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by snowwrestler 4035 days ago
Eh, I think Apple is doing ok with Macs and iPhones at least.

I'd guess the typical hardware replacement cycle for a computer is 3-5 years. My 2009 MacBook Pro is on Mountain Lion. It runs just fine, and the OS continues to receive security updates. Both 10.9 and 10.10 also officially support my machine, I just haven't bothered to upgrade. Rumor is that support for older machines is one of the areas of focus for 10.11. We'll see in a week or two.

The typical hardware replacement cycle for a smart phone is probably 2-3 years because of contract upgrades. My iPhone 5 is running 8.2 and runs just fine. 8.3 supports it as well, but I need to clear some photos off to make space to run the installer.

Looking at the entire Apple installed bases for computers and phones, Apple users seem to do a very good job of keeping up with supported OS versions.

I don't know as much about the iPad. At work I have an iPad 2 that is running iOS 8 and seems to work fine.
1 comments
bigiain 4035 days ago
For devices that _can_ have the OS upgraded - stats seem to show a remarkably high level of upgrading by users, at least for major version numbers:

http://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/

If you scroll down to "Device Breakdown (sorted by Usage)", you see a bunch of devices with 90+% stuck on the "last supported OS version" - 97% of iPad1G on iOS5, 97% of iPhone 3GS and iPod Tough 4G on iOS6, 91% of iPhone 4 on iOS7. Even including thise devices, they're showing 75% on devices on iOS8 and 20% on iOS7.

I'm in the "left behind" category - with both my iPad1 and Mac Mini single core being "stick" at iOS5 and OS X 10.6 respectively. Im somewhat disappointed at the lack of patches for the known security holes in iOS5 - especially since those numbers still show over 3% of the iPads in use are not upgradable past iOS5...

link