Some apps look broken or are actually broken on iOS14.

But it's not necessarily because they use the old SDK that they are broken. And there have been betas available for some time

There are changes between each beta. There are also changes between the beta and GM.

Sure, but do those changes actually cause any apps compiled with the iOS 13 SDK to look or behave significantly differently on the beta vs the GM?

Betas being available doesn’t solve the problem because you can’t submit updates compiled using beta versions.

Right, but the point is you can use the beta to validate that your app, compiled with the old SDK, still functions normally on the new OS

I’m starting to see a pattern where it’s always the same apps that are broken on each major release. I suspect the developers of those apps are simply incompetent.

We only got the GM last night? how can anyone 100% know for sure their app is not going to break in some unexpected way between then and now? Thats the point of the grace period and the whole article / discussion here.

I’m talking about apps that have been broken since the first betas.

Those aren't the ones we're discussing here.

Perhaps, but updating their apps on a dime is simply unreasonable regardless.

Or they're always on the bleeding edge using the latest features.

But who will suffer from poor app ratings and support requests if something doesn't work correctly? Not Apple.

Some apps (Pokemon Go) just crash on launch on 14 without updates.

This isn't an sdk issue, it's a purposeful decision by Niantic to not support beta OSes to avoid potential exploits. Fwiw it finally works now with the 14 GM that went out :)

It didn't work with the GM, they pushed a Pogo release today which addressed compatibility.

Surely the developers had the 3 month beta period to identify these issues, and ship fixes, right? As far as I understand it, it's possible to ship fixes for a new iOS version before that iOS version actually launches, and indeed that's the idea of the beta period.

> it's possible to ship fixes for a new iOS version before that iOS version actually launches

No it isn't. Apple doesn't permit code linking against the latest SDK to be submitted until the SDK goes "GM". That happened today.

To expand on this, if your app is "broken" because of changes made that require new OS features in order to "fix" them (such as the new limited permissions for photos, contacts, and location), you were completely unable to issue a new update to fix them until the end of the event. That gives you ≈24 hours to get the new GM, create a build (including setting up your CI system with the new GM, if applicable), make sure no new bugs have been introduced, submit to and get approved by App Review, and launch the update. If you couldn't get all that done in that time, you're probably going to have at least a few negative app reviews from early adopters.

And even then, who is to say that users are going to instantaneously download your update before/during their upgrade to iOS 14 (even if they have automatic app upgrades turned on, which they might not).

Being able to point your users to an update to fix their problems when they come to you for support, or when they go to write an angry review that their app is crashing but they see “iOS 14 support” at the top of the app’s page, is likely to help there. Especially since the earliest adopters are frequently technically competent enough to do that but also frequently demanding enough that their apps work on day one.

So, maybe you can get to it in a couple of days. Fix what you can using the old SDK before GM build becomes available. Then you have a small amount of updates once apps using the new SDK can be submitted. The app will be temporarily broken for a few days on a brand new OS until the update goes live. Is that really a big deal? The world doesn't come to an end if you get a few bad reviews from impatient users. I remember being in the mobile app development rat race and am so glad I left that world behind. Too much daily panic about things that really don't matter much.

Ok, but surely you can understand why people would be upset with Apple for doing this when they had no reason to do so?

The new location precision user auth seems to have been done in a backwards compatible way, at least in my testing:

- app with existing location permission in iOS 13 gets precise location.

- when the user prompt appears, it looks like precise location is the default in the UI.

(This is with an app build against iOS 13 SDK -- not sure yet if the iOS 14 SDK changes things.)

I think Apple will likely change this in the future, but right now devs are getting the time they need to adjust.

(As is, this new permission does almost nothing since 99% users will accept the defaults. I think they'll probably require more explicit action on the user's part to get precise location in the future.)

That isn't strictly true, several apps have launched their iOS14 ready versions ahead of the public release. All they can't do is use new SDK features.

You can't link against the new SDK, but you can link against an old SDK, but fix the bugs which are associated with iOS 14.

~All of the bugs I've ever seen on a new iOS release are just where they've tightened up some behaviour.

You say "tightened up" and perhaps that's what they meant internally, but as it stands my (simple) app's behavior when using the search bar is different and broken on the new update even though I'm using the API in a supported way. So it's really a bug.

I have applications and games from the 90s that still work in Windows 10. The idea that developers have have to constantly push updates is unproductive in my opinion.

A ton of software from that era stopped working when XP was released. For instance storing settings in an application's installation folder was common until Microsoft stopped it. Anything that ran as a service but interacted with the desktop was out of luck. This idea that everything from that period continues to run is a myth.

I never said everything. But a lot of the software still works. Some work with minor workarounds. Of course some programs will break with an update. But in my opinion creating a culture where an update is expected for software that is a couple of months old at best is really unhealthy.

no? all these things are just a couple configuration away from working.

the real things that were dropped since then were 32 bit protected mode apps, and for such you have plenty options for both virtualizing and paravirtualizing.

I can boot basically any other version of Windows under my windows system using Microsoft provided software.

I can even just go boot up older version of Windows on current hardware if needed be, up to a point.

almost everything from eighties to today I am able to run one way another, nothing "stopped" working.

Apple physically removes old software from their delivery platform or signing servers and if you lose your devices it's lost forever

how does it even compare?

That's a decision made by Microsoft which has pros and cons. There's significant overhead in maintaining this backwards compatibility. For an OS used by corporations all over the world, its worth it. For a mobile OS it will likely reduce their ability to deliver changes.

Apple used to give a shit there. They did a bunch of extra work so you could run OS9 apps under OSX for a few years, and they did an amazing job of making 68000 code run on PowerPC...

Wait until you see Rosetta.

I agree, I think a lot of what holds Windows back is the baggage from the past. Ideally OSes would live somewhere in a healthy middle, where we can’t expect 10 year old software to run on the current version of an OS. On the other hand we should expect 1 month old software to run on after an OS update.

Until you read Raymond Chen’s blog about all of the hacks that have been built up for the sake of backwards compatibility or try to run Windows on a low resource computer like the low end Surface computers and can’t because of code bloat.

The new OS version is a moving target, and it only really settles down with the final release candidate - which can still be changing a couple of weeks before the actual release.

So yes, it's possible to write to the beta, but no, it's not possible to guarantee there will be no last minute breaking changes.

I have been developing an app using the new SwiftUI 2.0 for iOS 14 during this beta. My builds have been breaking constantly between beta seeds, due to symbol name changes etc. And Apple have never allowed you to upload a binary linked with a pre GM SDK for release.

But they only released the XCode GM today.

Pokemon Go released a fix today and it's already working ahead of iOS 14 being made generally available.

A ton of apps released updates today, I feel like these are the companies that are more tight with Apple, getting their app updates in quickly.

IOS 14 for developers was available for a long time. Also this is a norm with all SDKs, engines, tools etc - new versions always have new bugs that will be fixed in updates.

Especially considering that only a small percent usually updates to new version of OS in first few days.

Uptake is very rapid, and new bugs can show up between a beta and a GM release of iOS. It's not enough baking time to test against a GM version of iOS and successfully submit an update to the app store that is accepted and reviewed that is the issue here.

Imagine if your app crashes on launch with iOS 14 GM and does not on the latest beta, your business has been materially effected as a result.

If you’re not seeing how, one sentence: angry users leave reviews.

I am already hearing screams of "This worked under iOS14beta6 from last week!!! Now it crashes on launch!!!"

(From firends/contacts, none of the apps I have to deal with, at least not so far...)

I agree, but the amount of apps that crashes is not that big. Also, this is only for a few days, until the developer fixes it.

Sure it would be nice to have a few days of extra preparation. But the post is obviously a result of pure frustration by developer and is exaggerated.

If you call everyone assholes because of such things then all software industry are assholes.

A quick googeling only showed data for iOS 10 but I would belive that the ballbark is the same. https://www.zdnet.com/article/ios-10-adoption-nears-15-after...

So 15% on the first day, with 1.5 billion active iOS devices. Thats a pretty high number of potential unsattisfied user experience.

If previous years are any indication, approximately 30% of users will update on the first day.

What Jamil7 commented..

I stopped/dropped my iOS dev efforts. I had an app on Apple Store, and eventually pulled it because of the constant updates demanded by Xcode. Yes things were still working, but unless someone is willing to dedicate 'many' days every 3-6-9-12 months to catch-up on new requirements, it's just not worth it. For someone who does dev for a living, it's game on, for others who may want this as a side hustle, it can be overwhelming (keeping up with Apple). I don't blame them, this cat&mouse just didn't work for me. It could as well work just fine for the other part-time/hobby devs.

What constant updates demanded?

I recently pulled it but I had a ios app since 2010, nothing advanced and was only updated every couple of years.

There was only twice I had to do a update because of iOS updates. Once a crashing bug and once to look nice on large screen devices.

You are "lucky" that your code was not affected/impacted from the changes throughout the decade. I have written my first app in the winter of 2017, and because of the functionality/libraries/code I used, every update has been a pain in the butt. Not impossible, but I did it as a hobby, not as a profession/income.

I understand the need to progress and develop/create/evolve the programming languages, techniques, environments, it's just not fit for a hobby (in my case)(YMMV).

What has forced you to update? iOS has not changed how core APIs work in a decade.

Same here, iOS was never my main thing, but I did write a couple of apps for it. I can't remember the specifics, but it seems way too common for them to change an API that ought to be already settled, for lack of a better term.

This just means that every time they change something, the devs have to rebuild, with an unknown amount of time spent. It might be as easy as just changing a couple of lines, or they changed the API so much you have to rethink your code.

And this is for apps that aren't using anything new, it's the old APIs that are changing under them.

I have Apps from 2013 and 2014 that have never needed updates. What has forced you to do them?