I am going to develop an Iphone application in IOS8.But I have no idea whether it will work on IOS7 and IOS6.Can anyone clarify my doubts with clear explanation?
Thanks & Regards
Sam.P
It would only support the older OSes if you didn't use any features exclusive to the newer OSes, and if you targeted the old OS when building the application. There is nothing stopping you from doing so, except that you will miss out on a lot of the new technologies (and adoption of recent iOS versions is very high traditionally among Apple's customers, so it isn't a huge issue generally to only support the latest version).
You must make this decision before you publish your app, the earlier the better. You can support all OSes starting from 6 and only use APIs and features available in 6. Or use all the new features of the 8 and make the app incompatible with the earlier versions.
Each published app has a target OS version. If you specify 8 then users with earlier OSes simply won't see your app in the app store. However it's not sufficient to set your target to 6 to support earlier system. You must be careful in using the APIs: each has a documented version where it became available. And you must test, at least in simulators with different OS versions. iOS 6 simulator is still available as a separate download for Xcode 5. I'm not sure about Xcode 6.
iOS 7 adoption wasn't as overwhelming as with earlier updates because Apple made big changes in the UI. So the iOS 6 user base is still significant. I think it still makes sense to support iOS 6 for a new commercial application.
Related
We are planning for a new mobile application for iPhones/iPads this month and we are outsourcing this project as we dont have much knowledge about the subject. Could someone tell me if current iOS applications will run on iOS 7?
I would appreciate help in this as I tried to search but could not find related articles as most of the articles talk about features and not backwards compatibility.
Sure. It will support older versions of iOS. If not millions of applications in Appstore will be unusable in iOS 7. You need to download iOS 7 SDK once available to exploit iOS 7 specific features, thats all.
Yes current iOS application will run on iOS 7, because apple will take care that if they launch new iOS then they create new iOS in such a way that it's always compatible with older iOS apps other wise if someone upgrade the iOS and the apps of previously developed will not work on it then they loose their customers/users. So don't worry new iOS 7 will also support apps developed for iOS5/iOS6. There were only new features in iOS7.
Although iOS 7 has seen a major overhaul in UI field as well as several back end changes too. But the main point for your question is that any application if working on previous versions of iOS should work in iOS 7 too. The OS will take care of all the UI instances drawings in different versions of OS. The situation where the applications supporting newer versions of OS not working on older versions is that they use some features only available to a specific version of OS or later.
It would run in iOS 7, but probably not as you would expect it to run, so my recommendation is to create 2 (or 4 if you build for iPad) 1 for iOS 6 - and one for iOS 7 + just detect the iOS version and load the storyboard for the appropriate version
It is always better to start development in the latest available version of iOS. In this case 7 is the latest with all the support for developers. You can get the relative iOS SDK and Xcode.
Long Story Short: Start Development in the latest iOS and nothing shall go wrong.
From the research I had done, indeed app built using 6.1 SDK and Xcode 4.6 will run on iOS7, however, the app will have an iOS6 look and feel on iOS7.
How can i check the compatibility of my application, based on IOS 5.0.1 created with Xcode 4.3.3 on Lion, on IOS 6 without having to change my current MAC OS version and Xcode? Is there any way? And as an addition to this question, if i submit my application to the Apple Store, can it be rejected just for the simple reason of being created compatible with IOS 5 and not with IOS 6.
It’s not clear what you mean by “compatible”. One thing is the version of the SDK you link against, one thing is your Deployment Target setting and then there’s actual code compatibility regarding various API, UI and behaviour differences between iOS 5 and 6.
It seems that you have to develop with at least the iOS 6 SDK to submit your app at all.
However, your Deployment Target setting may go as low as required, so that your app still supports older iOS versions.
Your app doesn’t have to be “compatible” with iOS 6 in the sense that you tested it on iOS 6 and handled all the potential quirks that may have appeared by moving from iOS 5 to iOS 6. Of course, the user experience on iOS 6 could suffer in this case, but unless there’s a major bug, the reviewer doesn’t care.
I am working on a major feature update for my application and would love to include features such as iCloud, Core Data, ARC and storyboards among other things. The issue is that I don't have data on how many users are still running 4.x. I realize that the ideal solution would be to support both at once and just select the available features based on what version the particular device was on, but my upgrades would be so substantial that this would be very difficult. Does anyone else have reliable data on the percentage of users on older versions? And also would it be advisable to release an iOS 5+ version of my app separately as an "App 2.0?"
... my company`s app still suport ios 3.x ,although only 2% on ios 3.x and below... but we can do the vast majority of ios4.0+ effect with 3.x and below API.
Here's an article for reference.
80% on iOS5
With the OTA updates, Apple devices are normally upgraded very quickly. The decision to create an iOS5 only app early this year was not too hard to make and more so now.
I believe iOS users are the fastest ones to upgrade when there's a new update. Also I don't know if it is accepted to have 2 different apps for different versions of iOS. What you could do is having the app check what version of iOS the app is running and exclude the features that are unsupported for lower versions.
Can't find any really reliable sources but you could check out some update stats around.
Link
Changes for ios 6 and Xcode 4.5.x
Xcode 4.5.x (and later) does not support generating armv6 binaries.
Now includes iPhone 5/armv7s support.
The minimum supported deployment target with Xcode 4.5.x or later is iOS 4.3.
The minimum support for iPhone is iPhone 3GS or later as earlier versions use armv6.
I am a beginner Apple developer and I have some issues I would like to resolve.
First of all, I am curently working on Xcode 3.2.6 because I haven't enrolled for the developer program yet. I would like to know if Apple only accepts apps (for the App Strore) compiled on SDK 4.
Secondly, I want my apps to work both on iPhone 3 and 4. What would you advice me to do? I have read in several developer forums that in order to achieve this I have to build my application with 3.1 iOS as a target. Is this correct?
Finally, is there any problem due to the difference in resolution between iPhone 3 and iPhone 4? Which resolution do you think I should use?
Thank you in advance,
Cherry
Set Base SDK to latest (4.3).
Set Target SDK to 3.1.
Avoid features available only in iOS 3.2 or later (e.g., don't use blocks, don't frameworks introduced in iOS 3.2 or later, always check availability of methods). Later, when you get more experience with Objective-C, you may try to combine features of more modern iOS, but still keep compatibility with older iOSes.
Don't worry about resolution. It affects only images – if you want to take full advantage of Retina display, then you will need to create images for both resolutions (std. and hi-res).
P.S. I suggest you to avoid support for iOS 3.2 or earlier. iOS 4 introduces a lot of nice and helpful features. And I pretty sure, Apple will revoke support for iOS 3.x soon after iOS 5 release.
If you are aiming for iOS 3, you will end up not using the features of iOS 4, which is the majority.
This is Apple's statement.
Target the latest iOS release.
Targeting the latest release allows you to take advantage of all the features
available in the latest version of iOS. However, this approach may offer a smaller
set of users capable of installing your application on their devices because your
application cannot run on iOS releases that are earlier than the target release.`
Target an earlier iOS release.
Targeting an earlier release lets you publish your application to a larger set of
users (because your application runs on the target OS release and later releases),
but may limit the iOS features your application can use.`
But I would suggest that you target the iOS 4 as people are now targeting iOS 5, and in another 8 months, I am sure Apple would release iOS 6 (They are very quick with their updates), and I personally feel that targeting iOS 3 is not going to give you great results in the long run.
If I am creating an iPhone app, is it worth trying to make sacrifices with functionality (e.g. with MPMoviePlayer) in the application and support previous versions of the OS?
Are the majority of iPhone users running iOS 4?
Will I lose out on a big portion of the market if I only support iOS 4?
There will still be a lot of iOS 3.x users because iOS 4 cannot be installed on original iPhones and older iPod touches. And iOS 4 barely works on iPhone 3G. You can still use functionality of iOS 4 while still targeting older versions though.
I've been learning through doing user testing that a lot of people don't upgrade their apps, much less their OS. Add that to the fact that lots of devices can't run 4.0, and I think you'll limit your market if you don't support at least 3.1.x.
As to 2.x, this report says it was less than 13% 5 months ago, so it's probably safe not to support for a new app at this point.
First, you're forgetting something: You need to support 3.2 if you want your app to run on the iPad.
You don't have to "sacrifice functionality"; you just have to code your app to detect what features are available at runtime and fallback gracefully.
If your app isn't free, then the real question is "Will users who don't upgrade buy my app?", and I suspect the answer is generally no. Apparently a substantial portion of the 2.x installed base are iPod Touch users who don't want to pay for the upgrade.
The other factor is the amount of work. If you use few enough iOS 4 features that it's not much work to also make it run on 3.1.3, then supporting 3.1.3 is a no-brainer. Of course, never support an OS version you can't test.
If this is a brand new app, there's not much point in supporting older versions of the OS. It will require making sacrifices when programming the app, and over time everybody will eventually move to iOS 4.