte.

Performance

• iPhone 6 Plus: Task Switcher scrolling is fluid; not extremely fast.
• iPhone 6: Task Switcher is 100% smooth and closing the last app does not have the weird glitch where the Home screen bounces left and right.
• iPhone 6: App load times greatly improved. Tapping apps is almost as smooth as iOS 8 and the load-in time is really quick compared to beta 2.
• Improved performance on iPhone 4s, iPad 2 and first gen iPad mini. Apps launch faster and Spotlight doesn't lag anymore.
• 60 FPS now in Multitasking area on A5 processor.

When did I say "just some little bugs"? So no I'm not kidding, because I never said that. You're making things up in your head.

Let me explain it again for you.

Operating System A gets an update 6 months in and contains 20 bug fixes.

Operating System B gets 2 updates in that same 6 months. Main reason for the updates are new features. Each contain 10 bug fixes.

Both Operating Systems get 20 bug fixes in the 6 months. OS B gets 10 Fixes at 3 months and 10 more at 6 months. (Because of more actual updates they can release finished fixes along side them sooner instead of waiting until enough are fixes to warrant a full update like they used to do.)

Apple has moved to more frequent updates for various reasons. Mostly for hew hardware support or new features (because they are releasing far more hardware today vs when iOS 6 was current and they also don't wait for a whole new iOS to release features.) So of course these support and feature updates will also include bug fixes as they are fixed. It would be stupid to not add finished fixes at the time. It doesn't mean twice as many bugs are needing to be fixed just because newer iOS version get twice as many major updates.

Plus everything you listed are beta build issues not release issues. Things change all the time between beta builds that may not even affect the actual release. You're somehow counting beta builds against iOS 8-9 vs iOS 7 only needing up to 7.1.2?

None of those are even official notes. Those are all user created notes and some aren't even bugs. Like the one mentioning the Feedback app. Feedback app isn't even a part of iOS. It's part of a completely separate install (the Profile needed to see beta updates OTA)

Jan 1, 1970 one shouldn't even be listed as a 9.3 beta 3 bug either. Because it's not new. It's been around for at least a couple years, it just wasn't discovered until very recently.

 

[MrAverigeUser]

When did I say "just some little bugs"? So no I'm not kidding, because I never said that. You're making things up in your head.

Let me explain it again for you.
(…)

I understand what you want to say.

But this is nothing but a confirmation NOT to upgrade on later OS versions (= ideally only download bug fixes) if the new released OS has no evident and significant advantage. You point out that there seems to be a increase of bugs like an exponential function with more and more complex Software. Which is logic.

I am NOT a software Pro - not even a amateur. But it seems very logic for me that the only way to prevent total chaos is to break down too complex software just in modules that you can handle. And to separate bug fixes and "new features" for download - so the customers (for example the ones with older hardware or those who haven´t need of "new features" can decide themselves if they take the rapid (exponentially) growing risk of additional bugs who provoke even issues with once well-running "old" basic functions.

You agree?

 

[Radon87000]

I'm frustrated that there's so much confusion and misinformation on this topic, here is my attempt to clarify:

There are two components to what is currently going on with iOS

One is that the new transparency and blurring effects used in the UI are costly on the GPU. On older hardware in certain areas of the OS this results in dropped frames dipping below 60fps. A big reason of why 6+ and 6S+ users are frequently left with performance issues as well is because the new larger screens have identical cpu/gpu hardware compared to their smaller counterparts but render at 1242 × 2208 and are downsampled to their native 1080x1920. This causes more GPU strain as it is a large increase in rendered pixels per frame and in certain circumstances, this results in dropped frames which feels to users as a loss of responsiveness and fluidity of the UI. The same is true for older hardware which even though runs at a lower resolutions, does not have the raw cpu/gpu power to handle a consistent 60 fps in various areas. You can easily test this by enabling 'Reduce Transparency' and see the operating system fluidity improve in areas where it was previously poor. Its the same reason that on older hardware when iOS 7 was released the transparency effects were force disabled. They are GPU intensive and costly to performance.

The debate as to whether fluid 60 fps matters or is important is certainly one that can be had; many would argue the fluid UI was a strong selling point and a staple for iOS over Android, which has always been notoriously laggy, since the first generations of iOS. Its is certainly a matter of preference and perceptibility however. A brief search in the video game world will lead to an always heated debate over 30 fps vs 60 fps and which is more ideal, and what priorities should be. But to debate whether this performance change exists is silly; using XCode you can easily and objectively measure the framerate of the device and see there are areas where it dips, it is present and not up for debate as it can be reproducible measured. (I'm surprised no one has made a video about it yet.)

The second issue is that since the iOS 7 redesign the animation times and ability to interact with the UI while animations are taking place on screen has changed. It in no way reflects the performance of the phone or efficiency of the operating system. Its simply a design choice; whether you agree with it or like it is certainly subjective and up to the user, but the iOS 7+ animations are longer, more involved, and generally disable user UI interaction until they are complete.

I personally would like to see iOS 10 return to a place where animations were more optimized and able to run at 60 fps on old and high resolution hardware, and were quicker without disabled UI interaction, but that is my personal preference. I'm just hoping this post can clear up some of the misconceptions.

Edit: Just did the math, the 6+ and 6S+ have to render 2.7x more pixels than their non-plus counterparts

There is no increase in graphical effects when upgrading from iOS 8 to iOS 9.So why is there a noticeable lack of fluidity on my iPhone 6 in iOS 9 compared to iOS 8?

 

[Tehpsyc]

There is no increase in graphical effects when upgrading from iOS 8 to iOS 9.So why is there a noticeable lack of fluidity on my iPhone 6 in iOS 9 compared to iOS 8?

That is generally attributed to the transition from opengl to metal. While it worked wonders in the OSX environment with regards to improving performs most people believe it had the opposite effect on iOS. Dunno if anyone has done any hard number crunching to compare the two though, so that's speculation on my part. I think there have been videos demonstrating that the iPhone 5 (non 64 bit and non-metal supporting, still using opengl) doesn't suffer from the same FPS drops that new iPhones did when upgrading from 8 to 9.

That being said I would argue iOS 8 still had many areas of framerate drops and the same long animations with UI interaction lockouts carried over from iOS 7, when compared to pre-iOS 7 versions of the OS.

Edit: It may also just be that iOS 9 introduced more demand on the cpu/gpu behind the scenes reducing UI performance unrelated to metal. There are probably areas that are less optimized as well compared to iOS 8. I know the new task switcher for one was very laggy when iOS 9 first came out and has gradually been improved in future updates.

 

[kaiseryeahhh]

Seriously you are comparing ios 6 ios 9?
ios 6 did not have half the stuff or background services or sharing of having ios9
It is logical that the same hardware one goes better than another.

 

[BillyMatt87]

iOS 6 was where Apple actually cared about software quality.Things have been downhill ever since

Plus it had one hell of a music app! It hasn't been nearly as good since.
[doublepost=1455751342][/doublepost]

Seriously you are comparing ios 6 ios 9?
ios 6 did not have half the stuff or background services or sharing of having ios9
It is logical that the same hardware one goes better than another.

iOS 6 had some features that were cut out in iOS 7 and never returned:

- Call rejection option on the lock screen
- Weather and social media widgets in the Notification Center (still in OS X)
- The 'play' symbol in the top right of the status bar to indicate when a song is currently playing
- Better UI optimization for iPad

 

[Altis]

Seriously you are comparing ios 6 ios 9?
ios 6 did not have half the stuff or background services or sharing of having ios9
It is logical that the same hardware one goes better than another.

Sure, but basic things like the keyboard, unlocking/locking, and general OS navigation should be perfect by now.

The hardware is astronomically more power today than it was in the days of the first few generations of iPhones/iPads. So simple things like above should be better than ever.

The problem is they're worse.

 

[BillyMatt87]

Sure, but basic things like the keyboard, unlocking/locking, and general OS navigation should be perfect by now.

The hardware is astronomically more power today than it was in the days of the first few generations of iPhones/iPads. So simple things like above should be better than ever.

The problem is they're worse.

The hardware is the best it's ever been. Sadly, the current software ruins it.

 

[oldmacs]

Sure, but basic things like the keyboard, unlocking/locking, and general OS navigation should be perfect by now.

The hardware is astronomically more power today than it was in the days of the first few generations of iPhones/iPads. So simple things like above should be better than ever.

The problem is they're worse.

This is my problem. How the hell can an iPad Pro or iPad Air 2 stutter in iOS 9, when say an iPad 2 could run iOS 4/5 without any stutter. Animations are such a basic part of the OS and its obviously poor coding.

 

[C DM]

The hardware is the best it's ever been. Sadly, the current software ruins it.

Does it actually "ruin" it?

 

[Radon87000]

Does it actually "ruin" it?

Yes.Just look at the 3D Touch Lag on the 6S

 

[BillyMatt87]

Does it actually "ruin" it?

Maybe not ruin it but the software certainly does not complement the hardware. For example, the hardware specs are getting more and more powerful, but iOS does not take advantage of the hardware upgrades. There are three different display sizes for the iPad now, but they all run an OS whose UI has been mostly designed around the iPhone instead of both platforms in mind.

As I said before, the hardware is beautiful but the software does not match the elegance or the sophistication of the devices it runs on in the way it used to. It's almost ironic, before the software and hardware looked like they were made with each other in mind (but the teams couldn't have been more separated) but now, software and hardware look like the work of two different companies (now both are designed together). I suppose that's what happens when you let hardware designers, with no prior experience in UI development and design take a crack at something that was already done much better by way more qualified people within the company.

 

[C DM]

Yes.Just look at the 3D Touch Lag on the 6S

All those poor people who are really enjoying their iPhone 6s phones.