iPad

With the event streamed online on Tuesday, Apple announced details on their upcoming devices. Not only that, but they continue to bolster their privacy features with iOS 15. Let’s discuss the big announcements made at the event.

iOS 14 is one of Apple's biggest iOS updates to date, introducing Home screen design changes, major new features, updates for existing apps, Siri improvements, and many other tweaks that streamline the iOS interface.

51Degrees is the demonstrable leader in the field of device detection, continually leading innovation throughout the past decade.

Apple iOS 12.2 threw up a lot of challenges for many industries such as analytics, finance and advertising. As the leader in the field, 51Degrees adopted an open and transparent approach to the development of a solution, publishing research and examples along the way.

Detecting the precise iPad or iPhone after iOS 12.2 is a bit of a headache, but so important for accurate analytics given Apple's dominance in the tablet and smartphone market. Traditional User-Agent based solutions need to be enhanced with JavaScript.

iPadOS 13 arrives on iPad in September. During the days that follow web analytics tools - like Google Analytics - will indicate single digital percentage changes in device splits with desktop increasing, and tablet decreasing.

The change is a consequence of Apple's drive for a supposed improved web browsing experience and tracking prevention.

As you may already know, with the release of iOS 12.2, Apple removed some vital information which allowed device detection solutions to accurately identify Apple devices. You can read more about what changed here.

The release of iOS 12.2 at the end of March removed the ability for device detection solutions such as 51Degrees to precisely identify Apple devices. Now 51Degrees open sources GPU renderer technique that can identify Apple iOS 12.2 device models.

The new Apple iOS update has disabled a common GPU based method of achieving precise model granularity.

In 2015 we released a detailed blog on Device Detection for Apple iPhone and iPad. Since then Apple has released many more devices. Identifying Apple devices can be challenging and when putting plans in place to optimise websites for mobile devices like Apple, companies have two choices. Try and run a solution internally or simply have 51Degrees do the work for you with the added benefits of the Apple device properties we provide in our data files.

Because we endeavour to support companies and hobbyists with our unique open source solutions, we are sharing some JavaScript that will enable you to set up an internal solution if you wish. We would, however, encourage you to save yourself the time and effort and use our data files to support your strategic website optimisation decisions.

51Degrees data analysis team stress tested a range of real iPhone and iPad devices, both old and new using all the major web browsers in order to determine if CPU stress testing is a viable additional method to identify iPhone and iPad models alongside User-Agent analysis, screen information and WebGL API

The full results are available for download along with the analysis of the differences between each device and browser.