iOS: Storyboard backwards compatible - iphone

I created my application with Storyboard not realizing till it was to late that iOS4.3 devices will not be supported. Is there an option where I can copy the storyboard views into xibs or programmatically do it at runtime? What options do I have without completely starting over?
Kinda makes storyboards useless since alot of people still use iOS4x

If you bought an iPhone 3G, the day before the 3GS came out, or bought remaining stock in the following weeks, your 20 month upgrade would be available in February 2011.
That gives all the 3G owners almost the last 12 months to have upgraded to a device that supports iOS 5.
So based on those dates, I wouldn't worry about iOS 4.x anymore and only develop for iOS 5.
Just my two coppers.
db

If it's a universal app, the benefits of storyboard are too good to pass up. If someone wants your app, they'll upgrade to 5.x

Related

Submitting an App to Apple wrote in iOS 4

Okay, I know what your thinking why, right? My employer wants me to work on their app and submit it to Apple, but I told him the app has to be wrote in the most up to date OS. Does anyone know where you can find a something that states your, iphone App must have the most up to date OS? He would to have some concrete proof, before they restart their project. I'm like 90% sure your app has to have the most recent OS, but I also am having troubles finding something from apple that says that.
thanks
Starting tomorrow (May 1st), all new apps and app updates must fully support the taller screen of the iPhone 5 and 5th gen iPod touch. In order to do this you need to be using Xcode 4.5 or later with a Base SDK of 6.0 or later. And this in turn means that the oldest Deployment Target you can support is iOS 4.3.
See https://developer.apple.com/news/ and look at the news items from March 21.
So you can still support iOS 4 but it must be 4.3 and later. You must have full retina support on all devices you support and you must fully support the taller iPhone/iPod touch screens.
To be honest, supporting 4.3 is virtually pointless at this point in time. Any device that can run 4.3 can run 5.1. And except for the iPad 1 and 3rd gen iPod touch, any device that can run iOS 5 can run iOS 6. So basically, there is no reason to support anything before iOS 5.1. Any user running 4.3 or 5.0 can update to at least 5.1 if not the latest 6.x.
In other words, starting May 1st, 2013, no new apps or app updates can support the iPhone 3G or older, or the first 2 iPod touches.
BTW - the following Wikipedia page has a good chart about what versions of iOS run on the different devices: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_iOS_devices

What iOS version to use when start building an iOS App now and publishing in 1-2 months?

Couldn't find similar questions:
I'm currently designing my app and after that I will build it with Xcode 4.2. My question is what iOS version should I use - iOS4 or iOS5?
I was trying out storyboard and ARC, so it would be great to build the app with iOS5, but I don't know if it will be better to use iOS4 to reach more users?
What are your advices?
Merry XMas! :)
According to this report, about a third of users had updated to iOS 5 in October. The figure has probably increased since then and will continue to increase (especially considering the huge influx of new iOS 5 devices which will enter use after Christmas), so by the time you publish your app it is quite likely that about half of users will have iOS 5.
Whether it's worth losing about half of your potential market for the extra features which are available when developing for iOS 5 is entirely up to you. To some extent, it also depends of what the app is - if it is something targeted at people who make intensive use of their iPhone, chances are they will already have upgraded, so it shouldn't be a problem. If, on the other hand, it's something that is likely to be used by non-techsavvy people, you might be better off making it compatible with iOS 4.
I would say go for IOS 4, you can still use Arc, and StoryBoards are not the end of the world...
I would:
In Xcode, set Base SDK to Latest iOS (iOS 5.0) and set iOS Deployment Target to iOSx.xx where x.x is any version from 3 to 5. The deployment target is where you can decide what is the minimum version of iOS that your app will need in order for it to work. So the lower the number would mean you can reach more targets. Just make sure you do test your app on those versions that you set before submiting to iTunes for review.

Is the use of storyboards in Xcode 4.2 production ready and recommended? (c.f. previous XIB methods)

Is the use of storyboards in Xcode 4.2 production ready and recommended?
That is, would iPhone/iPad developers that have used storyboards recommend (for native iPhone/iPad apps) to definitely use storyboards? Or are there some gotchas and issues still with the concept?
P.S. Also do storyboards assist in getting a Universal Application designed/working?
This depends, for the most part, on your target audience. The only potential deal-breaker is the fact that using storyboards requires you to set your app's deployment target to iOS 5.0 or later; a storyboarded app cannot run on any earlier version of iOS.
If you must cater to previous versions of iOS, you have to continue using individual nib files if designing your interface with Interface Builder. I'd also recommend sticking with whatever you're already using in your existing projects. (You can introduce storyboards into your existing projects in steps, but remember that they'll only work in iOS 5. There's a WWDC 2011 presentation that walks you through this process.)
For new projects, storyboards seem to be the way to go, as long as you're sure you won't need to deploy to previous iOS versions.
Also do storyboards assist in getting a Universal Application designed/working?
Not sure what you mean by "assist", but you have to create one storyboard of nibs for each device family. So one for iPhone/iPod touch, and one for iPad.
It would be interesting to know how much of the market you are missing out on by targeting only iOS 5. I have noted that there is a significant percentage of iPhone users who dont upgrade their iOS be it from iOS 3 to iOS 4 or even iOS 5 so any apps targeting iOS 5 will mean they can not download any app you create.
I started out using iOS 5 with storyboard and it's a great feature, but had to pull back and use xibs so that I get backwards compatibility. There's just too much of the market you will miss out on by only targeting iOS 5.
ARC is a great plus, and just for that feature alone I am happy with the transition to iOS 5. Not to mention the new CLGeoCoder class and JSON now included. Anyone who wants to use JSON API have a look at this great tutorial from Ray Wenderlich.

iOS storyboard on iOS 4?

Well, I got the new XCode and I saw it's nice new storyboard features. It's really nice and I LOVE IT. I spent about 2 or so weeks making a new app that I wanted to update. However, when submitted it through xcode, it gave me this error
The Bundle is invalid. The key UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities in the Info.plist may not contain values that would prevent this Application from running on devices that were supported by previous versions.
So I went back and set the deployment target to 4.0, but it wouldn't let me build. Soon after I realized storyboards were only compatible on iOS 5. Is there anyway I could get it working on iOS 4 by converting them to XIB's somehow?
I really don't want to just submit a new app that's iOS 5 compatible, because most people don't have iOS 5...
Thanks.
According to this, storyboards are absolutely not compatible with iOS4 as they rely on new runtime classes.

What are the potential (approximate) future usage tendencies of iOS 5?

According to PadGadget, just a few days after its release the iOS 5 was installed on 1 in 3 devices capable of running it.
When starting to develop a new app today in XCode I have to choose whether I want to use StoryBoards in it or not. If I choose yes, I will not be able to compile the app so it could run on the devices with the lower iOS versions than iOS 5.
In order not to leave more than two thirds of the potential users "overboard" the logical step would be to opt out the StoryBoards usage when starting a new app development.
On the other hand when the app is finished (let's say in 1-6 months) maybe 90% of iOS devices will be running iOS 5, thus it would make sense to start the development of a project today aiming for the support of iOS 5 or greater.
What are your opinions on this issue and how can one predict the approximate future usage of a new iOS?
My guess is that after 6 months a majority (say 60-70%) will have updated to iOS 5, but generally it's a good idea to support the two latest major OS versions.
That's probably going to change with iOS 5 forward, because of OTA updates, but for now I would keep supporting iOS 4.