iOS 5 Beta 1 or 2? (For development)

[s4yunkim]

I'm an aspiring, albeit poor, iOS developer, who just got approved into the iOS dev program.

I've only got 1 iPhone (an iPhone 4) to test my apps and such with, so I'm being very cautious about actually installing iOS 5 betas... as this is also my day-to-day use phone.

From what I've been reading on this forum about Beta 2, it sounds almost like staying with Beta 1 is better? I use facetime on a regular basis with my girlfriend, so it is important to me, but I guess if I had to go with Beta 2 I could just use my Macbook Air to facetime.

I know that with betas not being meant for use on production machines, my best bet would be to stick with iOS 4 for a while, but as I understand, iOS 5 has garbage collection? If so, I'd much rather save myself the headache during development and code on a platform that does garbage collection for me. (Any experienced devs willing to provide their opinion on that would be greatly appreciated)

So, just a general, constructive opinion would be greatly appreciated.
Stick with iOS 4 for testing? or iOS 5 ? Beta 1? Beta 2?


Thanks!

 

[rdowty]

If you're writing an app that you might want to sell in the next few months I'd avoid IOS5.

 

[Prodo123]

If you're writing an app that you might want to sell in the next few months I'd avoid IOS5.

If you want to avoid compatibility problems in the next 2 months then I suggest iOS 5 beta 2. Developers have access to the latest builds for a reason.

 

[saving107]

Get an iPod touch for development and app testing either from Apple (refurb) or craigslist.

 

[Prodo123]

Get an iPod touch for development and app testing either from Apple (refurb) or craigslist.

Can't write apps on an iPod Touch...
Plus he's asking for which OS, not which device.

 

[Shawnpk]

Don't go iOS 5 yet. You can't submit apps with iOS 5 yet anyway. Just download the beta version of Xcode and run any apps you are writing in the simulator for now.

 

[s4yunkim]

It's not so much that I'll be writing an app to sell within the next few months, I mostly plan/want to develop and test apps on a real iPhone. With the simulator, you can't test things like having a button make a phone call, etc, so yea, testing it on the real deal.

The biggest reason I'd think about testing my code on iOS 5 is that garbage collection issue. After reading a huge section on memory management in Obj-C, my head is about to explode, so I'd like to get an expert's view on whether or not having to manually releasing every bit of memory I use is going to be necessary on iOS starting 5. (I've done some java in the past, so if the garbage collection is similar to Java, then I guess I don't have to worry so much.)


I'd love to hear everyone's opinions about any of those subjects, and thank you again in advance.

 

[Mascots]

It's not so much that I'll be writing an app to sell within the next few months, I mostly plan/want to develop and test apps on a real iPhone. With the simulator, you can't test things like having a button make a phone call, etc, so yea, testing it on the real deal.

The biggest reason I'd think about testing my code on iOS 5 is that garbage collection issue. After reading a huge section on memory management in Obj-C, my head is about to explode, so I'd like to get an expert's view on whether or not having to manually releasing every bit of memory I use is going to be necessary on iOS starting 5. (I've done some java in the past, so if the garbage collection is similar to Java, then I guess I don't have to worry so much.)


I'd love to hear everyone's opinions about any of those subjects, and thank you again in advance.

In my opinion, use iOS 4 to build your project, it is much more stable and the current release. Use iOS 5 if you have a project already built and are prepping it for the iOS update.

There really isn't Garbage collection in iOS5, but instead Automatic Reference Counting. Garbage Collection at runtime checks all of the allocated objects and releases those that are not used anymore.
ARC is more of a feature of the compiler; it analyses your code and inserts -retain and -release automatically. While the effect and idea (developer doesn't have to do the work) is similar to GC, they're essentially very different.

However, it's worth learning Memory Management and to use it. Knowing how your app is managing memory is an important step and while ARC is awesome, it can cause potential problems if something not wanted is occurring that you don't know how to fix manually, especially in large code blocks. And in my opinion, I'd rather manually manage the gears in my app than assume a compiler is doing it correctly for me.