My dilemma is that I am about to begin developing my first iOS app, but I am not sure what iPhone I should develop it for. If I begin now I'll probably get it done by March/April of 2013. Should I make it for both the iPhone 4 and 5, or will that be way too much work because of their different resolutions? Would it be a good idea to just make exclusive for the iPhone 5 because most likely most people will have it by March?
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iOS Make iPhone 5 Exclusive App, or do iPhone 4, too?
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I'm not aware of anyway to limit your app to a particular device. There is a parameter for your targets plist named UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities that allows you to set several device capabilities but all the values appear to apply equally to the all the iPhones from the 3GS up to the 5. Two of the parameters could exclude devices without and auto focus camera or flash.
I don't have time to try it, but perhaps if you only supply the higher height graphic that currently only applies to the iPhone 5, the app store would accept that and list the limit as iPhone 5 and iPod 5th generation. Apple might not allow that though as their scanner code might complain that a shorter graphic isn't available and therefore won't allow an upload to the store.
You can limit your build to iOS 6, which limits the devices somewhat. You can also set the target to be iPhone (and iPod) only. You'd still have to be concerned about supporting three resolutions; iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4/4S, iPod 4t/5th gen, and iPhone 5. You can exclude the iPhone 3GS by using using the front-facing-camera parameter.
One thing about those parameters. You must include them as requirements the first time you upload your app because you can not add them later on. For instance, my app doesn't have the requirement of a camera so a customer could end up downloading that for use on an older iPod. That wouldn't be good, but Apple won't accept the additional requirement.
I don't have time to try it, but perhaps if you only supply the higher height graphic that currently only applies to the iPhone 5, the app store would accept that and list the limit as iPhone 5 and iPod 5th generation. Apple might not allow that though as their scanner code might complain that a shorter graphic isn't available and therefore won't allow an upload to the store.
You can limit your build to iOS 6, which limits the devices somewhat. You can also set the target to be iPhone (and iPod) only. You'd still have to be concerned about supporting three resolutions; iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4/4S, iPod 4t/5th gen, and iPhone 5. You can exclude the iPhone 3GS by using using the front-facing-camera parameter.
One thing about those parameters. You must include them as requirements the first time you upload your app because you can not add them later on. For instance, my app doesn't have the requirement of a camera so a customer could end up downloading that for use on an older iPod. That wouldn't be good, but Apple won't accept the additional requirement.
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Apple doesn't reject apps if they don't have the splash screen images (Default.png). Adding only a taller splash screen (meant for 4" devices) doesn't stop the app from running on older devices.
I would focus on iOS 6 in this case. You don't want to completely eliminate older phones, as the iPhone 4 and 4S are still sold, as well as older iPod touch models. It's not much extra work, and you'll have a much larger customer base.
My only problem is that because the iPhone 4 and 4s are not proportional to the iPhone 5, it may be kind of impossible.. Or yet look weird on one of the two, to have a single game model run on both. What would be the best way to go about doing this for both resolutions?
You might want to consider developing around the iPhone 4 resolution and just letting the app run letterboxed on the iPhone 5. You should consider how your users will react to this, though.
As far as I know, you can't build for specific devices, only for OS's. So you can't exclude iPhone 4's just because you want to. I think you might actually get rejected for it. You should support all devices that run the iOS you're targeting.
Alternatively, make it for the 5 and scale down / letterbox it for the 4. The scaling down could result in some funky ugly graphics, though.
Alright thanks a lot guys, I'm new around here and appreciate your help! I'll test out both, and see which one works better.