The iOS system has rolled over again.
On March 15, 2022, Apple released the official version of iOS 15.4. Just when many iPhone users are surprised to use Face ID normally while wearing a mask, many users also find that iOS 15.4 will make the battery life of the phone worse.
According to the news reported by GSMArena, after updating to iOS 15.4, even the iPhone 13 Pro Max with the largest battery capacity can only maintain half a day's battery life. More iPhone 11 users said that after updating to iOS 15.4, the phone only opened the screen for 2 hours, and the battery level can be reduced by 80%.
In this regard, Apple released a message saying: "Within 48 hours after installing the new version of the operating system, the application and some mobile phone functions need to be adjusted, and it is normal for the battery life to change." You can observe for a while, and then you can contact them if you still have questions."
Although it is not explicitly acknowledged that iOS 15.4 has a battery life bug, combined with the history of the iOS system, the netizens' doubts are not rootless water.
iOS has also "rolled over" before
In fact, as early as iOS 12, Apple realized the need to improve the stability of the system. For example, Verge reported that at an internal meeting in June 2018, Apple's VP Craig Federighi, who is in charge of software business, said that the highest priority goal of iOS 12 is "improving reliability and performance."
This is most likely due to the impact of the "downscaling gate".
Image source: reddit
At the end of 2017, there were foreign technology bulls through a number of old iPhones, switching between the new original battery and the aging battery test, and finally confirmed that if the iPhone's battery is relatively old, Apple will limit the CPU speed, resulting in a decline in iPhone performance.
As things got bigger and bigger, Apple finally said to the outside world, "Reasons such as aging batteries, cold and low power will indeed slow down the CPU speed of multiple series such as the iPhone 6, 7 and SE." To appease consumers, Apple announced a reduction in battery replacement prices for the globally insured iPhone. For example, in the Chinese market, the price of replacing the battery of the iPhone has been reduced from 608 yuan to 218 yuan.
Although the overall performance of iOS 12 is not bad, but by iOS 13, Apple seems to have forgotten the above priority goals.
Source: Apple's official website
According to media reports, after the launch of iOS 13, there was a serious "killing background" problem, if in the process of watching the video, reply to WeChat, at this time, not only WeChat needs to reload, and then cut back to the video page, but also need to reload. In this regard, some netizens complained: "After upgrading iOS 13, I have been watching 'Earth' all day."
It also bothered Apple engineers. According to media statistics, from September 20, 2019 to October 1, 2019, iOS 13 has been updated in 4 versions, and the interval between each version is not more than 5 days. Unfortunately, updating so frequently seems to be just to fix the bug. Because some netizens found that some of the interfaces of iOS 13 have not even been done in Chinese.
In fact, in recent years, almost every major version of iOS has been exposed to new bugs.
Tech blogger "BloggerNickAckerman" found through actual measurements that after updating iOS 14.5.1, the performance of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 11 dropped by about 60%. According to this calculation, the performance of the upgraded iPhone 12 is similar to that of the 2018 iPhone XR, and the iPhone 11 is close to the performance of the iPhone 7 in 2016.
Why did iOS, once known for its stability, fall to this point?
Apples that frequently do addition
This is likely to stem from Apple's "additive strategy." Before 2013, Apple was known for being closed and stubborn. This personality, reflected in iOS, is extremely conservative. For example, before iOS 8 in 2014, the iPhone did not support third-party input methods. If the user wants to use a third-party input method, then the iPhone can only be jailbroken first.
However, as Android continues to exert efforts in terms of stability, the iPhone's innovation ability has weakened, and Apple has gradually adjusted its previous conservative strategy and begun to add. Interestingly, since there are ready-made jailbreak stores, many of the new features added by iOS are learned from jailbreak stores.
F.lux Image Source: businessinsider
For example, Apple added Night Shift, a night-time protection mode, to iOS 9.3. Some media said that this is not the first feature created by Apple, because the jailbreak plugin F.lux released in October 2011 can already achieve this function. Ironically, F.lux was also featured on the App Store, but in November 2015, it was forcibly removed by Apple for "violating the Developer Agreement."
Apple continues to inject new features into iOS, and one of the effects is that iOS is becoming more and more bloated. Taking XS as an example, iOS 13 is only 4.44GB in size, iOS 14 is 6.17GB, and by iOS 15, this number has further expanded to 7.49GB.
This is like building a building, as the number of floors is getting higher and higher, the connection between the system levels is also more and more, and if it is slightly wrong, there may be bugs.
In fact, not only iOS, But also the Windows system has this problem. In November 2021, computer security organization Cisco Talos discovered a new vulnerability that allowed users with partial privileges to elevate their privileges to system administrators. It is understood that all versions of Windows, including Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022, are affected by the vulnerability.
But unlike Windows, iOS doesn't give users enough options.
The choice should be left to the user
At the beginning of 2022, Apple's official data showed that among the iPhones launched in the past four years, 72% of them upgraded to iOS 15, only 26% used iOS 14, and the rest of the older versions were only 2%.
For comparison, MSPoweruser released data shows that by the end of 2021, Microsoft's latest Windows 11 only has an 8.9% market share, while Windows 10 21H1 has a market share of 36.3%, which is the most popular version of the Windows operating system.
A large part of the reason why Apple and Microsoft's latest system have such a large share gap is because Apple's closed-loop ecology does not allow users to downgrade to older systems at will. For example, just a week after the release of iOS 15.4, Apple stopped validating iOS 15.3.1. This also means that users who update to iOS 15.4 can no longer downgrade to iOS version 15.3.1.
Of course, Apple's purpose of this move is to avoid fragmentation of the system version and affect the company's overall ecological strategy, but consumers have ownership of the product after purchasing electronic products. Whether it's fragmentation, a ban on jailbreaking, or Apple's launch of a new device, it has nothing to do with users who already have old iPhones.
In this sense, the biggest beneficiary of Apple's closed-loop ecology is actually not the user, but Apple itself. Because from the perspective of system upgrade, it can be found that consumers can only passively accept, and have no right to choose.
After experiencing many system BUG events, if Apple still hopes to adopt an additive strategy in the future, then the primary consideration is presumably to return to the "performance and stability improvement" proposed in the iOS 12 era.