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All New Apps Must Be Built With iOS 11 SDK Starting in April

Markoth said:
To all the non-devs out there: this article is misleading. Devs can still target older iOS versions, thereby ensuring compatibility, they just can’t use the old SDK to do so. There’s really no downside for anyone here.
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Well, there is kind of a downside for devs. It means if they don't care about the X layouts, they still have to write conditional statements anywhere anything is handled differently for iOS 11, like the safe zones for the X. Conditionals/exceptions like that just bloat and complicate code.

Also, forcing them to compile with Xcode 9 means some of their Swift 2 code and libraries may break. It also forces them to be running at least macOS 10.12, which they may not want to do, and for which there are many legitimate reasons not to.
 
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Apple ecosystem is like a train with no carriage behind. Only the head.

I believe dev can actively NOT support iPhone X but I doubt they want to do that. The notch is the worst design choice ever. Yet everyone will embrace it.
 
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ersan191 said:
They probably forgot to turn the machines off - CVS does not take Apple Pay, they actively disable their NFC readers. They have CVS Pay instead, which never works.
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Some companies have to be dragged kicking and screaming (by losing customers) and CVS is definitely one of them.
 
KazKam said:
Well, there is kind of a downside for devs. It means if they don't care about the X layouts, they still have to write conditional statements anywhere anything is handled differently for iOS 11, like the safe zones for the X. Conditionals/exceptions like that just bloat and complicate code.

Also, forcing them to compile with Xcode 9 means some of their Swift 2 code and libraries may break. It also forces them to be running at least macOS 10.12, which they may not want to do, and for which there are many legitimate reasons not to.
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True, but the point is that this article largely misunderstands the implications of forcing the new SDK.
 
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The trouble is that Xcode 9 is incredibly slow at building and the running apps even on new Macs. Apple would do much better if they stopped slowing down Xcode. The build times in Xcode 9 are horrifically slow compared to Xcode 8. At least 5-10 times slower. (This was not the case moving from Xcode 7 to Xcode 8.)
 
sracer said:
...and also ensuring that every customer who actively uses apps from the app store must upgrade their device to iOS 11. That's one way to improve the iOS 11 adoption rate. ;)
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Solver said:
“Must use iOS 11 SDK.” This is why you do not see new apps for older devices, even if developers wanted to support them.
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wrong ... no one is being force to upgrade to iOS 11. Apps compiled against SDK 11 will still run on older devices (8.0 and later). Only if the app chooses to use features that are not available in older versions (like AR) it will require a new version.

KazKam said:
Well, there is kind of a downside for devs. It means if they don't care about the X layouts, they still have to write conditional statements anywhere anything is handled differently for iOS 11, like the safe zones for the X. Conditionals/exceptions like that just bloat and complicate code.
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very minimal work has to be done to support the safe area - I updated my apps in no time to support he X

KazKam said:
Also, forcing them to compile with Xcode 9 means some of their Swift 2 code and libraries may break. It also forces them to be running at least macOS 10.12, which they may not want to do, and for which there are many legitimate reasons not to.
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This is the real issue here. Framworks/libraries written in swift are not compatible with even minor Xcode updates - Apple totally screwed up the compatibility here and developers depending on older closed source swift libraries are screwed since the can't link them with the newer Xcode (even though apps compiled with older Xcode and swift work fine on newer devices/OS)
 
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KazKam said:
Well, there is kind of a downside for devs. It means if they don't care about the X layouts, they still have to write conditional statements anywhere anything is handled differently for iOS 11, like the safe zones for the X. Conditionals/exceptions like that just bloat and complicate code.

Also, forcing them to compile with Xcode 9 means some of their Swift 2 code and libraries may break. It also forces them to be running at least macOS 10.12, which they may not want to do, and for which there are many legitimate reasons not to.
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What is a legitimate reason that a device a developer uses to test their product with doesn't have the newest OS?
 
kirky29 said:
Does this finally mean that apps will be forced to update to native screen resolution? My Lloyds UK banking app refuses to update!!
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Chase bank hasn’t updated their app either, literally the only bank I use that still hasn’t updated for the new layout
 
Plutonius said:
Isn't it backwards compatible ?

I just foresee app bloat (the size of them) occurring.
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Only if the older devices are upgraded to iOS 11. I have an iPhone 5s, and while technically it's supported by iOS 11, it is unusably slow running it, so I don't. The implication is for an older device like the iPhone 5S, no one may target it with new Apps, even though it's got a 64-bit ARM, etc.

Apple used to have a different philosophy - for example, they did a herculean effort to back port large sections of the OS to earlier platforms... But I don't know if this is the first time they've ever done this, and whether it's an attempt to make the iPhone X look good... Apple could have said that you need to support the iPhone X in addition to earlier devices, but this is different.

[I did upgrade to an iPhone 6S, because even iOS 10 was unusably slow on my 5S. The problem is that now the OS is barely fast enough on my 6S. So again, Apple is no longer trying to make its OS usable on older devices like they used to...)
 
scott523 said:
I also want to see a date or even when they start doing it. Because Panera had updated their app today and it was still not optimized for iPhone X. :rolleyes:
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That’s not all Panera screwed up. As announced last week, they leaked all their customers’ data in plaintext, including names, email and physical addresses, birthdays and the last four digits of the customer’s credit card number for at least eight months prior.

For more info see: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/04/panerabread-com-leaks-millions-of-customer-records/
 
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