Apple Watch Crashes Less Than iPhone, is Driving iOS Upgrades

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet:

The data, collected by app performance experts at Crittercism, suggest that crash rates for Apple Watch apps is far lower than the desired crash rate of 1 percent. At the point when the Apple Watch was launched the app crash rate was 0.00833 percent, a figure that rose to 0.01233 percent by the end of May.

Crash rates for iOS currently hovers around the 2 percent mark.

Apple Watch has also driven iPhone iOS upgrades. When the Apple Watch was announced on April 10, only 51 percent of iPhones were running a compatible version of iOS (compatible versions being iOS 8.2 or later). By the launch date on April 24 this had risen to 61 percent, and this figure has since risen to 70 percent.

I’m not sure if I would credit the Apple Watch for the rise in iOS 8 adoption, but if it has risen 20 percent in such a short time, it does seem possible.

The more interesting thing to me is the difference in crash rates. Because the Watch is on you at all times, I do think that it’s very important that it crashes as little as possible. Something about wearing a product makes it feel less like a computer and more like jewelry. People are used to seeing computers crash or restart, but they’re not used to the idea of a Watch doing that. Of course, I’m sure we’d all want them both to crash as little as possible, but my gut tells me that Apple is especially anal about the Watch crashing.