Michal Marek The release of a new generation of iOS usually means the end of support for the oldest supported iPhone model to date. This year it's the turn of the 3GS model, which simply isn't technically equipped enough to work comfortably with iOS 7. Technological progress is inexorable, and for phones this old and their owners, this step becomes somewhat unfortunate.
This is because application developers stop supporting older models with an older operating system, and the functionality of such devices is therefore greatly limited over time. However, now there is a change that will surely please many owners of a new iPhone or iPad. Apple has started allowing owners of older devices to download older versions of apps that are compatible with their operating system.
The differences between iOS 6 and iOS 7 are significant and not everyone will like them. Most developers will certainly try to get the most out of the new options. They will build new APIs and features of the new operating system into their apps, will gradually change the design of most apps to fit the iOS 7 user interface, and will mainly focus on the new operating system and current phone models.
But thanks to this friendly move by Apple, these developers will be able to innovate without worrying about angering and losing their existing customers. Now it will be possible to rework the application to the image of iOS 7 and cut off the older device, because the owners of such devices can simply download an older version that will work for them without problems and will not even disturb the user experience of their different-looking graphical interface.
So will my new-old 3G come back to life? :-)
Well, if this TimeMachine will also work for, say, an iPod Touch 2g with iOS 4.2.1, then it's a great news and for me a bigger hit than the entire keynote last week. That's what I call not throwing your customers overboard.
It still has a catch, for example with twitter, which changed the API and they probably didn't fix it in the application for 4.2.1. Anyway, I'll try.
It sucks :-) but then again what are we going to talk about :-) iphone 4 is 3 years old ... and still has relatively old hardware - 800mhz processor and 512 ram ... and still has ios 7 .... for classic applications like Lidl, I understand ... for music, photography and other applications that require more performance, I don't understand a little :D
My child got by with the original 2G iPhone (as an iPod) for the last two years. This feature is of great benefit to me :)
This is exactly why I appreciate Apple!! thinks of everyone :) even if you have an older model :)
I wonder if this will be configurable somehow by the developers. I think that if the old application will use an API that the developer will want to cancel later, that it should be possible to set the exact behavior somehow...
It also boggles my mind how it will behave in different combinations of the application version and iOS - I would beg for a more extensive article, preferably with a test of some popular applications. In addition, it will behave differently when you buy/install directly from a mobile device and otherwise via iTunes on a Mac - initially it let me buy an application in iTunes, which then did not sync to the old iPod, which annoyed me quite a bit.
Sounds good and certainly good news for users with older
devices, but the question is how many developers will support this trend.
When a developer makes an app, they usually have it in 2 (Full and Lite) or 4
(Full iPhone, Full iPad, Lite iPhone, Lite iPad) versions. Support
an older version would basically mean doubling the number of applications which
must be maintained by the developer, which in my experience is the road to hell. In addition, at
older versions, it will often not only be about some little things in the code,
but there can be quite a lot of changes.