Updated iOS device and OS version stats from Instapaper

http://www.marco.org/2011/08/13/instapaper-ios-device-and-version-stats-update

by siglesias • 15 years ago

57 17 15 years ago

phren0logy• 15 years ago

Interesting stuff. Keeping the OS so up to date has got to help both users and developers. As a nitpick, the "OS/CPU is at least this" plots are screaming for a CDF graph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulative_distribution_functio...

viggio24• 15 years ago

I completely agree. Using 4.x today allows to write code in a much cleaner and efficient way; a few examples: gestures (for iPhone), blocks, GCD. Besides multitasking and background processing allows features that were impossible to get or required complicated hacks. And now that we must provide iOS4 and iOS5 mixed compatibility, we cannot absolutely maintain any compatibility with iOS3.

reidmain3• 15 years ago

It is quite impressive that in just over a year developers are able to start requiring iOS 4.

I hope that iOS 5's OTA updates we could get to the point where iOS versions older than a few months are considered obsolete.

Apple has done a great job at fostering this culture of upgrading as soon as possible. Microsoft and Google still have problems were the average consumers see OS updates as something that can cause problems, not bring new features.

tmgrhm2• 15 years ago

>I hope that iOS 5's OTA updates we could get to the point where iOS versions older than a few months are considered obsolete.

While a very nice idea, I'm not convinced it much will change due to old hardware being incompatible with new versions of iOS. It's rarely the x.y versions which are the barriers to progress, but the x.0 versions.

RyanKearney• 15 years ago

And when iOS 5 is released Instapaper will become completely unnecessary.

st3fan• 15 years ago

Care to explain why?

rkudeshi• 15 years ago

Probably because Apple's adding Reading List, an Instapaper-lite clone.

However, Marco's said he's "cautiously optimistic" that it will actually drive up the number of users of Instapaper.

http://www.marco.org/2011/06/06/safari-reader-and-instapaper

siglesias• 15 years ago

Maybe for some users, but by no means everybody.

1) Reading List is Safari only. 2) Many popular apps (such as Twitter for iOS) actually support Instapaper's Read Later, whereas I'm not sure that there is a Read Later API (someone correct me if I'm wrong). 3) Instapaper has social sharing built in.

Skroob• 15 years ago

I've been using the iOS 5 betas and I can tell you I use Reading List and Instapaper completely differently. Instapaper has always been long form reading, stored for later (and potentially offline). Reading List, I use to quickly transfer a site I'm currently reading from my desktop to my iPad or iPhone, incidentally replacing an app I wrote to do exactly that. I guess it's time to take Panic's Audion advice and retire that app ("When you double click the competition in the morning, that's a pretty good sign that it's time to hang up your hat!", http://panic.com/extras/audionstory/)

derefr• 15 years ago

The Reading List is just a folder named "Reading List" within your Bookmarks folder; anything that can create a bookmark can add something to it. (It's actually all your bookmarks that are iCloud-synced, not just the reading list.) I imagine there are a bunch of apps with code for an "Add to Reading List" button already written but #define'd out until iOS5 is released, to avoid confusing people who press it and don't get any syncing.

haribilalic• 15 years ago

And Instapaper works offline.

reidmain3• 15 years ago

Does anyone know of any other developers that have published these kind of stats?

I suspect that Instapaper was extremely popular with the techie/start-up crowd when it first launched but it has become quite well known in these last three years and I'm wondering if it has pushed through to your regular Joe consumer yet.

It would be great to get a couple more points of data so we can show that most people are using iOS 4 to help push forward the phasing out of iOS 3 support.

trotsky2• 15 years ago

Funny that the two ipad models are dead even considering they've shipped more than twice as many original ipads. It would seem a full 50% of gruber's readers replaced their ipad's with the ipad 2. No wonder apple is crushing tablet sales.

tmgrhm2• 15 years ago

>It would seem a full 50% of gruber's readers replaced their ipad's with the ipad 2.

What does Gruber have to do with this? Do you mean Marco?

hboon• 15 years ago

He might have meant for you to replace "gruber's readers" as "Apple fanboys".

trotsky2• 15 years ago

Yup, sorry meant marco.

Updated iOS device and OS version stats from Instapaper

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