We are currently getting ready to submit an update to our app, but we have been told by our app development company that another one of their customers recently had their app rejected because they were supporting back to iOS 6 in their app. We have an older app user base, and currently support all the way back to iOS 5 (we're planning on moving to iOS 7 & 8 only with our next update), so we're afraid of seeing the same issue. Can anyone confirm whether or not apps are being rejected for supporting any versions older than iOS 7?
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iOS Support for older iOS Versions
- Thread starter Kyle Hunt
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That certainly wasn't the reason. Apple does now demand that your app supports iOS 8 and 64-bit. Also I beleive it needs to built with Xcode 6. Apple uses the term "optimized for iOS 8". That does not exclude your code running on an older version of iOS.
These apps were rejected for other reasons, not because of iOS 6 support.
With the latest official release of Xcode (6.1.1), one can currently build App store submissions with support all the way back to iOS 5.1.1 (for the iPad 1). Building an App store app for iOS 4.3 is not possible because of the current arm64 requirement.
In the list of recently approved updated apps this past week, I see lots of apps with Deployment Targets set to iOS 6.1.
One has to build any support for iOS 6 while using the iOS 8 SDK and including 64-bit support, which is not trivial, and then do a lot of device compatibility testing, which is expensive and time consuming. It requires having some non-updated and 32-bit iOS test devices. So maybe your app development company is lazy or inexperienced with building compatibility for older iOS Deployment targets.
With the latest official release of Xcode (6.1.1), one can currently build App store submissions with support all the way back to iOS 5.1.1 (for the iPad 1). Building an App store app for iOS 4.3 is not possible because of the current arm64 requirement.
In the list of recently approved updated apps this past week, I see lots of apps with Deployment Targets set to iOS 6.1.
One has to build any support for iOS 6 while using the iOS 8 SDK and including 64-bit support, which is not trivial, and then do a lot of device compatibility testing, which is expensive and time consuming. It requires having some non-updated and 32-bit iOS test devices. So maybe your app development company is lazy or inexperienced with building compatibility for older iOS Deployment targets.