Are you surprised at how many devs are focused on developing new iOS 7-specific applications this late into the game? iOS 7 has a 2 – 3 month ticking time bomb on it and yet every day, I encounter developers whose primary focus is getting their iOS 7 apps into shape for this autumn rather than building iOS 8 for launch this fall.
Sure iOS 7 and iOS 7 compatibility aren’t going away for a while. Even those devs aware of UIAlertView deprecation are focused on bigger deployment issues. Nearly all of them have irrational partners and bosses who insist on backwards compatibility to roughly the jurassic period. If a new iOS 7 app will work on iOS 8 that’s all they want or need. Taking advantage of iOS 8 features, well that’s for other people.
When you work on books, it’s awfully easy to get stuck in Apple headspace. Take UIAlertView. It’s been deprecated and I keep coming back to that, mostly because deprecated classes aren’t even available in Swift these days. Somehow this keeps resonating to my “It’s dead, Jim! I’m a doctor not a miracle worker” senses. I have to keep reminding myself of the day-to-day realities of the app store as it exists, not as Apple would have it. And yet when developers come to me asking how to build HUDs based on UIAlertView this late in the game, I start going UIAlertController ballistic.
The way I see it, ever since App Store started offering platform-specific upgrades, the pressure to back-support all devices all the time was gone. Unless you’re developing something new but specific to older devices (there’s a big market out there if you’re prepared to fight the tool suite, hi Chris S!), why not keep pushing forward with new releases? It’s not as if older systems can’t still do business with you. And when they upgrade, your newer versions are ready for them to download.
How much back compatibility do you think is necessary, especially if you put out regular updates? If the world is upgrading with you, what are you gaining from supporting those 10% of users who have access to your product but may not be running the latest version of your software? What am I missing here?
I’m really curious to hear what you have to say.