64-bit and iOS 8 Requirements for New Apps

64-bit and iOS 8 Requirements for New Apps(developer.apple.com)

66 points by derpenxyne 11 years ago | 31 comments

verelo 11 years ago |

64 bit is already a requirement, right? We submitted an update a few weeks back and it wouldn't pass verification without us adding 64 bit support (which took a few days of work - it added a few issues but nothing major, they were just tricky to track down)

We're working on moving over to the iOS 8 SDK already. What a massive pain in the backside that is proving to be.

apike 11 years ago | |

We also hit this - it was a bug, and was fixed within a couple days. They are now rolling this out intentionally on Feb 1.

This is a challenge for us because we use a large 3rd party library (WebRTC) that has a bunch of armv7 assembly in it, but Feb 1 should be enough time to get it sorted.

verelo 11 years ago | | |

Ah nice, now that is frustrating. We just ended up fixing it, where did you find it was a bug? I find the communication between Apple and the general developer community is pretty difficult to come by (even after millions of installs of our app)

jibberia 11 years ago |

Ah, it finally happened. My company has a legacy-ish SDK that all our products are built on, and because of bad decisions in the past (like extensive use of C macros) it essentially cannot be ported to 64-bit. Luckily we're already building the replacement, but this is going to accelerate the requirement of having to migrate data from the old system to the new one.

mackey 11 years ago | |

At least it sounds like this only applies to new apps, not apps updates for apps that are already published. It would be great to get clarification on that though.

jibberia 11 years ago | | |

Yes -- the language is ambiguous.

fineline 11 years ago | |

Is there some problem with macros in the new SDK? Or is it that your macros are specific about word size?

jibberia 11 years ago | | |

The latter.

tiffanyricks 11 years ago |

This makes sense to me and easier to maintain the code. I won't have to support older versions. And my app can take advantage of the 64bit architecture.

bradleyland 11 years ago | |

I'm not sure why you'd say that. There's a lot of misinterpretation going on here. Read the text carefully (emphasis mine):

> new iOS apps uploaded to the App Store must include 64-bit support and be built with the iOS 8 SDK

You must include support for these items. There is no suggestion or requirement that a developer not support iOS7 (or iOS 6 for that matter).

This also only affects new apps. So basically:

* This only applies to new apps [1].

* This only requires that new apps include support for iOS 8 [2] and 64-bit.

* Developers can still support older versions of iOS.

That's just the basic breakdown of Apple's expectations. Your customers might still demand support for older iOS versions, so this isn't much of a change as far as legacy support goes.

1: I suppose it is open to interpretation whether "new iOS apps uploaded to the App Store" includes updated versions of older apps. It doesn't sound like that to me though.

2: Just because you use the iOS 8 SDK doesn't mean you can't/don't support earlier iOS versions. Quite the opposite actually, as iOS SDKs have specific provisions for supporting older versions (note, I'm not an iOS dev, but this is what I hear).

0x0 11 years ago | | |

Building with a new SDK makes the app opt in to new behaviors even when targeting older iOS versions. This can be quite a hassle. Your perfectly working app - even when deployed on an iOS 8 device - will suddenly break in many fun ways merely from recompiling with a newer SDK: touch handling differs, margins may be weird, table headers vanish because various new methods aren't implemented, screen rotation suddenly gets enabled where you didn't expect, new keyboard metrics mess up your layout, etcetc. This happens because when the runtime detects that an app is built with an older SDK, it enables a bunch of compability behaviors that newly built apps cannot opt in to.

wvenable 11 years ago |

Does this mean no new iOS apps for those people who choose not to upgrade to iOS 8?

dozy 11 years ago | |

No - it just means new iOS apps must support 64-bit and be built with Xcode 6. Those same binaries/archives can also support 32-bit and older OS versions.

Similarly, today, you must build your app using at least the iOS 7 SDK and xcode 5, but that does not prevent you from supporting iOS 6 as well.

wvenable 11 years ago | | |

Thanks for the reply. I'm not that familiar with iOS development but have a jailbroken iPhone on iOS 7.

pretz 11 years ago | |

iOS 8 apps can still be built to support iOS 7

megablast 11 years ago | | |

Xcode 6 lets you suppot iOS 5.1.1 without too much difficulty.

reverend_gonzo 11 years ago | |

Did you read the link?

New apps must include 64-bit support. That's it. It says nothing about not allow backwards compatibility as well.

wvenable 11 years ago | | |

I read the link, I was focusing on the "built with the iOS 8 SDK" part. I'm asking the question whether or not building with the iOS 8 SDK would preclude that code from running on iOS 7 or is that only if that code uses iOS 8 features.

I'm not sure why this is news otherwise.

joesmo 11 years ago | | |

They must be built with the iOS 8 SDK so unless that runs on previous versions of iOS, then new apps for previous iOS versions will not be supported.