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Starting Feb 1, new apps and app updates must be optimized for iOS 7

developer.apple.com

1–10 of 88 posts

Re: Starting Feb 1, new apps and app updates must be optimized for iOS 7

#2
Doesn't requiring the new build pipeline plus 'optimized for iOS 7', mean you can't support most older iOS devices anymore? I know that is how the build pipeline stuff worked for desktop OS X apps - they tended to deprecate the ability to build for older OS versions when you installed the latest rev of XCode.

If so, how far back does it go? Like, if I compile an iOS7 optimized app, will it work on iOS6 devices? What about iOS5? Do they schedule the support deprecation based on lifetime (i.e. all devices released in last 2yrs will work) or is it just based on software versions?

Re: Starting Feb 1, new apps and app updates must be optimized for iOS 7

#3

Doesn't requiring the new build pipeline plus 'optimized for iOS 7', mean you can't support most older iOS devices anymore? I know that is how the build pipeline stuff worked for desktop OS X apps - they tended to deprecate the ability to build for older OS versions when you installed the latest rev of XCode. If so, how far back does it go? Like, if I compile an iOS7 optimized app, will it work on iOS6 devices? What…

I'm also interested in the answer to this. Building for Android allows you to target a wide range of versions even if your build target is the latest; is there any analogue to this in the iOS world?

Re: Starting Feb 1, new apps and app updates must be optimized for iOS 7

#5

Doesn't requiring the new build pipeline plus 'optimized for iOS 7', mean you can't support most older iOS devices anymore? I know that is how the build pipeline stuff worked for desktop OS X apps - they tended to deprecate the ability to build for older OS versions when you installed the latest rev of XCode. If so, how far back does it go? Like, if I compile an iOS7 optimized app, will it work on iOS6 devices? What…

Users can now install older versions that are compatible, but you can't update them anymore once you go past that point.

Re: Starting Feb 1, new apps and app updates must be optimized for iOS 7

#6

Doesn't requiring the new build pipeline plus 'optimized for iOS 7', mean you can't support most older iOS devices anymore? I know that is how the build pipeline stuff worked for desktop OS X apps - they tended to deprecate the ability to build for older OS versions when you installed the latest rev of XCode. If so, how far back does it go? Like, if I compile an iOS7 optimized app, will it work on iOS6 devices? What…

No, you can build against the iOS 7 SDK and still support older versions of iOS. With Xcode 5 you can only build against iOS 7. You can also have entirely separate functionality for different OS versions in the same app bundle.

I've never tried it, but as far as I'm ware, you could theoretically build agains iOS 7 and have the app run on iOS 2.0, assuming the App Store still works.

Re: Starting Feb 1, new apps and app updates must be optimized for iOS 7

#7

Doesn't requiring the new build pipeline plus 'optimized for iOS 7', mean you can't support most older iOS devices anymore? I know that is how the build pipeline stuff worked for desktop OS X apps - they tended to deprecate the ability to build for older OS versions when you installed the latest rev of XCode. If so, how far back does it go? Like, if I compile an iOS7 optimized app, will it work on iOS6 devices? What…

I'm also interested in the answer to this. Building for Android allows you to target a wide range of versions even if your build target is the latest; is there any analogue to this in the iOS world?

You can build for ios 7 at the same time as ios 6. They tend to assume you'll only want to target the latest, but it can be done without much trouble, esp. if you already have a tested older project and are willing to put more time in to testing. I'm supporting an app which supports ios 5-7 at present but we tend to test only on 6-7, and have changed some of the UI to match better with ios7.

The issues tend to be with matching chrome if you have custom controls, but if you don't have many custom controls, you'd probably be fine. I imagine it's not very different from the story for Android.

Re: Starting Feb 1, new apps and app updates must be optimized for iOS 7

#8

Doesn't requiring the new build pipeline plus 'optimized for iOS 7', mean you can't support most older iOS devices anymore? I know that is how the build pipeline stuff worked for desktop OS X apps - they tended to deprecate the ability to build for older OS versions when you installed the latest rev of XCode. If so, how far back does it go? Like, if I compile an iOS7 optimized app, will it work on iOS6 devices? What…

I currently have an app in the store that has been optimized for iOS 7 but works as far back as iOS 5.1. You could probably support earlier versions as long as you verify the OS supports a feature/method before calling it.

Re: Starting Feb 1, new apps and app updates must be optimized for iOS 7

#9

Doesn't requiring the new build pipeline plus 'optimized for iOS 7', mean you can't support most older iOS devices anymore? I know that is how the build pipeline stuff worked for desktop OS X apps - they tended to deprecate the ability to build for older OS versions when you installed the latest rev of XCode. If so, how far back does it go? Like, if I compile an iOS7 optimized app, will it work on iOS6 devices? What…

iOS apps in Xcode have a "Base SDK" (which is the actual SDK you're building against: must be iOS 7.0 from Feb 1). But you then also set a "deployment target", which is effectively the oldest version of iOS you still want to support. Set this to iOS 6, for example, and you'll be supporting both versions, even after Feb 1.

One of course needs to be careful about using new APIs/features in this situation (detect whether a certain method/selector exists before using it, for instance) – as we don't want to throw runtime errors on the older OS.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1358033/iphone-base-versu...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/986589/how-do-you-optiona...

Re: Starting Feb 1, new apps and app updates must be optimized for iOS 7

#10

I think the lack of definition of "iOS 7 optimized" is what is confusing to those of us who haven't developed apps on iOS.

Basic guidelines of "no using the old UI widgets (grey keyboard, old tabs, old back arrows)" and, old by now, supporting iPhone 4 and iPhone 5+ screen sizes with optimized graphics. Same goes for iPad except there's only one resolution to support even though it comes in two resolutions across two sizes.
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