While Apple may be experiencing some bad news on the security front, it has reason to celebrate the accelerated adoption of the latest update to its mobile operating system, iOS 9.
The company announced yesterday (Sept. 21) that iOS 9 has achieved the fastest adoption ever, with the software being downloaded on more than 50 percent of Apple mobile devices.
“iOS 9 is also off to an amazing start, on pace to be downloaded by more users than any other software release in Apple’s history,” Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said in a company press release.
[bctt tweet=”The latest iOS 9 upgrade is now on more than 50% of Apple devices”]
The latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system includes upgrades to Siri, an enhanced search screen, improved functionality for searching through photos and split-screen multi-tasking for the iPad.
There were some skeptical opinions surrounding how quickly users would actually download iOS 9 considering some of the issues users experienced with the iOS 8 upgrade last year.
The initial iOS 8 release was accompanied by a series of bugs, one of which actually prevented phones from making or receiving calls. The software update additionally required a significant amount of storage — about five gigabytes — on the device when installed wirelessly over the Internet.
[bctt tweet=”Apple confirms iOS 9 set a record-breaking download rate”]
But iOS 9 has gained traction among users in a way Apple has not seen before, which could be due to the software update serving as an intermediate improvement that hasn’t so much transformed the product so much as it has smoothed out some of the rough edges.
“This is a necessary spit-and-polish release that followed two bigger, transformative releases,” Ars Technica wrote. “There’s some good stuff here, but nothing that’s quite as all-encompassing as iOS 7’s complete redesign or iOS 8’s introduction for Handoff and Continuity and Extensions.”
One reason behind the accelerated adoption of iOS 9, besides the attention-grabbing updates to Apple’s digital personal assistant Siri, is the fact that it plugs some threatening security holes.
PYMNTS reported last week that the new update lessens the severity of what many have called a “nasty bug” that is easily and quietly exploitable via Apple AirDrop, iOS and Mac OS’s filing sharing system.
Mark Dowd, an Australian researcher who heads up Azimuth Security, told Forbes that the flaw would allow an attacker to drop malware onto a target device. It could also possibly open the door to iOS tweaking that would make the exploit workable, even if the intended victim rejected the incoming file.
While iOS 9 significantly mitigates the problem, it does not actually fix it, despite all the headlines to the contrary.
According to Dowd, the upgrade “hasn’t fully fixed the flaws,” though he does note the exploit does become somewhat harder to access with the upgrade in.
In other news, Apple also announced its iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus will be made available for purchase at Apple retail stores starting on Sept. 25. The company remains confident that the pre-order sales of the new devices will set a new record upon release.
“Customer response to iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus has been extremely positive and preorders this weekend were very strong around the world,” CNBC reported the company saying earlier this month. “We are on pace to beat last year’s 10 million unit first-weekend record when the new iPhones go on sale Sept. 25.”
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