Traffic from Apple's unannounced iOS 8, OS X 10.10 remains steady ahead of WWDC 2014
Testing of Apple's anticipated next-generation operating systems -- iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 -- continues along at a steady clip, new traffic data shows, ahead of the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, where both products are expected to be unveiled.
AppleInsider has been tracking traffic it sees from the next major versions of iOS and OS X, keeping an eye on trends as WWDC approaches its June 2 kickoff. While traffic from both Apple's mobile and desktop-class operating systems was steadily growing through late 2013, it's largely flattened out over the last month, traffic logs show.
In a somewhat interesting pattern, traffic from devices running iOS 8 was largely steady regardless of the day of the week, with only small drop-offs on weekends. Macs running OS X 10.10, however, saw a significant decline in visits on weekends, reflecting the fact that those machines are probably used mostly at work.
Traffic from Macs running OS X 10.10 was also higher than iOS 8 on peak days.
The data suggests that Apple is hard at work testing out the next-generation versions of its iOS and OS X platforms, both of which are expected to be announced at an anticipated June 2 WWDC keynote. Apple took the same stage in San Francisco last year to officially unveil iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 Mavericks to its developer community and the public at large.
In its WWDC 2014 announcement, Apple did reveal that the company plans to show off its "latest advances in iOS and OS X," stopping short of admitting that full-fledged point-zero releases will be shown off.
AppleInsider has been tracking traffic it sees from the next major versions of iOS and OS X, keeping an eye on trends as WWDC approaches its June 2 kickoff. While traffic from both Apple's mobile and desktop-class operating systems was steadily growing through late 2013, it's largely flattened out over the last month, traffic logs show.
In a somewhat interesting pattern, traffic from devices running iOS 8 was largely steady regardless of the day of the week, with only small drop-offs on weekends. Macs running OS X 10.10, however, saw a significant decline in visits on weekends, reflecting the fact that those machines are probably used mostly at work.
Traffic from Macs running OS X 10.10 was also higher than iOS 8 on peak days.
The data suggests that Apple is hard at work testing out the next-generation versions of its iOS and OS X platforms, both of which are expected to be announced at an anticipated June 2 WWDC keynote. Apple took the same stage in San Francisco last year to officially unveil iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 Mavericks to its developer community and the public at large.
In its WWDC 2014 announcement, Apple did reveal that the company plans to show off its "latest advances in iOS and OS X," stopping short of admitting that full-fledged point-zero releases will be shown off.
Comments
I agree, we should tell all the Windows XP users that!
Hopefully they'll have some sort of variation or improvement on widgets or continuously letting apps run on a portion of the screen in iOS8. Assuming they are releasing a bigger screen phone they need to take advantage of what you can actually do with more screen real estate. Simply being able to cram 50 icons on the screen instead of 20 would just make for clutter.
Or one could say that the Mac OS guys have their OS fairly well debugged and the iOS guys are on a crash program to get the bugs out. I find it highly unlikely that they have that many iOS devices out in the wild right now.
Well if 9to5Mac is correct, the big feature of OSX this year will be the UI redesign. I don't expect OSX to look exactly like iOS but I won't be surprised to see icons looking more like their iOS counterparts and any last vestiges of faux leather, felt, etc. removed. Peter Cohen made a good observation on the last iMore podcast. He works for an Apple reseller and said a lot of people that are new to the Mac are coming from iOS, so making elements of the UI more similar just makes sense.
I also don't expect OS X to look like iOS. Although, in principal it is almost possible with Launchpad and full screen apps. At the moment it would feel forced to unify OS X and iOS. If there is a point in the future, when a separation of OS X and iOS feels forced, a unification will come. But this day still appears quite far away.
I'm not saying it would not hurt but come on it isn't that confusing. I've never had trouble finding Safari, Mail, Contacts or anything else on both systems. I would expect some interface tweaking as honestly software is never done, however I don't expect a MS like abortion of an update.
What are you talking about here? Mavericks was a massive update and a great step forward for users. Beyond that what do you really expect from an operating system?
I'm not saying it would not hurt but come on it isn't that confusing. I've never had trouble finding Safari, Mail, Contacts or anything else on both systems. I would expect some interface tweaking as honestly software is never done, however I don't expect a MS like abortion of an update.
You might be right from a developer perspective. So no argument here. I was talking from a user perspective. There I can't see a big difference to 10.8. It's not a complaint, more an observation. As such more UI consistency between iOS and OS X is desirable, e.g. icons.
I don't mind if OS X gets a flat look, the original Mac OS was flat. It's the transparency I don't like, they think it puts content first, but it just makes things hard to read and cluttered looking.
I don't mind if OS X gets a flat look, the original Mac OS was flat. It's the transparency I don't like, they think it puts content first, but it just makes things hard to read and cluttered looking.
I couldn't agree more: transparency, especially on iOS, is nothing but a distraction. Windows had transparency in Vista and I thought that was one of the worst UI decisions.
Or one could say that the Mac OS guys have their OS fairly well debugged and the iOS guys are on a crash program to get the bugs out. I find it highly unlikely that they have that many iOS devices out in the wild right now.
With less than a month and a half until WWDC, it is rather likely that there are many devices running iOS 8 in the wild. Naturally, most (if not all) of the devices would be existing hardware (iPhone 5s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPad Air, iPad mini Retina, etc.) right now rather than beta hardware since we're presumably still about five months away from a new handset release.
A casual passerby would not be able to tell that the Apple employee was running beta software on their device. If the Apple employee went to his/her kid's soccer game and shot some video with an iPhone or took a picture of their cappuccino, how would someone be able to tell?
Do you look over people's shoulders to see what OS their phone is running? I don't. The only time I can tell is if I'm standing next to someone at a bar or on public transit.
What are you talking about here? Mavericks was a massive update and a great step forward for users. Beyond that what do you really expect from an operating system?
Apps are not the operating system. The operating system was enhanced significantly, spend sometime with the developer tools and actually develop an understanding of what has happened with Mac OS over the years.
For the most part the could is a joke and anti user. I don't see excessive could integration as being a big help for most users. ICloud especially gets far to many things wrong, as such I don't see it ever being a huge success unless Apple can significantly overhaul the facility to make it more useful. In a more general sense there might be a few could based features worth adding but Mac OS needs a different approach than what is seen in some of the iOS solutions. The perfect example here is Siri which could be useful on the Mac if the IA was actually running on the Mac so that traffic to the web is minimized. However such a Mac Siri would not be seen as a could services so much as a Mac service that can intelligently talk to the cloud.
I'm not saying it would not hurt but come on it isn't that confusing. I've never had trouble finding Safari, Mail, Contacts or anything else on both systems. I would expect some interface tweaking as honestly software is never done, however I don't expect a MS like abortion of an update.
I agree with the first 1/2 of what you said. People forget about compressed memory, App Nap, coallesced timers, adding a whole new mode of working with multiple monitors, tags, etc.
iCloud already is a huge success. Bookmark and keychain sharing between Macs and iOS devices is awesome. The same is true for document sharing between devices. Granted, core data syncing was rough when first released, but it has improved dramatically since then. Apple still has some work left ahead of them. Their current implementation of file management iOS-style feels incomplete. In addition, they don't have a good handle on generic file types such as images. I don't think iCloud syncing is going anywhere anytime soon.
Remember these are yearly and now free updates. Getting changes isn't like changes in Windows where they take a couple years to do a point update.
They might be doing a tick/tock method where one year they concentrate more on the sub-system and the next on the UI. That gives each a couple years to be ironed out before the next set of big changes.
Apps are a different story and a few new ones came with Mavericks, but Apps aren't really the operating system. Sure Apple ships Safari, Mail and a bunch of others but you aren't stuck with them and their particular gloss.
More importantly to me, I'd rather see Apple keep thing consistent across operating system releases rather than to suffer through a botched attempt to improve things like Windows 8 tried to do. I don't consider iCons to be part of the OS either, they are part of the app as such Apple can do whatever it wants with app icons anytime it chooses. However they need to be careful here because I've had installed user apps upgrade their app icon during a modest don't release and frankly it sucks if the change is dramatic. The problem is once you get use to an icon it becomes muscle memory when accessing it. If I have to retrain myself to use common features of Mac OS then I have to ask is it worth it. Especially when some of Apples icons are damn near classics.
Some designs are classics, take for example the Hobart/Kitchen Aid mixers that have had the same basic mechanical design for years. Sometimes it just makes more sense to keep a familiar and reliable design around instead of screwing with it. This is how I feel about much of the Mac OS interface, nothing substantially better has come around so why screw with it. Sure tweak it here and there but let's not screw it up like MS did with Windows. The time to drop familiarity is when there is a substantial advancement to be had, I see this happening when Mac OS can be extended with AI technology.
No it won't because that is about the only thing that works well in IOS and Mac OS. Beyond syncing though iOS is extremely frustrating to work with.
I hope that 3D dock will be GONE.