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Apple's iOS 8 Crisis Continues With New Update Controversy

This article is more than 9 years old.

The iOS 8 horror show doesn’t look to be ending anytime soon. Just days after Apple released the vital iOS 8.1.1 update, a patch it meticulously tested with developers for over two weeks, a fresh outbreak of complaints and bug reports has occurred.

Signs that problems were brewing came with reader comments on my original Forbes’ iOS 8.1.1 release story.

AJ DO commented that “iOS 8.1.1 does absolutely nothing to fix bugs or improve performance” while Bill Johnson remarked that “So far….it didn’t help the WiFi problem. Still need to put it in the freezer to get 10 minutes out of the wifi.” Continuing the theme, fellow Forbes contributor Jim Gorzelany said “Still can't get my 4S back on wi-fi–this is nonsense.”

In addition reader rhonin noted that, while iOS 8.1.1 had fixed some issues, it had introduced others: “Safari seems smoother but now I have a bug with the copy/define not wanting to turn off... Wifi seems better but looks like it pushes the 5 band and dumps the 2 band. Mini 2 runs hot on games that it didn’t before.”

Read more: iPhone 6 And iPhone 6 Plus vs iPhone 5S And iPhone 5: Should You Upgrade?

These concerns are mirrored elsewhere. The official Apple Support Communities board has a number of new threads with users pointing out issues after installing iOS 8.1.1 and the famous ‘iOS 8 Wi-Fi problems’ thread which has been around since the original launch of iOS 8 is now 82 pages long.

Despite this there is light at the end of the tunnel because for many users iOS 8.1.1 has indeed fixed their previous problems. The rather joyful ‘Ios 8.1.1 makes me love my iPad again’ thread is predominantly filled with happy users and there is arguably an equal number of satisfied owners posting as dissatisfied.

Consequently I would still advise all iPhone and iPad users who have already installed a version of iOS 8 to upgrade to iOS 8.1.1.

That said convincing users still on iOS 7 to upgrade seems Apple ’s larger battle. New figures from mobile marketing platform AppLovin show an unprecedented reticence among iOS users to update their devices.

Read more: iPhone 6 Plus Vs Galaxy Note 4 Review: 2014's Biggest Phone Fight

AppLovin processes over 25 billion ad requests per day giving it a vast amount of data to analyse and it found that 45 days after the initial release of iOS 8 only a little over 50% of eligible users have upgraded. For the same period after the release of iOS 7, 80% had upgraded.

Ultimately another version of iOS 8 is still needed and Apple is already on the case. 'iOS 8.2 (Beta 1)' is now in the iOS Dev Center for developers to get to grips with and it should get a public launch within the next few weeks.

The big news about iOS 8.2 is that it adds the ‘WatchKit’ API for Apple Watch app developers, but for many users their hopes for the feature list will be a lot more basic.

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