Ina Fried

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Early Measures Show Massive iOS 7 Adoption on Day One

It took some iPhone owners a while to get it, but a ton of Apple users downloaded iOS 7 on Wednesday — the first day it was available.

A study from advertising network Chitika showed that, less than 24 hours after being made available, iOS 7 was accounting for more than 18 percent of North American iOS traffic on the sites it tracks. That’s three percentage points higher than Chitika saw for iOS 6 in its first day.

“This level of adoption represents another proverbial feather in the cap of Apple, as it bests the impressive adoption rates of iOS 6 in the same time period last year,” Chitika said in a report to be published on Thursday. Chitika’s study measures the number of page views, not unique visitors, that reach sites with its ad network present.

Meanwhile, Mixpanel said it saw even higher iOS 7 uptake. Its stats showed iOS 6 accounting for 94 percent of iOS activity. By 9 a.m. today it had dropped to account for only 61 percent of activity. Mixpanel says that were things to continue at the same rate, iOS 7 could surpass iOS 6 usage in another 24 hours (that said, there are always dangers when one tries to extrapolate.)

In any case, though the adoption contrasts sharply with the slow pace seen on Android, where updates often require support from both the carrier and device maker. Mixpanel says that, as of yesterday–450 days after launch–all versions of Jelly Bean account for 57 percent of the activity it sees, while Google itself touts a 45 percent adoption rate.

Although those are just two measures of iOS 7 adoption, the numbers clearly show that a huge number of Apple users couldn’t wait to try out the new operating system. (While iOS 7 had been in beta testing, only about half a percent of users were using iOS 7 prior to its official launch on Wednesday, Chitika said.)

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work