While websites and developers have been seeing low levels of hits from iOS 7 devices for several months, as of last week we noticed a significant surge in such hits in our own logs. The hits come from Apple's block of IP addresses, suggesting that the company may have rolled out a new phase of testing with its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) just a month away.
MacRumors is not the only site seeing significant increases in iOS 7 activity, as TechCrunch reports that mobile publishing company Onswipe has seen a similar spike coming from San Francisco and Cupertino.
Over the past week, Onswipe found a significant bump in the number of visits from iOS 7 iPhones and iPads, specifically located in both Cupertino and San Francisco. SF had the most iOS 7 visits, with 18.75 percent, and Cupertino accounted for 17.9 percent of the total. May 2 saw the highest iOS 7 traffic to date, representing 23 percent, or nearly a quarter, of all unique iOS visitors to Onswipe-enabled sites. Most were visiting from iPhones (75 percent), but iPads also represented a full quarter of visits.
Apple is expected to show off iOS 7, as well as OS X 10.9, at next month's WWDC, but a public release of iOS 7 is not expected until later in the year alongside new iPhone hardware.
We have not seen a similar spike in OS X 10.9 traffic coming from Apple in recent weeks, although that traffic has been slowly growing for a number of months now.
