"This was one feature we really wanted and implementing this was painful as hell. I can’t believe it’s now just a boolean value away." - So awesome yet so frustrating! haha
iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do
71–80 of 82 posts
Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish other developers would adopt such a considerate attitude. Alas, my personal experience is that many simply abandon users who dare to have a device more than a couple of years old. My worst personal experience being an app that became obsolete, only to be replaced by an app that doesn't support my version of iOS.
Obsoleting an app is a problem, but -- at least in the PC space -- people who do not upgrade from e.g. XP to Win7 are unlikely to pay for new apps - so, if you care about getting paid, there's no point in supporting XP home users (enterprise is different, and I do not wish to go into that). Does anyone here know if that's also true for iOS devices? I'm quite sure that the big app spenders would be the people who cont…
Well, I can only speak for myself, but I definitely would keep buying apps if given the opportunity. There are plenty of apps I've wanted to purchase, but haven't been able to - whether there are enough like me that would make the extra market lucrative enough is another matter.
Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do
#73Note that Apple now keeps the previous version of the app around for users on older OSes. Of course they won't get any of the upgraded features, but at least there's still something there for them - and you won't have to worry about all that messy code for supporting multiple versions. My next app updates will also be iOS7 only, since I know the iOS6 version will still be around. Makes it much easier to decide to use…
Apple only offers older versions of your app to users that have previously purchased it. New users will still get the traditional "this app requires iOS 7" failure message.
Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do
#74I was a bit on the fence about iOS versions before because I still have a first-generation iPad (iOS 5.1 maximum) and I wanted to make games for it. I have a new iPhone 5S as well.
I originally wrote game code with OpenGL ES, and then tried very hard to make the same code work on a Mac with regular OpenGL. It took more time than it should have to see results and it wasn’t that fun. About all I can say is that I learned a lot and OpenGL clearly runs efficiently.
After seeing Sprite Kit (Mac OS X Mavericks and iOS 7 only) and working with it, I am now completely devoted to these latest OSes. That framework has solved virtually all of my Mac/iOS parity issues, while allowing code to be almost identical in ways that really impressed me. Sprite Kit requires far less effort and it produces far greater results. About the only downside I see is that there would be no hope of porting my code to something like an Android phone (and I don’t happen to care about that).
It doesn’t hurt that Mavericks is free so about the only device left out in the cold is my old iPad. I decided that I was probably holding myself back by trying to support it anyway; the device is quite slow compared to almost any other iPad. I will likely just buy a new iPad.
Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do
#75I think that not writing iOS/ObjectiveC/AppStore/Apple-specific code, period, is even saner.
Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do
#76Note that Apple now keeps the previous version of the app around for users on older OSes. Of course they won't get any of the upgraded features, but at least there's still something there for them - and you won't have to worry about all that messy code for supporting multiple versions. My next app updates will also be iOS7 only, since I know the iOS6 version will still be around. Makes it much easier to decide to use…
Apple only offers older versions of your app to users that have previously purchased it. New users will still get the traditional "this app requires iOS 7" failure message.
I believe you can purchase apps you haven't purchased before. The writer of the article I read on this tried it. I've downloaded free apps whose latest versions weren't compatible on my device, and got the older version that works for my old (iOS 3.2) device a couple of months ago.
Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do
#77Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw somewhere that Apple doesn't allow new apps to target less than iOS 7. Is that correct?
Depends what you mean by "target". You can specify the whatever minimum OS version you want for an app. You have probably heard something like "[After Feb 1] new apps [...] must be built with the latest version of Xcode 5 and must be optimized for iOS 7." That only means you must use the latest dev kit and satisfy some other requirements. It does not mean that you need to disable support for older OSes.
Ahh I see, thanks!
Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Supporting iOS 6 and 7 visuals at the same time just means your app looks out of place in both versions. It's just a little more work. Facebook looks the same on iOS 6 even now that it supports iOS 7. If you are mostly using native UI with only a few customisations, I don't see the problem.
The problem is a lot of iOS 6 apps don't use mostly native UI. The article touches on this when talking about all their custom code because previous iOS components were not as easily customizable. My next update will be iOS 7 only, at which point I plan to drop a lot of custom code and switch back to mostly native UI.
Yes, UIKit only became easily customisable in iOS 5 and the OP's app was written for iOS 3.
But even then you can port it to native UIKit (which is a good idea either way), and then make iOS 7 frameworks optional, and add a few UIAppearance calls for iOS 6. The last two pieces are extra effort that might not worth it for < 30% of your users, but it's still completely possible.
Re: iOS 7 only is the only sane thing to do
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I saw somewhere that Apple doesn't allow new apps to target less than iOS 7. Is that correct?
Depends what you mean by "target". You can specify the whatever minimum OS version you want for an app. You have probably heard something like "[After Feb 1] new apps [...] must be built with the latest version of Xcode 5 and must be optimized for iOS 7." That only means you must use the latest dev kit and satisfy some other requirements. It does not mean that you need to disable support for older OSes.
It is not trivial to support ios7 with the latest gui elements (ios7 sdk) and also support prior versions. Practically speaking you will need to support only ios7+ after feb1, which for me is a lot of development work which is not worth doing with the income my apps give. I am therefore no longer supporting my apps.