iPad iOS question

Ideally you would want to test your apps on all iPads available.
At the bare minimum you want to test on the oldest supported device.

What we like to do is make sure it runs on an iPad 2, and an iPad3. If your app runs smoothly on those, then it should be fine on the newer ones.
Note, that there are certain features only newer iPads support. For example i iOS8, apple allows users to use the frosted glass effects in their apps. This only works on newer iPads (i think the oldest they work with is the mini).

 

It would also depend on what your app is going to do. If it's a very simple "quiz" app, speed might not be an issue.

Marketing is an issue as well, look at how far back you want to go in your support for iOS. The number of people using older versions is very small with Apple. People tend to upgrade quickly.

Another issue is how far forward do you want to take the use of the test device. Some devices might not make the cut for the next OS.

Speed is certainly an issue, more on a resource hungry app. You might know people that have older devices that you can run test on as well.

I tend to wait for an upgrade then get a high end device. Also, storage shouldn't be a big issue with a test device unless you are making an app that requires huge storage.

 

Storage shouldn't matter, its more of a personal preference. Unless you're gonna store huge local databases on to your iPad locally.



As for supporting old devices, if its going to be on the App Store then yes you should.

But then again if you have to change your whole structure and move mountains to support an iPad 2, iPhone 4S, iPad Mini 1. Then its probably better not to, because those devices are going to be obsolete a lot sooner then later.

I'm mainly in B2B app development, so theres only one App we maintain that supports nearly all devices. Otherwise i tell customers to get the latest iPad and the give them the Minimum iOS Model (Usually like an iPad 3 or later, iPhone 5 or later, ANYTHING OVER 512 MB of RAM) because you're either going to run to bottlenecks and hell if you didnt code it correctly and you're gonna go through hell trying find out where all the memory is getting burned.


it matters because in the case of iPod 5th Gen, we had to optimize functions because it crashes when the devices uses 200MB of ram.

 

Just to be clear, you do not write apps on an iPad for iOS and the App Store.

 

As this person said. Your app can only be considered as good as its very worst implementation.

 

Do you mean iPod 4th Gen? ... the 5th has the 512 doesn't it?

 

WTF? It’s iPad Air(r) anyway.

You didn’t mention the App Store.
If you pay the developer fee to write for yourself just use what you have.
If not, appeal to the largest audience.

I’ve got a bit of a thirst for some Coke(r)

 

No the 5th Gen,



It crashes at 200MB with the current OS (at that time iOS 7). same with he iPad2, iPad Mini 1 as they pretty mush use the same internals