Ars Technica recently made a very interesting discovery while checking over their monthly usage statistics – several hundred hits from a Retina iPad running iOS 6! This would seemingly add to the already substantial case that the next iPad will have a Retina display.
…we began looking at iPad user agents coming from Apple’s corporate IP block in Cupertino and discovered that Apple appears to be surfing the Web using iPads running what looks like iOS 6.0. The whole listing shows iPads running iOS 5, iOS 5.0.1 (the current public release), iOS 5.1 (the upcoming release currently available to developers), and iOS 6. The iPads that appear to be running iOS 6 are also using a slightly newer build of WebKit—the older OSes all show WebKit 534.46, while the ones claiming to be iOS 6 show WebKit build 535.8.
While the fact that these devices report to be running iOS 6 is interesting, it doesn’t suggest that Apple will be releasing iOS 6 with their next iPad – Apple commonly tests future software updates at their campus long ahead of their official releases.