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My PM wants me to include support for older iOS versions before going to appstore

I'm trying to figure out how to build for older versions below 3.2 but I'm un able to do so because MPMoviePlayerViewController isn't compatible?

Should I just remove all 3.2+ code and use MPMoviePlayerController instead to dodge the issue? Or just expect all lagging users to catch up and update their phones?

kennytm
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David van Dugteren
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  • The answers to this question might be relevant here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3088624/support-legacy-iphone-users – Brad Larson Aug 10 '10 at 14:07
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    Does Apple publish this data anywhere?? Wish they would, as it would make all our lives soo much easier. Not only do we have to consider respondsToSelector code as discussed below, but doing testing on older Simulators or iPhones is time consuming and difficult (especially since new XCode does not include old simulators). – Fraggle Dec 02 '10 at 21:56

4 Answers4

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There are still a significant number of 3.1.3 devices around.

The iphone 2G and original ipod touches can't be upgraded.

Many of the iphone 3G models that were sold are still within their initial contract term, preventing users upgrading to newer devices at a reasonable cost, and users are reluctant to upgrade their 3G devices to iOS4 because of the performance drop:

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/07/28/apple-looking-into-poor-ios-4-performance-on-iphone-3g/

I'm experiencing similar issues; working around bugs in 3.1.3 that are fixed in 3.2 and 4 is really slowing me down, but I just can't exclude 3.1 devices.

Update

I found a very useful graph here:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/22/chitika_ios_4_already_powering_50_of_iphone_traffic.html

It's based on analysis of data from in-app ads, so is no doubt statistically skewed in many ways, but none the less still makes interesting reading.

JosephH
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  • Thanks, just what I thought I'd hear, but I needed to confirm that there wasn't anything I needed to be filled in about. Yea It's not a major pain, I have to use MPMoviePlayerController instead, I think I can probably have it working in an hour worth of google-copy-paste-replacing of the existing code. It's just a little bit less elegant than MoviePlayerViewController which has lots of handy features that you can take for granted. – David van Dugteren Aug 10 '10 at 11:59
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Is MPMoviePlayerViewController an integral part of your app? I'm assuming not or you wouldn't have posted the question - but sometimes it's best to ask the obvious questions first ;-)

If it is integral then you'll have to target the minimum OS it is available in (I'll trust you that it's 3.2 - I don't remember OTTOMH).

Another alternative is to rewrite so it doesn't use MPMoviePlayerViewController, but some earlier API instead. I don't know how feasable that is.

But if it's a nice-to-have, but you want it if its available, you can use weak-linking to achieve this.

Community
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philsquared
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  • Well yea the previous versions used MPMoviePlayerController instead, so I'm now testing the new replacement code before copying and pasting it throughout my app! Good times! :D – David van Dugteren Aug 10 '10 at 12:01
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Some links:

http://surgeworksmobile.com/iphone/iphone-os-30-adoption-rates-how-many-iphone-and-ipod-touch-users-are-upgrading

During the WWDC keynote, Apple stated that more then 40 million iPhone OS devices are around, which obviously includes the iPhone and iPod touch. Of those 40+ million devices, according to Apple’s announcement dated June 22, six million had the new OS installed within the first week after its release. That is about a 15 percent iPhone OS 3.0 adoption rate in one week.

Tom Gullen
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  • This is situation differs from that. In this case not all devices running the previous software can be upgraded while in that case all iDevices were able to upgrade. – cutsoy Aug 10 '10 at 11:14
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Well, since the iPhone 2G and iPod Touch 1g cannot run OS 4, I think about at least 10% or something.

cutsoy
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