Thousands of developers will be perfectly happy to drop iOS 5 and 6 support and remodel their apps for iOS 7 – myself included – because:
a. The new APIs and Xcode look lovely to work with.
b. Dropping support for iPhone 3G and 3GS devices four years after they were released doesn't feel unreasonable.
c. Apple has a long history of featuring apps that use their latest APIs. Having your app featured is still the only reasonable hope to make money in the App Store, unless your business model revolves around selling Smurfberries.
d. Many developers will have been holding back from making major app changes because they were waiting to see how iOS 7 would change the design language. Now that they know, they can spend the Summer redesigning.
e. Apple are openly inviting developers to "reimagine your apps on iOS 7" - that's the language they've used in their developer emails.
f. A successful developer with a widely read blog has just come out and said that everyone who drops support for older iOS versions to build afresh on top of iOS 7 stands to gain a lot.
So there will probably be a huge host of "new, nimble" apps with new takes on tired old setups come Autumn.
But I bet a lot of torch app developers are feeling very hard done by.
a. The new APIs and Xcode look lovely to work with.
b. Dropping support for iPhone 3G and 3GS devices four years after they were released doesn't feel unreasonable.
c. Apple has a long history of featuring apps that use their latest APIs. Having your app featured is still the only reasonable hope to make money in the App Store, unless your business model revolves around selling Smurfberries.
d. Many developers will have been holding back from making major app changes because they were waiting to see how iOS 7 would change the design language. Now that they know, they can spend the Summer redesigning.
e. Apple are openly inviting developers to "reimagine your apps on iOS 7" - that's the language they've used in their developer emails.
f. A successful developer with a widely read blog has just come out and said that everyone who drops support for older iOS versions to build afresh on top of iOS 7 stands to gain a lot.
So there will probably be a huge host of "new, nimble" apps with new takes on tired old setups come Autumn.
But I bet a lot of torch app developers are feeling very hard done by.