Quote:
Originally Posted by SkinnyPupp
Performance within an app is one thing, but how about when apps have to load and swap a lot of information into RAM. Switching between apps almost always requires the app to be restarted in ios7, is that the case with 8? Also games designed for newer devices will have problems continuing to run on the air or ipad 2, since they run out of memory quickly. Does 8 help solve that, or does it make it worse?
Benchmarks are one thing, a great way to show off hardware performance. However real world performance is another issue all together. The only apps that run decently on ios on older hardware like the air and ipad 2 are the integrated apps. Anything not integrated will have these issues. Which sucks for me, because I prefer to use pocketcasts over podcasts, gmail over the email app, and chrome over safari. But the combination of those 3 apps renders the ipad 2 unusable for task switching, and extremely slow within the apps. It would be great if ios 8 helped, but I have a feeling it's just going to make things worse, and will probably deprecate even newer hardware like the iphone 5 and ipad retina.
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"older hardware like the air and ipad 2" Since when is the "air" older hardware?
The biggest problem with the iPad 2 is the 512MB memory. So it's always going to be hampered. That said, Apple has now made their browser engine available to 3rd party apps instead of the generic UIWebView. This means browsers like Chrome or Dolphin will perform much faster. Browser windows opened in apps like Facebook or Twitter will also benefit. How much difference this makes we'll have to see, but it was a significant complaint from developers.
I also wish Apple would stop supporting older hardware. I think the 4S and iPad 2 should have been the minimum for iOS 7 and the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 should have been the minimum for iOS 8. That would have reduced the complaints from users of the oldest devices and guarantee a minimum level of performance.
While I understand Apple wanting to make the newest version available on the widest selection of hardware, extending support for 4 years after a launch is too much, IMO. The 4S came out in Oct 2011. So it will be a full 3 years old when iOS 8 comes out. It will also receive all the point updates for another year until iOS 9 comes out. That's 4 years of operating system support & upgrades. They could cut that back to 3 years (2 year old devices getting the latest release and one year of updates). It's still generous. Especially compared to the dismal state of OS updates on many other manufacturers.