CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosswiftbackwards-compatibility
Thiha Aung
Thiha Aung

Reputation: 5096

Swift App iOS Compatible check?

I am now using Swift code for my whole project.And I need to know some backward compatibility.

All 3rd party libraries that I used are iOS 8.0 and above.And some swift class(eg.UIAlertController,etc.) show me that it support iOS 8.0 or later which seem all swift project are recommended for iOS 8.0 or later.Not for iOS 7.0.

So,any suggestion or should I set my minimum requirement to iOS 8.0 or later for my Swift App.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 200

Answers (2)

Batuhan C.
Batuhan C.

Reputation: 380

As a mobile developer company, we advise our clients to develop their apps to support the platform versions that most devices run at that time. For example, at the time of writing this answer, this is iOS 8+ for iOS (and maybe soon iOS 9) and ICS+ for Android. You may be missing a lot of new features and facing lots of additional problems to try to support an outdated OS for very few users.

Especially for an OS like iOS that mostly forces regular users to update to the latest OS, this decision is even easier.

If you have a very specific reason to support iOS 7; according to this Apple Dev Blog, Swift applications can run on iOS 7. In Swift 2, you can insert checks to relevant parts of your code to "do this if iOS 8+, do that if older". 

if #available(iOS 8) {
    // use library that supports iOS 8 and later
} else {
    // do the same thing in iOS 7 way or show sad face to the user
}

Upvotes: 1

Carlos
Carlos

Reputation: 6021

Note I'm writing in Feb 2016. iOS 9 came out in Sep 2015.

I'm doing a project where 8.3 is the minimum. If you look at this chart, it shows most people have gone to iOS 9 already when it came out in September.

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/ios-9-adoption-rate-hits-50-in-less-than-a-week-fastest-ever

So I'm guessing that 8% of people on 7 or lower has pretty much vanished now.

Summa summarum: you're safe to put 8 as the minimum.

Upvotes: 1

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