Apple has sold hundreds of millions of tablets since 2010 and the iPad 2 is still the most commonly used. With the iPad 2, as well as the iPhone 4s, another long selling and hugely popular gadget, experiencing problems with iOS 8, little wonder Apple is taking notice — here comes iOS 8.1.1.
Ars Technica reports that Apple pushed out iOS 8.1.1 beta to its developer community. This could be a boon for iPad 2 and iPhone 4s, which have suffered a range of performanace reliability issues with the introduction of iOS 8.
This would address one of our bigger criticisms of iOS 8, which in our testing was significantly slower on these older devices than iOS 7 was. Apps took longer to launch, and the user interface was often jerky and inconsistent in ways that it wasn’t before. Apple has a long history of speeding up new iOS versions on old hardware post-release—iOS 4.1 on the iPhone 3G, iOS 7.1 on the iPhone 4, and now iOS 8.1.1.
Because the original iPad mini and fifth generation iPod touch share many of the iPad 2’s internals, these two devices should also benefit from iOS 8.1.1. That said, while my iPad 3 running iOS 8 started out fine, recent weeks seen an increase in performance hiccups and general malaise. Here’s hoping Apple gives iPad 3 owners a little love, too.
And, for the Mac users reading this, Apple has seeded its first Yosemite Update, OS X 10.10.1 beta, to developers. This Yosemite Update delivers fixes for WiFi, Notification Center and Microsoft Exchange (email) issues.
How is iOS 8, or for that matter OS X Yosemite, performing on your Apple iThings? Sound off in the comments below…