Fragmentation Comes To iOS 244
dell623 writes "While the fragmentation issues in iOS are nowhere near as bad as Android, it can no longer be considered non existent. I have prepared a chart showing which features will be available on which device. While some restrictions are the result of hardware limitations, it is clear that Apple has deliberately chosen to limit some previous generation devices, and figuring this out isn't always straightforward if you're not buying the latest iPad or iPhone."
par for the course for apple they also lockout 64 (Score:3, Interesting)
par for the course for apple they also lockout 64 bit only os on 64 bit hardware due to it only having 32bit EFI. But the same systems can boot 64 bit windows os.
Also the video cards don't have 64 bit drivers on the osx side but you can put in newer videos cards in them.
Also they can run the 64 bit only mac os x but you need to use the same tools that you use to run mac os x on a non apple pc.
3GS, iPad1 and iPad mini should not be on the list (Score:3, Interesting)
Why are the 3GS (a 3 year old design), iPad1 (2.5 years old) and iPad mini (rumored device at this moment) on the list? Why aren't things like hardware acceleration, smooth scrolling and other basic features that didn't exist for Android as of a few months ago on the features list? Hell, why isn't front/back camera on that list - no complaints that the iPod touch even have an external speaker until v2?
As it stands there are basically three screen ratios (3:2, 4:3 and now 16:9), 3 device categories (phone/ipod/tablet). A whole lot less variety and scattered than Android where this kind of list would require a large spreadsheet to make sense of.
This list is a bit of a stretch. The phones that are currently being sold (4, 4S, 5) have very similar capabilities to each other, as do the tablets.
Re:It's pretty clear.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course. In android world, the so called fragmentation is actually "choice", while in Apple world, it's truly fragmentation.
I don't get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Starting with the retina display, the programming API's for the iPhone took a one-way trip away from utilizing absolute pixel measurements, and referring to screen positions by resolution-independant "points", instead. In this way, coupled with the usage of floating point values for screen positions instead of integers, code would be made entirely resolution independent, without having to inquire about the phone's physical pixel resolution. All of the iPhone screens up until that time, whether retina display or not, were considered to be the same dimensions in these "point" sizes, so the same code could look and work exactly the same both on pre-retina and post-retina displays (perhaps only being of higher fidelity on the latter).
Now Apple decides it's time to make a phone with an entirely different aspect ratio. Really, what was the point of bothering with the resolution-independent screen positioning in their API's in the first place if they were just going to go and produce a completely different screen size that the programmer is going to have to write extra code to account for anyways?
A feature comparison != fragmentation (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently the author of the "article" doesn't understand the distinction. I'm disappointed the editors let this one in.
Re:It's pretty clear.... (Score:4, Interesting)
iOS fragmentation is far worse than Android fragmentation, because the Apple App Store has no problem selling you software that you can't use on your devices. Google Play won't let you buy an app that won't work on your device, which mitigates a lot of the problems that exist because of fragmentation.
It's annoying because decent software will get rated down on the App Store because it doesn't work on the iPad 1 and angry suckers leave low ratings to show their anger at Apple's incompetence.