iPhone OS 4: Welcome to fragmentation-land Apple [Updated]

Ooooh, tricky, Can ‘o worms.

Was this done for commercial reasons? or because the older hardware / battery life just wouldn’t hack it?

Methinks the latter, given Job’s iron grip on user experience. Answers on the back of a hacked i3G running OS4 please.

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This post was mentioned on Twitter by ReallyMobile: iPhone OS 4: Welcome to fragmentation-land Apple by @bensmithuk : http://rlly.mp/beLF8p...

Very good point and observation.

Ooooh, tricky, Can 'o worms. Was this done for commercial reasons? or because the older hardware / battery life just wouldn't hack it?Methinks the latter, given Job's iron grip on user experience. Answers on the back of a hacked i3G running OS4 please.

Ooooh, tricky, Can 'o worms.

Was this done for commercial reasons? or because the older hardware / battery life just wouldn't hack it?

Methinks the latter, given Job's iron grip on user experience. Answers on the back of a hacked i3G running OS4 please.

There’s a difference between fragmentation and progression. Ultimately if you want to have leading edge features your going to have to leave some older hardware behind. I suspect that by the time OS4 ships the iPhone 3G will be discontinued and as such the upgrade will only apply to existing customers.

What this means in practice is that the supported feature set will be the same of all current devices (OK the iPad is gonna be 3 months late) But basically if you go out an buy an iPhone in July it will run the full OS4 set.
Compare this to Android or Symbian where I can walk in to any high street phone shop today and buy a device with one of 3 or 4 different version of the operating system, now thats where fragmentation is a problem.

If you want the latest features then buy the latest device, and don’t moan about being locked into your contract for 2 years. Your the one that wanted the ‘free’ phone and couldn’t realise your basically buying it on HP over 2 years! (but thats a rant for another time!)

And if your a developer and want to build a cool app that utilises one of the feature of OS4 then go for it, please don’t start building your apps for the lowest common denominator, if the industry was doing that then all we’d have today would be SMS & Voice services

I disagree that “There’s a difference between fragmentation and progression”… I think they’re essentially linked. The longer a platform is around or the quicker it evolves the more fragmentation there will be… and this isn’t a bad thing especially (some choose to do it). It just means the honey-moon period with consumers where everyone gets the same experience s over and you have to show your true colours in hat you support and how.

It depends what you mean by consumers get the same experience, if Apple basically cares about shifting boexes then all their ‘customers’ will get the same experience. If you’ve already got a phone then your not a customer your an ex-customer
A hardware company will always be more interested in who they CAN sell too not who they HAVE sold too.
Not that I’m in favour of this position but I think a lot of today’s business models just serve to re-enforce that, always looking to quarterly revenue instead of customer loyalty.

Very good point and observation.

Very good point and observation.

There's a difference between fragmentation and progression. Ultimately if you want to have leading edge features your going to have to leave some older hardware behind. I suspect that by the time OS4 ships the iPhone 3G will be discontinued and as such the upgrade will only apply to existing customers.What this means in practice is that the supported feature set will be the same of all current devices (OK the iPad is gonna be 3 months late) But basically if you go out an buy an iPhone in July it will run the full OS4 set. Compare this to Android or Symbian where I can walk in to any high street phone shop today and buy a device with one of 3 or 4 different version of the operating system, now thats where fragmentation is a problem.If you want the latest features then buy the latest device, and don't moan about being locked into your contract for 2 years. Your the one that wanted the 'free' phone and couldn't realise your basically buying it on HP over 2 years! (but thats a rant for another time!)And if your a developer and want to build a cool app that utilises one of the feature of OS4 then go for it, please don't start building your apps for the lowest common denominator, if the industry was doing that then all we'd have today would be SMS & Voice services

There's a difference between fragmentation and progression. Ultimately if you want to have leading edge features your going to have to leave some older hardware behind. I suspect that by the time OS4 ships the iPhone 3G will be discontinued and as such the upgrade will only apply to existing customers.

What this means in practice is that the supported feature set will be the same of all current devices (OK the iPad is gonna be 3 months late) But basically if you go out an buy an iPhone in July it will run the full OS4 set.
Compare this to Android or Symbian where I can walk in to any high street phone shop today and buy a device with one of 3 or 4 different version of the operating system, now thats where fragmentation is a problem.

If you want the latest features then buy the latest device, and don't moan about being locked into your contract for 2 years. Your the one that wanted the 'free' phone and couldn't realise your basically buying it on HP over 2 years! (but thats a rant for another time!)

And if your a developer and want to build a cool app that utilises one of the feature of OS4 then go for it, please don't start building your apps for the lowest common denominator, if the industry was doing that then all we'd have today would be SMS & Voice services

I disagree that “There's a difference between fragmentation and progression”… I think they're essentially linked. The longer a platform is around or the quicker it evolves the more fragmentation there will be… and this isn't a bad thing especially (some choose to do it). It just means the honey-moon period with consumers where everyone gets the same experience s over and you have to show your true colours in hat you support and how.

I disagree that “There's a difference between fragmentation and progression”… I think they're essentially linked. The longer a platform is around or the quicker it evolves the more fragmentation there will be… and this isn't a bad thing especially (some choose to do it). It just means the honey-moon period with consumers where everyone gets the same experience s over and you have to show your true colours in hat you support and how.

It depends what you mean by consumers get the same experience, if Apple basically cares about shifting boexes then all their 'customers' will get the same experience. If you've already got a phone then your not a customer your an ex-customer A hardware company will always be more interested in who they CAN sell too not who they HAVE sold too.Not that I'm in favour of this position but I think a lot of today's business models just serve to re-enforce that, always looking to quarterly revenue instead of customer loyalty.

It depends what you mean by consumers get the same experience, if Apple basically cares about shifting boexes then all their 'customers' will get the same experience. If you've already got a phone then your not a customer your an ex-customer
A hardware company will always be more interested in who they CAN sell too not who they HAVE sold too.
Not that I'm in favour of this position but I think a lot of today's business models just serve to re-enforce that, always looking to quarterly revenue instead of customer loyalty.

I also don’t think it is fragmentation. This is linear where every OS version is a complete superset of the previous version. You don’t have to do individual feature tests (where the feature tests themselves differ between versions) you can just test for the OS release number and know what is available.

The fragmentation is between the iPad, iPod and iPhone where, to maximise the value of each platform, every application writer is going to have to do a raft of feature tests to know what functionality to expose to the user and what to hide. Some of this will be helped by the APIs (calls will return approximate or, alternatively, “failed to work” values) but things like screen size require real programming changes – user interfaces aren’t something you can scale and pretend that it will look nice.

I also don't think it is fragmentation. This is linear where every OS version is a complete superset of the previous version. You don't have to do individual feature tests (where the feature tests themselves differ between versions) you can just test for the OS release number and know what is available.The fragmentation is between the iPad, iPod and iPhone where, to maximise the value of each platform, every application writer is going to have to do a raft of feature tests to know what functionality to expose to the user and what to hide. Some of this will be helped by the APIs (calls will return approximate or, alternatively, “failed to work” values) but things like screen size require real programming changes – user interfaces aren't something you can scale and pretend that it will look nice.

I also don't think it is fragmentation. This is linear where every OS version is a complete superset of the previous version. You don't have to do individual feature tests (where the feature tests themselves differ between versions) you can just test for the OS release number and know what is available.

The fragmentation is between the iPad, iPod and iPhone where, to maximise the value of each platform, every application writer is going to have to do a raft of feature tests to know what functionality to expose to the user and what to hide. Some of this will be helped by the APIs (calls will return approximate or, alternatively, “failed to work” values) but things like screen size require real programming changes – user interfaces aren't something you can scale and pretend that it will look nice.

As soon as I saw that slide in Apple’s presentation with the word ‘Fall’ adjacent to the iPad that alteration you made was inevitable…

Whilst a more major instance, this isn’t the first time there’s been fragmentation on the iPhone OS platform; the launch of iPhone 3GS introduced new 3D acceleration capabilities to applications. I believe it was stated that this means some applications are 3GS/Touch3G only. Of course the OS 4 functional deviations are going to greatly exacerbate this.

As soon as I saw that slide in Apple’s presentation with the word ‘Fall’ adjacent to the iPad that alteration you made was inevitable…Whilst a more major instance, this isn’t the first time there’s been fragmentation on the iPhone OS platform; the launch of iPhone 3GS introduced new 3D acceleration capabilities to applications. I believe it was stated that this means some applications are 3GS/Touch3G only. Of course the OS 4 functional deviations are going to greatly exacerbate this.

As soon as I saw that slide in Apple’s presentation with the word ‘Fall’ adjacent to the iPad that alteration you made was inevitable…

Whilst a more major instance, this isn’t the first time there’s been fragmentation on the iPhone OS platform; the launch of iPhone 3GS introduced new 3D acceleration capabilities to applications. I believe it was stated that this means some applications are 3GS/Touch3G only. Of course the OS 4 functional deviations are going to greatly exacerbate this.

[...] “Welcome to fragmentation-land Apple“, Ben Smith of The Really Mobile Project has commented on a consequence of the iPhone OS 4.0 [...]

Fragmentation? Yes and no. I don’t think the core user experience will change, but Apple isn’t going to hang around with improvements to the OS for the sake of older customers. The main problem will be (1) annoyed users of older hardware, and (2) user confusion in the App Store, IMHO.

http://www.allaboutiphone.net/2010/04/is-the-iphone-platform-really-fragmenting/

Fragmentation? Yes and no. I don't think the core user experience will change, but Apple isn't going to hang around with improvements to the OS for the sake of older customers. The main problem will be (1) annoyed users of older hardware, and (2) user confusion in the App Store, IMHO.http://www.allaboutiphone.net/2010/04/is-the-ip…

Fragmentation? Yes and no. I don't think the core user experience will change, but Apple isn't going to hang around with improvements to the OS for the sake of older customers. The main problem will be (1) annoyed users of older hardware, and (2) user confusion in the App Store, IMHO.

http://www.allaboutiphone.net/2010/04/is-the-ip…

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Today Steve Jobs announced iPhone OS 4 – an update that includes long-awaited features such as multi-tasking… and that’s great…..