Apple has kicked off this week by publishing downloads for its two operating systems, addressing some existing issues and introducing more significant improvements than what are usually seen in these type of patches. At the beginning of this month, the company made the unprecedented decision to make iOS 8.1.1 available to developers as a beta, which is not standard procedure for such updates and indicates the importance of this release.
Indeed, iOS 8.1.1 introduces improved functionality for owners of Apple's older hardware, the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. Early returns online have been positive, after the release of iOS 8 on September 17 caused performance issues for users of the older devices. Reported problems affected battery life and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity.
As Wired notes, there are reasons for the bugs that have affected iOS 8. First, this is by far the most complex version of the mobile OS, in both its functionality and its system support, since it now runs on the last eight iPads or iPad Minis, six iPhones and the latest iPod Touch. Secondly, Apple chose to release its latest hardware and software within a few days of each other.
Apple also released the first patch for OS X Yosemite, fixing a bug that was causing Wi-Fi issues on certain configurations, among other improvements. Two of the features specifically address enterprise users: Domain Name System searches have been enhanced, and a bug has been eliminated that caused the system to recommend an Apple Remote Desktop update when the most recent version was already installed.
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