

Developing for iOS 7 and supporting iOS 6 - jtbrown
http://roadfiresoftware.com/2013/09/developing-for-ios-7-and-supporting-ios-6/

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eonil
Posting's nice.

But, should we support users who don't even update iOS - which needs only one
button tapping? Wishing them to search and install extra apps?

~~~
danabramov
Since you're asking... Had I updated to iOS 7, every single animation on my
phone would have become jaggy, and the camera would just take forever (instead
of current 15 seconds) to load.

Oh wait, my iPhone 35s doesn't support iOS 7 at all (for these reasons). But I
know people with iPhone 4 who don't upgrade because iOS 7 lags too much even
on iPhone 4.

Of course we gotta update our devices once in a while, but for those of us who
don't live in the US and buy them unsubsidized, it costs some money. All I'm
saying is, there are some reasons people won't upgrade right away even if
they'd hell like to. Whether to support them for a while is up to you of
course.

edit: and there's this iPod Touch thing of course.

~~~
yaeger
I noticed this with Evernote.

I am still on my iPhone4 with iOS6 and now, everytime I try and sync my phone
with iTunes I get the pop up notice that Evernote will not be synced as it
requires a new OS version.

I have 100 apps on my phone and that one is the only one that does this. Why
on earth did the developers require iOS7 as minimum? What is wrong with
supporting iOS6 seeing as iOS7 is still in its "1.0" and not even 4 weeks old?

I get that they wanted to include iOS7 as early as possible. Hell, every app
basically did. But Evernote is the only one of my apps that now apparently
refuses to work with anything <iOS7.

I guess I was lucky that I still had it on my phone cause otherwise, I would
be left without the ability to install it now.

~~~
jtbrown
Good points about Evernote - I'm not sure what went into their decision to
support iOS 7 only, but I'm sure they considered it.

"I guess I was lucky that I still had it on my phone cause otherwise, I would
be left without the ability to install it now."

That's not entirely true any more - Apple is now allowing users to install the
"last compatible version" of apps. More on that from Engadget:
[http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/17/apple-ios-last-
compatible...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/17/apple-ios-last-compatible-
version-app-iphone-ipod-ipad/)

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gcb0
And at another thread here people were saying how they add a fake hardware
requirement (e.g front facing camera) just to deny people from installing in
older phones because 'it run slow there'.

~~~
jtbrown
If you want to deny people from installing on older devices, you can just set
the target to iOS 7, meaning you need iOS 7 to install it. Doing that means it
can only be installed on iPhone 4 and later, iPad 2 and later, and iPod Touch
5th gen and later.

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misterjangles
Great post. I've been holding off on an update due to the navbar issue and not
wanting to deal with it at the moment. Thank for the write up!

~~~
jtbrown
Yeah, that navbar issue killed my productivity for at least a day. Glad I
finally found the topLayoutGuide property so I can align my views properly.

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joshdotsmith
Thanks for posting this, Josh! Really came at the exact right time for me as I
work with our first production-worthy RubyMotion app.

~~~
jtbrown
Glad it was helpful to you. Tell me - do you build views in RubyMotion
programmatically? If so, I suppose that -[UIViewController topLayoutGuide]
would be useful, right?

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anuraj
Not really necessary - more than 90% users upgrade anyway.

~~~
jtbrown
Eventually, yes, most users upgrade. But Apple's stats showed about 6% of
users still on iOS 5 a full year after iOS 6 was released. I'd imagine we'll
see similar numbers with users going from iOS 6 to 7 - lots of them won't
upgrade for a full year, and some will never upgrade. Mixpanel is currently
showing 36% of users on iOS 6 - that's not an insignificant number. I'll be
supporting iOS 6 for probably another year.

