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David Smith, last week: > Been really interesting to watch the iOS 27 adoption curve > over the first two weeks. Clearly on a different path than > previous years. Still steadily growing, at a similar rate to > the ‘steady growth’ phase of most years, but without the big > surge at the start. > > Given that this rate is largely controlled by Apple’s automatic > update logic, I suspect it’s a deliberate choice. Likely because > it lets them manage the Siri AI waiting list and avoid a big queue > on day one. Smith’s numbers are from analytics from users of Widgetsmith and Pedometer++. If you look at his chart for Widgetsmith, there’s really no explanation other than Apple pushing automatic updates to users more slowly than in any previous year, and I think it makes sense that this is to gate admissions to Siri AI. You can also see from his chart that Apple has been slowing down updates to initial .0 versions in recent years — the adoption rates were much faster for iOS 15 and 16 back in 2021 and 2022. Note too that every year Apple makes it more and more likely that users will opt into automatic software updates. The overwhelming majority of iOS users get OS updates when their devices update themselves. And remember the whole thing with slower-than-previous-years adoption of iOS 26 last year — that was all attributable to the auto-update pace set by Apple. (It’s purely personal anecdata, but I feel like Siri AI has gotten worse since iOS 27.0 was officially released. It feels a bit slower and I seem to get worse answers, sometimes. I asked it for a word today, using it as an interactive thesaurus, and it simply told me it couldn’t. It never did that over the summer. I started using iOS 27 full-time on my iPhone the day after the WWDC keynote and I got into the Siri AI beta the next week. While it might be some sort of placebo effect, I feel like Siri AI was better — slightly faster and more useful — in July and August than it is now. I could be wrong, or maybe just unlucky of late. But I’m also quite certain that scaling up the Private Cloud Compute side of Siri AI is a massive challenge for a platform with over a billion Siri AI-eligible users.) ★

David Smith, developer of the widely-used Widgetsmith, on Mastodon: > The eve of iPhone 18 Pro pre-orders seems a good time to look back > at the iPhone 17 family’s adoption. Here’s the 17 family data as a > percentage of overall usage for Widgetsmith. > > Generally they followed the usual adoption pattern, and overall > did very well ending at around 20% of total usage. > > With the exception of the Air really struggling to find market > share. For comparison the 16 Plus ended its first year at around > 1.4% (vs the Air’s 0.3%). The chart looks rough for the iPhone Air. Amongst all Widgetsmith users, here’s the share as of September by model: iPhone 17 7.2% iPhone 17 Pro Max 5.9% iPhone 17 Pro 5.8% iPhone 17e 0.5% iPhone Air 0.3% But if we only consider the 19.7 percent of Widgetsmith users using one of these new 17-generation iPhones, the percentages look like this: iPhone 17 36.5% iPhone 17 Pro Max 29.9% iPhone 17 Pro 29.4% iPhone 17e 2.5% iPhone Air 1.5% In the entire year since the iPhone Air was announced, I’ve never seen Apple advertise it. No billboards, no commercials. It raises a chicken/egg question: did no one buy it because Apple didn’t market it, or did Apple not market it because no one wanted it? It’s a shame, because I truly believe not only that it’s the nicest iPhone Apple has ever made, but that if most people tried it, they’d love it. They don’t need a bigger battery and, wouldn’t take better photos with a Pro model, and would love the thin feel and low weight. But the shame of these low iPhone Air sales reminds me, very much, of the late great iPhone 12 and 13 Mini — also a truly great design, also terribly disappointing sales numbers. If the iPhone Air 2 rumored to be coming in the spring doesn’t turn things around, it might follow the Mini as a twice-and-done design. That said, the 17e seemingly isn’t setting the world on fire either. That’s a bit surprising to me. (Maybe the sort of people who buy the “e” models (and the SE models before them aren’t the demographic for an app like Widgetsmith.) ★