ios - what should I be careful of when switching from ios 6.0 to 5.0 for my apps?

Question

I for some reason, not sure why, originally released an app with Deployment target as 6.0 but really what I wanted was for everyone to be able to use the app so I really needed to choose 5.1 or 5.0

I am thinking to change the deployment target to 5.0 but I am not sure what the consequences are for changing back. It is a business app that uses storyboards.

Advice is much appreciated Thanks, Alex

Answer 1

No simple answer can be given. You just have to test like crazy. Personally, I think if you've written the app for iOS 6, trying to make it backwards compatible to iOS 5 is a lost cause. But try it if you must... Here are some of the chief points:

• The handling of view controller rotation/orientation is totally different. iOS 6 uses the Info.plist settings along with supportedInterfaceOrientations. iOS 5, uh, doesn't. It uses totally different rules for determining rotation.

• As you've been told, if iOS 5 even loads a storyboard or nib that has autolayout turned on, kaboom.

• Text drawing is quite different between the two systems; the very same text can end up being drawn differently. And of course the NSAttributedString stuff is new in iOS 6.

• UILabel sizeToFit behaves differently between the two.

• iOS 6 requires a bunch of permissions to access various user libraries; iOS 5 doesn't.

• There is a difference in how a gesture recognizer interacts with a subview of its view.

Answer 2

One big problem i've faced when switching back my app to iOS 5 was the "Use auto Layout" setting which is only supported on iOS 6, you'll have to re-check your whole storyboard views and uncheck it under "File Inspector". Of course disabling it would mean that you need to re-manage all your view Controllers manually writing some lines of code. Other than that, nothing really special to mention .