iOS 6 or the Price of Progress

Just downloaded XCode 4.5 and migrated Streetsoccer to support iOS6 and the new, longer iPhone 5 screen. This was necessary as Apple only allows app submissions built with the latest development environment which as a developer I can totally understand. Supporting old versions is always a source of major headaches. What I cannot really understand is why they dropped support for pre-4.3 devices in XCode 4.5! iOS 5.1 SDK was still able to do it, so why drop it now?

I was totally unaware of this and – of course – only noticed it AFTER updating my system. This rendered two of my test devices (a 1st and 2nd gen iPod Touch) completely obsolete, one of which I had sent someone just recently to do some testing of the Streetsoccer beta builds and who I was planning to send an updated version soon.

So after 5 years, my very first iPod Touch has lost its last reason to stick around. I basically got it the first day it was available in Germany and started programming for it the first day the SDK went public. I distinctly remember a good friend of mine asking why I “did buy this piece of electronic garbage” that has no real use compared to his stylus-based mobile phone. Aaaah, those were the days. Now you almost cannot buy an iPhone because everyone else has one!

Hopefully, my 1st-gen iPad will stick around just a bit longer. They dropped iOS 6 support for it already, so it’s only a question of time until I won’t be able to develop for it I guess…

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