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by andrewgjohnson 4570 days ago
I think the lack of definition of "iOS 7 optimized" is what is confusing to those of us who haven't developed apps on iOS.
3 comments
micampe 4570 days ago
The only apps I have that have not been updated are Google's and the only annoying thing is that they use the old keyboard, which looks bad now.
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seiji 4570 days ago
Basic guidelines of "no using the old UI widgets (grey keyboard, old tabs, old back arrows)" and, old by now, supporting iPhone 4 and iPhone 5+ screen sizes with optimized graphics. Same goes for iPad except there's only one resolution to support even though it comes in two resolutions across two sizes.
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ben1040 4570 days ago
>old by now, supporting iPhone 4 and iPhone 5+ screen sizes with optimized graphics

Yep. Starting from May of 2013, they will reject any app that letterboxes on an iPhone 5.

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tonyhb 4570 days ago
Yeah, I was thinking that as a web/java developer I don't understand what this means.

Does this mean that, essentially, we only build for iOS 7 onwards?

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smweber 4570 days ago
"iOS 7 Optimized" is Apple's way of saying "built with the iOS 7 SDK".

Apps that are built for iOS 7 get the new shiny keyboard and some different behaviour when run on iOS 7, but can still run fine on older versions of iOS if the app developer is willing to support older versions of iOS. This is done by setting an option called "deployment target" to an older iOS version when building in Xcode (and testing a ton on older versions of iOS, and not calling newer APIs on versions of iOS that don't support them).

So this announcement means Apple is dropping support for older versions of Xcode (with older iOS SDKs), but older versions of iOS are still technically supported as long as you're building with the iOS 7 SDK.

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tonyhb 4570 days ago
Ah OK – thanks for the information!
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drp4929 4570 days ago
No, it does not mean only build for iOS onwards.

It means give primary focus to iOS7 in terms of performance, UI, design idioms, usage of underlying technologies etc….

It means don't build apps targeting prior iOS and just reply upon backward compatibility of iOS7. Use iOS7 as your main target OS.

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