如何在我的应用中决定支持最旧的iOS版本？

Question

How can I decide the oldest iOS version to support in my app?

Are there any kind of usage / installation statistics to make this decision easier?

Answer 1

Not officially, but a few of the big developers release statistics on their blogs. Instapaper is a good example. I'm sure there are more if you google around, but for me, its once a version hits 5% or less users, its ok to scrap support for it. (I recently stopped supporting iOS 3.x).

You could also check in your app and send it to a server or something to log and check your own statistics.

Answer 2

A tip from the other perspective. A lot of new features were introduced in iOS 3.2, even a lot of stuff that's not whiz-bang, but you might want to make use of, like gesture recognizers. You're probably likely to accidentally use a few minor features that didn't exist prior to 3.2 when coding, and then when you test on an old device you'll discover you need to rewrite that code. So I would say target at least 3.2.

Answer 3

Some developers are constrained by the oldest OS for which they want to keep a running and non-updated iOS test device. You should not set the Deployment target lower than the lowest OS on which you plan on doing actual device testing.

Note that you should not use raw OS user base statistics, as users of devices running older OS versions seem to be far less likely to buy or download new apps than those users who buy new devices and/or update to the latest iOS version.