In the six weeks since its release, iOS 8's app crash rate has declined more than 25 per cent as app developers have adjusted to new APIs and issued updates, an app performance management developer said today.
According to San Francisco-based Crittercism, iOS 8's crash rate as of Wednesday was 2.6 per cent, or more than a quarter lower than the 3.6 per cent on September 22.
Crittercism mines crash rate statistics from the approximately 20,000 mobile apps it monitors for clients, which include eBay, Groupon, Netflix, PayPal and Yahoo. Developers embed the company's framework in their apps to track a host of performance metrics, including crash causes and rates.
iOS 8 wasn't the only version to show lower crash rates.
Devices running iOS 8.1, Apple's first major update, which included an unspecified number of bug fixes and improvements, have experienced a lower app crash rate than those that continue to run the original iOS 8, or the two follow-on minor tweaks, 8.0.1 and 8.0.2.
As of Wednesday, devices powered by iOS 8.1 had an app crash rate of 2.15%, representing an improvement of almost 19 per cent over iOS 8.0/8.0.1/8.0.2. According to Crittercism, more than 28 per cent of all iOS 8 devices ran 8.1 as of mid-week, nearly triple the percentage of the week before.
Apple released iOS 8.1 on Monday, October 20.
The lower app crash rates had been expected as app developers tweaked their software, as Apple quashed bugs on its end, and as more of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus smartphones (that had been optimized for OS 8) made it into users' hands, in many cases replacing older models, which in Crittercism's earlier tallies had shown more app crashes than the newest iPhones.
Crittercism also joined in the chorus singing iOS 8's slow adoption blues: As of Wednesday, 48 per cent of all iOS devices Crittercism monitored ran the new operating system, just a tad more than ran iOS 7.
Other analytics vendors have reported similar numbers. Late Wednesday, Mixpanel pegged iOS 8's uptake at 56.2 per cent, while rival Fiksu had iOS 8 at 49.1 per cent.
Like Crittercism, Mixpanel and Fiksu track iOS 8 adoption via the analytics embedded in clients' apps.
Apple's iOS 8 uptake number -- currently 52 per cent on its developer support website -- was slightly higher than those from Crittercism and Fiksu. But iOS 8 continued to lag behind last year's blistering iOS 7 adoption pace -- and by a large margin: Fiksu said iOS 8 trailed iOS 7 by almost 15 percentage points at the 43rd-day mark after each edition's release.