Apple could certainly do better with its apps and software

A few years ago, an iPhone was the perfect combination of hardware and software for a smartphone. It sported an app ecosystem that was almost perfect, and hardware that was custom made by Apple for its smartphone. Apple’s iPhone 5 was the culmination of all this and performance was great until Apple went in for an overhaul for its software in the form of iOS 7, which was a transition from Apple and Steve Job’s skeuomorphic past. Oddly though, unlike Windows Phone which was showed off a flatter design and ran smoother, Apple’s revamp of iOS was loaded with problems and we are not even talking about design, but performance. The iPhone 5 became the first victim of Apple’s iDevices that took a performance hit so massive that it hampered day to day usage. Unfortunately for Apple fans, this was just the beginning. Apple kept adding more features in every major release without bumping up the hardware and this lead to slowdowns in performance and lag and also plenty of bugs. Today, as Walt Mossberg pointed out, Apple’s state in terms of software is not too good. The third-party apps have lost their charm, they stutter on all Plus devices and even on the regular iPhone 6 and 6s models. For example, we prefer the Microsoft Outlook app for email on our iPhone because it offers more features. Even with Microsoft’s best efforts there is still some visible stutter while scrolling through our mailboxes. The iPhone 6 Plus models take the biggest hit with apps scaling down from iPad resolutions with just 1GB of RAM to spare. Apple tried to rectify similar issues on its latest iPhones with a focus on hardware, but iPhone 6s battery life is still nothing to talk about (for which they released a not so smart-looking battery case ) while the iPhone 6s Plus stutters in almost every app you can scroll though. While interest in Apple’s star product is dwindling , the company seems to be getting desperate and is trying out new form factors (iPad Pro), while heading back into the archives and reviving older ones (iPhone 5se ). iOS 9 was supposed to be an update focussed on **performance** and bug fixes, that showed up with iOS 8, but we still have plenty of performance issues on older iOS devices; something that has indeed become a touchy topic on Apple’s own official forums. And every software update gets worse with no improvements to stability nor performance. In fact iOS users who would earlier proudly (since Android updates are slower) update their iPhones and iPads, now hold back to hear from others before taking the leap. If there are too many bugs or issues, they even hold on to older software while others become guinea pigs. The Android camp on the other hand is doing pretty well with new updates that focus on things that matter, like battery life and performance. Apple has been riding on its earlier success for very long, but now it’s time to wake up and do something about the rising consumer expectation. Apps stutter more on iPhones, than they do on flagship Android devices. As June approaches, it’s that time of year again to get excited about a new iOS 10 update that “promises” double the performance and hundreds of new features, but we’re still sceptical.