I’m the opposite of an early adopter, especially when it comes to Apple. I have an iPad 4, not exactly by choice - I need it to run a certain app for work, otherwise I might have something different. Anyway, I purposely keep it behind on updates because I frequently find they are pointless, yet make enough superficial changes to require retraining in how I do basic tasks.
It’s been a while now and I see there has been a tweak to the latest update. I’d like to see what it looks like to use on my iPad. Most of the reviews seem to focus on new features that I don’t care about, or apps that I will never use. I just want to see how the nuts and bolts work during basic use - browser, podcasts, music, turning WiFi on and off, photos, etc. Can’t seem to find any videos either because the search terms bring up a lot of extraneous stuff.
Is anyone here using the new IOS on an iPad 4? Can you tell me how it compares to the previous version?
What’s to say? If you “don’t care about” all the new features, and are just interested in the nuts and bolts of what you’re used to, you’ll find that they all still work. Visually, iOS 8 is changed a lot less than iOS 7 was.
On the other hand, you can also do a bunch of stuff that you couldn’t before.
It runs just fine on an iPad 4, other than some new features which require the latest hardware. But anything you can do now, you’ll be able to do under iOS 8. Some older devices (iPad 2, iPhone 4s) ran pretty slowly under the new system, but a recent update (iOS 8.1) went a long way to correct this. My wife has an iPhone 4s and it’s running iOS 8.1 with no problems.
One slight caution: the update needs a lot of free space to run. You’ll get most of this back, but not all.
I updated my iPad (2 I guess? it’s retina but a few years old) from 6 to 8 a few days ago because a couple apps my wife wanted wouldn’t play with anything less than 7. I’m pretty sure it was a mistake: it’s generally a bit slower (presumably because of my older hardware, but if I give Windows shit for memory creep I can give it to iOS), it changed a lot of things in stupid ways (wtf is with Safari disappearing the navigation bar to give me a quarter inch of extra space and making me do an extra touch or gesture to get the damn back button? Who thought that was a good UI decision?!), and it added some required apps that I can’t get rid of (I added an entire extra screen just to hide stuff like “Tips” where I’ll never have to see it again). I’m fairly equal opportunity between Apple, Win, and Android, firmly believing that each has its strengths and its place, but I just don’t see any advantage to the particular upgrade that I made. YMM, of course, V.
(Well, my wife can run the USA network streaming app and watch her shows. Hooray.)
I was reluctant to upgrade to 8, but did it after the security issues in older versions were revealed. Apple wasn’t making fixes for devices that could upgrade to 8.
I just turned off almost everything that is a new feature of 8. (Heck, I even turn off things like FaceTime that have been around a while). With the cartoony icons, I have no choice but to get used to them, but they’re not so bad after you forget how much nicer the old ones were.
I’m also not affected by some changes because of the apps I use (or don’t use). For example, I use GMail’s app for mail, Nook or iSilo for reading, and Dolphin for web browsing.
Like Kiros, I hide all the Apple apps I don’t use but can’t delete. For myself, I created a folder (I forget the formal iOS term for them) and put all the apps in there. That way, they only take up one icon worth of space.
I have a iPhone 4S and had no problems with iOS8 until the recent update ( 8.2 ). After installing it I was not able to rotate the screen view to landscape. For me, this only impacted pictures, Safari, and the Stocks app but it was enough of an annoyance to go back to one level.
I have not spent any time investigating the problem online so perhaps another update is pending to fix this.
My iPod just bugged me to do an update so I said “OK”. I’m vaguely regretting it. For some reason the new update forgot about a number of my settings; e.g. how long it takes before it turns off/locks the screen. The music player now seems weirdly sluggish and oddly organized (why would “Songs” be under “more”? Doesn’t everyone listen to their music with “Songs” set to shuffle?). And, as someone else mentioned, there are a couple of new useless, undelete-able apps such as Health and Tips that you have to fling into a window of their own so they don’t bug you by their very presence.
Perhaps I misspoke. I restored from the last backup I had before the update. Since the only thing new was the 8.2 upgrade I was able to get back to 8.1.2 without much difficulty. Sorry for the confusion.