I have a friend who recently graduated from the Flatiron School, an intense Ruby-on-Rails training workshop. As part of the class, he built an iOS app.
I was excited to download it, but I couldn’t.
Why? Because I have made a choice to keep my iPhone 5, purchased when it was released in 2012, with the operating system that it came with, iOS 6. As of July 2014, iOS 7 (which is a requirement for my friend’s app) is the current OS, with iOS 8 slated to be released in fall 2014. I don’t like upgrading the OS on my hardware (computers and mobile), as I risk slowing them down, with no turning back.
Bells and whistles are great, and the latest and greatest technology can do amazing, previously unseen things. But I won’t allow an obsession with what’s new alienate the parts of the user base that have not upgraded just yet.
When I used to design websites back in 2000-01, when the world was still moving away from dialup modems (and AOL) to broadband, I would test my sites for both speeds/connections. I even ran stuff on my old 1994 Macintosh Performa (which never slowed down, although software would eventually not be compatible with it).
While there needs to be a cutoff to make most apps financially viable, I would suggest to not alienate those using older devices and hardware.
What if your phone works better? Have you read any reviews of people on iPhone 5 having trouble with iOS7. I doub’t they’d release before iPhone 6 if they didn’t think the iOS couldn’t handle it. I am on iPhone 4S with iOS6 and it works fine!
This is an interesting thought, Ian, but how developers can do it? They are developing for the latest available OS, and iOS 7 had been out for a while… I’m more like you and don’t jump on the latest releases as they come out, but then at some point you have no choice but to upgrade…
Thanks for the feedback!
My experience of upgrading leads back to my first iPhone, the 2nd generation iPhone 3G, released in 2008. It came with iPhone OS 2. I upgraded it to 3, since it added cut and paste features for the first time. It did, however, slow my phone down.
I held out on installing iOS 4 (the last update on the 3G supported by Apple) until it was apparent that it was necessary for the 2011 version of the MLB At Bat app (which I get a lot of milage out of). The 2012 version of MLB At Bat was actually only for iOS 5 and up, so I went most of the season without it until I got the iPhone 5 that fall. (The MLB app has worked fine this season on iOS 6).
I do agree that upgrades of both hardware and OS are necessary as time goes on. However, my phone still works well, and the apps that I want for it are functional. I’ll wait until my next phone before I get the next OS, trading the newer (and updated apps) for my phone’s current performance.