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.