'Skitch' Goes iOS 7-Only, Adds AirDrop Support and New Gestures

Whoa, just straight up removing support for iOS 6? That's a bold move... At least now you can download old versions.

But still.

stiligFox said:

Whoa, just straight up removing support for iOS 6? That's a bold move... At least now you can download old versions.

But still.

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I wonder if there's a reason for it other than just driving iOS7 adoption?

bombardier.v2 said:

I wonder if there's a reason for it other than just driving iOS7 adoption?

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skitch (dont know if it started before the evernote takeover) has always seemed rather ignorant in their updates and of course had to revert some time ago.


btw has anyone had anything added to that share menu in skitch? something that does not appear in other apps while sharing

but but my vintage software!

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Time to upgrade folks

I always used this for editing photos I was saving into Evernote but to my surprise I noticed last night that Skitch seems to be already included into Evernote (or at least just the same kind of annotating features/tools that Skitch has).

When did they include these tools in Evernote without needing Skitch installed?

Skika said:

Time to upgrade folks

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seriously, suck it up and upgrade

A lot of functionality seems to be missing from Skitch now (maps? websites?) and it is definitely not pulling all of the photos from my camera roll. I tried deleting & reinstalling & it's just not working right. Anyone else?

unplugme71 said:

seriously, suck it up and upgrade

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There are no upgrades for MILLIONS of devices. iOS 6.1.3 is as high as they go.

Telling people to "upgrade" when they may not be able to isn't a solution.

Xenomorph said:

There are no upgrades for MILLIONS of devices. iOS 6.1.3 is as high as they go.

Telling people to "upgrade" when they may not be able to isn't a solution.

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Time to upgrade your 3-4 year old device?*

*We're all doomed, eventually.

anthonyjr said:

Time to upgrade your 3-4 year old device?*

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...or the iPod touch (4th gen) Apple was still selling less than four months ago.

stiligFox said:

Whoa, just straight up removing support for iOS 6? That's a bold move... At least now you can download old versions.

But still.

Click to expand...

This is a non issue. Like you said, you can install the old version, so its not going to be a problem. Why limit what people can do on iOS7 just because iOS6 can't do it?

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RMo said:

...or the iPod touch (4th gen) Apple was still selling less than four months ago.

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Yup they do that every year. The iPod Touch is useless pretty quickly if you buy it that last week or two before a major OS update.

Um...this is no different then lots of software/games.

If you don't upgrade your device you can't upgrade to the newest software but you still have the old software.

Don't see the issue here.

Fair or not, this is just the beginning.

rmwebs said:

Yup they do that every year. The iPod Touch is useless pretty quickly if you buy it that last week or two before a major OS update.

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Like I said, this was not a week; it was four months. But yes, I agree that it is generally a bad idea. And in this case, I think it's clear that they introduced the 16 GB camera-less Touxh just so they could have a low-end iPod touch that still supports iOS 7.

stiligFox said:

Whoa, just straight up removing support for iOS 6? That's a bold move... At least now you can download old versions.

But still.

Click to expand...

"straight up removing" makes it sound like they did additional work to not support iOS 6, which the reverse is the case. With any major OS change the authors suddenly have to do additional work to support two platforms. If they only have the time/money/willingness to support one, which one should it be? New of course, the one that the majority of their users are using.

bombardier.v2 said:

I wonder if there's a reason for it other than just driving iOS7 adoption?

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See what I wrote above. The majority of their users will or are already on iOS7.

Xenomorph said:

There are no upgrades for MILLIONS of devices. iOS 6.1.3 is as high as they go.

Telling people to "upgrade" when they may not be able to isn't a solution.

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First, did you pull "millions" out of thin air, or do you have a source for millions of active devices in use today, that can not run iOS7?

Second, how many of those "millions" of users that can't upgrade to iOS, are active users of Skitch? Probably less.

Now, of the old device users that use Skitch, how many need the new update, and won't be happy with the version they currently have?

Last run, of all the old device users, that use skitch and feel entitled to all future updates of skitch, how many will up and unreasonably hate the company to the point where they are a lost customer forever?

That last number, that's why the software devs won't be spending hundreds of man hours and thousands of dollars to maintain two versions of their software.

Nobody needs iOS 6 support anymore.

bombardier.v2 said:

I wonder if there's a reason for it other than just driving iOS7 adoption?

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As an iOS developer who has worked on applications that have decided to make the switch to iOS 7-only, the motivation has absolutely nothing to do with driving iOS 7 adoption.

Whenever Apple releases a new version of its OS, there are generally a lot of new features developers can take advantage of. However, it's always a tradeoff between supporting shiny new features, and supporting people with outdated versions of the OS.

At least on the applications that I've worked on, we've historically supported 1 OS back from the current. However, the difficulty with iOS 7 is that it isn't just new features that it adds, it requires entirely new styling otherwise it looks completely out of place on iOS 7. While possible to support two different interfaces for two different versions of the OS, it creates a massive amount of extra work for what will soon be a very small segment of users (iOS 7 is estimated to be already at 60% adoption).

Hopefully that helps shed some light on the situation.

I've found Skitch to be a terrible app. Maybe this update makes the iOS version better, but not being able to save annotations directly back to the original note is a killer.

The positive thing is that the new Skitch is actually performant on the iPhone 4. The previous version used to stutter even in their demo video on Evernote.com.

stiligFox said:

Whoa, just straight up removing support for iOS 6? That's a bold move... At least now you can download old versions.

But still.

Click to expand...

Not really. In OS X, that's a bold move because adoption rates are a lot lower (probably because updates cost money.) Not so on iOS. iOS 7 is already past 60%. Further, there's a correlation between being an unprofitable customer and being a customer who doesn't upgrade (there's a few factors for this, including those who don't upgrade tend to buy cheaper devices and those who don't upgrade tend to not use their devices often, ergo, they don't use your app or download apps as often as others.)

Fragmentation is increasing very, very fast in the iOS world.

stiligFox said:

At least now you can download old versions.

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Woah, sweet! Now I can reinstall Google's Youtube app on my older device.

iGrip said:

Fragmentation is increasing very, very fast in the iOS world.

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I know you're just trolling, but what the heck:

It's actually due to the incredibly low level of iOS fragmentation that makes going iOS 7-only a reasonable business choice rather than a suicidal move.

In an ideal mobile device ecosystem, all customers would instantly have the latest OS, the day it was released. Developers could then target a single OS and take full advantage of any and all new features without leaving any customers behind.
(Also, since we're in an ideal ecosystem, updates would be frequent, substantial and have no downside. And the updated apps would all be released on the same day as well.)

Of course, no such ideal ecosystem exists. Yet it is remarkable how close Apple is to this with iOS 7, even though it is a major update.

I think Google understands all this and will eventually get Android to where adoption rates for updates are high and fast... but only by following Apple's model.