Fragmentation

On the eve of Samsung's Galaxy S4 event, Apple's Phil Schiller repeats that Android is fragmented, lacks integration, offers poor experience

By Rene Ritchie, Wednesday, Mar 13, 2013 a 6:21 pm

Tomorrow Samsung will announce the Galaxy S4 -- I know this because I'll be in New York, playing Jimmy Olsen to Phil Nickinson's Clark Kent to help out Android Central's coverage -- and in a not atypical competitive fashion, Apple's senior vice president of marketing, Phil Schiller, sent a few jabs Android's way. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal's Ian Sherr and Jessica E. Lessin, Schiller hit the usual targets of fragmentation, lack of integration, and poor user experience:

Apple fixes App Store download issue for iPhone and iPod touch users on iOS 3.1.3

By Andrew Wray, Wednesday, Dec 21, 2011 a 9:46 am

Apple has issued a fix for iOS 3.1.3 App Store download bug. The bug in question removed the 'Download' button altogether when users running the older firmware attempted to acquire apps from the App Store.

Since the App Store is essentially a native wrapper around a web-based interface, Apple is able to update it without having to push out a full version of the whole OS. That can lead to things breaking out of nowhere, but also getting fixed.

iPhone and iPod touch users on iOS 3.1.3 having trouble with App Store downloads

By Andrew Wray, Tuesday, Dec 20, 2011 a 2:33 pm

Reports in Apple's Support Community suggest some users running on older iOS 3.1.3 firmware are no longer able to download apps from the App Store after Apple pushed out an update on December 16th.

Mobile Nations 10: The F-word

By Rene Ritchie, Tuesday, Nov 15, 2011 a 7:56 pm

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Phil Nickinson, Rene Ritchie, and special guest Michael DeGusta talk about fragmentation, legacy, forks, and flexibility and how they challenge developers, designers, but most importantly -- consumers. This is a Mobile Nations Special Edition!

iPhone vs. Android phone update-ablity

By Rene Ritchie, Thursday, Oct 27, 2011 a 1:56 pm

Michael Degusta from the understatement did a tremendous job putting together a breakdown on iPhone vs. Android phone device update and support history. [Click/tap on the thumbnail above to go to his site and see it in full.]

Just as LTE-support, user-changeable batteries, different form factors, etc. are legitimate points of consideration when it comes to choosing beteen iPhone 4S and the various Android phones, so is vendor support and their history of OS updates. Not just for consumers, but for developers as well.

Updates

By Rene Ritchie, Thursday, Apr 14, 2011 a 10:33 pm

Today Apple released both iOS 4.3.2 and iOS 4.2.7. The first was for almost all iOS devices except the Verizon iPhone. The second was for the Verizon iPhone. Like iPad last year, which shipped with iOS 3.2 and didn't unify with the rest of the iOS family until iOS 4.2, the Verizon iPhone shipped with iOS 4.2.5/4.2.6 and won't unify with the rest of the iOS family until some future update, perhaps not until iOS 5/5.x.

Yet despite this fragmentation -- or more properly bifurcation -- of the iOS software, Apple still delivered both updates at the same time, across the world, and across both major US carriers, AT&T and Verizon.