Back cameras, front cameras, gyroscopes, magnetometers, retina screens, taller iPhone screens and multiple CPU cores are all innovations that have been added over the years in different versions of the iPad and iPhone.įortunately, it’s not as hard as you might think to ensure your apps support the widest range of iOS versions and hardware devices possible. Just to add to the confusion, Apple mobile hardware has also evolved over the years. While you’re chomping at the bit to use the new features in your apps, some of the new classes and frameworks just aren’t available in older versions of iOS. However, new iOS versions are double-edged swords along with the new features comes the inevitable issues with backwards compatibility. This year, Apple is promising a host of new features in iOS7, including Text to Speech, AirDrop for iOS, Sprite Kit, and other incredibly exciting innovative extensions to iOS. Last year, iOS 6 introduced Auto Layout, UICollectionView, PassKit, and native Facebook integration. Two years ago, iOS 5 introduced Storyboards, iCloud, Newsstand, and native Twitter integration. iOS Versions: An OverviewĮach new version of iOS presents new opportunities to mobile developers - along with new challenges. In this tutorial, you’ll modify an existing iOS 6 app called RWRageFaces to make it compatible for iOS 5 – without losing any of the iOS 6 functionality.Īlong the way, you’ll cover various methods to detect and correct compatibility issues – and you’ll encounter a whole lot of crashes that give you some insight into the various APIs that we take for granted in iOS 6. You’ll have your apps supporting multiple iOS versions and devices in no time.

In this tutorial you’ll see how to use various techniques that allow you to support different iOS versions and devices effectively. You might even test on more than one or two versions of iOS.īut doing so would cover only a handful of the different combinations of iOS version and device type. When you’re writing an app for iOS, you likely test on the simulator and one or two devices.

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