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Apple busted out a lot of evolutionary features last night at WWDC, including iOS 6. Apple’s ditched Google for its built-in Maps app on the iPhone, and finally brought turn-by-turn directions, plus a fancy new 3D “Flyover”, but only if you’ve got an iPhone 4S.
Yes the iPhone 4, and even the iPhone 3GS, is getting some flavour of iOS 6, but not everything is equal for the older phones. Just like the horrendous iOS 4 update that crippled the iPhone 3G and left it without multitasking, plus other pivotal iOS 4 features, nothing but the iPhone 4S is getting the full package.
I can kind of understand that the iPhone 4 and below might not have the graphical horsepower to push those 3D building for Flyover, but turn-by-turn directions? TomTom runs just fine, on even the iPhone 3GS, and isn’t it supplying the maps for Apple?
Is this another case of Apple cutting off the older models to try and sell newer ones? If that was true you’d almost expect the iPhone 4S not to get them too, but then that would be a really bad move for customer relations — I’d probably be cheesed-off enough to dump iOS and go with one of the lust-worthy new Android phones.
Whatever Apple’s reason, iPhone 4 owners will be left high and dry for Maps; let’s just hope that’s all they’ll miss out on. [9to5Mac]
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this has p*ssed me right off.. are you having a laugh?
although i will be upgrading my phone to the 5.. its still a joke to not update the maps on a 4
Are you sure you want to do that? Your just feeding your money and life(let’s face it, your phone is your life) into a company with a walled garden that routinely ditches what are still quite expensive products.
F R A G M E N T A T I O N
Doesn’t exist in Apple land. Didn’t anyone tell you? You MUST be wrong.
Yeah, I had wondered about this when they said that turn-by-turn was going to be voiced by Siri…So is Google Maps still going to have any presence on the phone, like as a separate Google app, in order to get street view and suchlike, or is it going to be totaly dumped and we’ll have to ‘make do’ with a non-working 3D option until we realise the errors of our way and buy a new phone?
I get the idea of not holding the future releases back because of the technical restrictions of the past ones, but it’s starting to feel more or and more cyncial now, which is annoying…
This is just normal Apple procedure. Obviously the new features have to work on what is now the current phone, so that devs can start to work on Apps now, ready for the iOS6/iPhone5 launch in September.
It’s still getting the new maps, just not turn by turn or flyover. The 4 came out two years ago and is will still receive software updates until at least autumn 2013, maybe autumn 2014 if the 3GS support is anything to go by. No one bought a 4 with the promise is would get free turn by turn navigation two years later.
But iPhone 4 did have the directions feature of the old Maps app. Do we still get that at least? If not, iPhone 4 users are actually losing a feature they had 2 years ago.
Yeah directions are still there, just not turn by turn. One feature you will lose though is street view. Hopefully Google won’t take long to add Google maps to the app store with that.
Then I can’t complain too much.
And this is how apple can safely say it doesn’t fragment its users. If in android your phone still updated but without some of the features, it would look less separated. But apple updates them to make them look good. No doubt iOS 6 will cripple the 3GS even though it will be able to handle it. But then it has one less fragmented phone. Its easy to say they are one big unit but its not totally true…
#rant
This my friends, is called planned obsolescence.
I’m surprised my iPod Touch 3rd gen will only stop receiving updates with iOS 6. I’ve managed to go through quite a few versions with it, so I’m happy.