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From the app developer perspective, it's really Apple's fault; they push HARD to force upgrades:

- Hardware DRM is used to block installation of old OS releases, mandating that developers maintain a stable of old hardware that they never reinstall just to be able to test on iOS < $current.

- Critical security updates aren't provided for previous major releases if the device can run the next major release. iOS 6 was left with completely broken SSL certificate validation, and the last iOS 7 release also has known bugs; the only way to get a fix is to upgrade to iOS 8.

- Apple rapidly deprecates and removes old SDKs and toolchains from Xcode long before the devices supported by them have reached their end of useful life -- for example, dropping armv6 entirely due to clang having a litany of armv6 codegen bugs. The standard test framework -- OCUnit -- was deprecated in favor of an almost identical (but API incompatible) XCTest framework ... but Apple didn't bother to port XCTest for iOS 6 and (iirc) 7.0 devices, leaving developers with the choice of breaking testing on previous releases, or disabling/ignoring deprecation warnings and just being forced to refactor all their tests at an unexpected future date when Apple will drop OCUnit without additional warning.

Apple used to have a great backwards compatibility story; now, they're shoving both developers and users as hard as they can, and leaving an enormous amount of prematurely useless hardware and artificially enforced codebase bitrot.

What's worse is that Apple's pace is producing some seriously broken, buggy OS releases. Apple needs to return to the fundamentals of driving adoption by providing the best possible platform, rather than twisting and shimmying as fast as they can to stay just out of reach of the competition.

I have sympathy for any developer who supports just the latest iOS. Because:

* you need to maintain a stable of test devices on all iOS versions

* it's time-consuming to support legacy OS versions

* it leads to more support

* it has dubious economic value

Also, to be angry at app developers because they act rationally seems misplaced. Particularly with HipChat, you want them to support what exactly... every version of OSX, iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux? Because they get pretty close.

Why don't you just not update your phone, or your apps? Did FourSquare and HipChat force you to update the app, with some sort of blocking in-app pop-up?

p.s. We do support 2-3 versions for our apps, but that's a practical matter for us.

There's a sliding scale here. I don't think anyone is expecting app developers to support every OS version that ever existed. But iOS8 doesn't work on the iPhone 4, and according to comments on here works pretty terribly on the 4S, and even on the 5.

Supporting the current version and the most recent version doesn't feel like the biggest imposition. As a web developer we've adopted it - we just phased out iOS6 support now that we're looking at iOS8. And there aren't actually that many differences between 7 and 8 - especially compared to 6 and 7. What iOS8-specific SDK features are developers using that means they absolutely have to only target iOS8?

The difference is that as a web developer you don't have to drop roughly ~$2k on devices to test the older versions of browsers, you just fire up a VM.

Apple developers can't roll back the OS version, and need to have at least one 4/4s, one 5/5s, and one iPad for each OS they would like to support. Let alone the new screen fragmentation.

The inability to roll back iOS is inconvenient for customers, but it's a HUGE middle-finger to developers. Customer are caught between "don't update a few of my apps" while we are caught between "don't support a number of new users" and "spend a lot of extra time and effort"

The difference is that as a web developer you don't have to drop roughly ~$2k on devices to test the older versions of browsers, you just fire up a VM.

Why? You can fire up an iOS Simulator just as easily for web developer as you can native development. The same issues affect both. In neither case would I suggest relying on simulated versions of devices - I've been caught out by too many touch event oddities in the past.

Yes, Apple not allowing paying developers to downgrade their devices is a huge FU. My office spends way too much time dealing with iDevice management than it should. Which devices do we upgrade to the betas? How many old iOS versions will we support? These questions are made much more difficult when there is no going back to a lower firmware. Of course, we are always buying new devices ($$$) because new demand is outpacing deprecation.

It's not a matter of updating the apps, I couldn't install them in the first place. I started a new job, was using iOS 6, needed both apps for the job, and when I'd try to download them from the App Store, I'd get an error message saying they only supported iOS 7. So, I was forced to upgrade to iOS 7, period. Not updating my phone was simply not an option. I mean, HipChat and FourSquare couldn't even support a single version back of iOS? Apparently not. Again, ugh.

And I remember reading about some feature where Apple would let you download a previous version of an app that was compatible with your iOS. But that option definitely was not there with HipChat or FourSquare. In fact, I never saw it for any app anywhere, the whole time I was on iOS 6.

Developers that force you to upgrade to the next iOS is indeed annoying, but

> I don't criticize Apple so much for creating new iOS versions that require greater processor power

I think you'd be in the right to criticize this as well, by upgrading to an OS that requires more processing power, you get a lowered battery life and a less responsive phone overall.

Agreed. I understand there is some need for the world to move on at some point, I don't expect my 5 year old computer to run the latest games (although it mostly does). But from apple we now see an annual update, with quite a few apps immediately relinquishing support for a previous version. The problem? You can't install old versions supported for your OS from the app store, even though they work perfectly fine on any device that installed them before the update came around.

That's just painful. I didn't even update to iOS 7 on my phone, my girlfriend did and no joke, she literally sold it 40 days later as she couldn't take how slow it was and got a Nexus 5. So I'm still on iOS 6 (and iOS 7 for my iPad). My phone works great, it's quick, and runs the apps for iOS 6 perfectly. But I've also been locked out of getting lots of apps, so I'll be dumping this phone soon while it works just fine, just so I can use basic apps I didn't happen to download in time at a normal framerate.

I had this experience going to iOS 6 on an iPod. It was so frustrating (as any device with poor responsiveness is) that I decided I'd only upgrade to a new major OS version within the same year the product was released. That's worked really well so far, though it's always annoying that the notifications don't seem to completely go away.

> What really pisses me off is the attitude of app developers to only support the newest version of iOS. I'd upgraded from iOS 6 to 7 simply because I needed HipChat and FourSquare for professional reasons, and both companies had completely dropped support for iOS 6.

I'm baffled that you expect developers to continue developing for outdated OSes, at substantial support and development costs, in exchange for $0-$5.* This is an especially surprising since there's nothing stopping you from continuing to use your working, non-updated version of the app.

Plus, this:

> I don't criticize Apple so much for creating new iOS versions that require greater processor power -- I criticize the app developers which force us to upgrade to OS's our phones can't support.

Directly contradicts your complaint. The reason developers require the newer OS is so that they can support the new APIs Apple has released, without fragmenting their user-base. It's the same rationale as Apple dropping support for older phones, albeit with APIs rather than processors.

*HipChat does actually seem a bit inappropriate in this instance, since it's an SaaS product. Given the amount the user is paying, they really ought to support the last iOS version in addition to the most current.

Remember, Apple considers this attitude among developers a feature.

I had a similar issue, the sarcastic/cynic side of me says that this was Apple's way of making us want to upgrade to a new 6. Fortunately my provider offered 200 bucks for my 4s and sold the 6 for 200, so I did.

You are right though, painful was the best way to describe it. Even plugging in power there was a noticeable pause before the phone would acknowledge it and some applications seemed just moribund.

In the end I am quite pleased with the 6, I do think iOS8 is a step back in some instances but the hardware is able to out power the designers dreams and programmers faults. Now if I can find a case to remove the slipperiness of this new phone

The Apple silicone case is shockingly good, for what it's worth.

My gf updated her 4S to iOS8 and she has the same complaints. Somehow I'm not surprised, it happened to the iPhone 3GS with iOS6 and the iPhone 4 with iOS 7. Conspiracy theorists are all over this :)

If an app you bought in the past doesn't support the latest iOS version, I believe you now have the option of downloading the last version that still supports your current OS.

You do, but only if that app can still communicate with the backend successfully. Often that isn't the case.

This is only true if your _device_ does not support the latest iOS version. i.e. if I have version 1.0 that supported iOS 7, and just released version 2.0 that only supports iOS 8: User on an iPhone 4/iOS 7 will see 1.0 in the App Store. User on an iPhone 4S/iOS 7 will see 2.0, and "you must update to iOS 8" if they try to download it.

Ah, good point.

Yeah, learned this one the hard way :)

The performance on my iPad 3 also deteriorated, after I updated. I don't seem to experience it anymore, so I may support the theory that it's Spotlight re-indexing my device after updating.

Tweetbot crashes like mad, though, but it was designed for iOS 5-6 anyway.

Anyone running iOS8 on a 4S should change some settings:

Settings->General->Accessibility->Increase Contrast Set to On

Settings->General->Accessibility->Reduce Motion Set to On

yes, turning on contrast will remove the translucency which will greatly improve performance.