为什么要将我的应用升级到iOS 5？

Question

I understand that iOS 5 is the latest (and the greatest) version of the Apple Mobile OS. I also know that it contains ARC, OpenGL ES Debugger yada yada yada...

I have already developed some in-house apps at my company and they all work perfectly fine. But as a developer, should I really bother upgrading all my apps to be iOS-5 compatible? If so, why?

Answer 1

"Upgrading" doesn't really apply to apps, only the OS. If your app already runs fine on iOS 5 (ie is "compatible"), which it might well be, there's no reason to change it.

If it's not currently "compatible", implying that you've tested it and something in the app is broken when run on iOS 5, then you would consider fixing or working around those issues so that your users on iOS 5 can use your app.

If these apps are ones that you're continuing to develop, you'd consider whether using the new technologies (ARC, new frameworks, etc) is worth the trouble of doing so and/or dropping support for older devices. That's a tradeoff only you can make relative to your apps and your business needs.

Answer 2

Considering that majority of crash related problems are due to memory allocation/deallocation/reference errors, it might be helpful to port the code over to use ARC. Of course the time/cost will need to be determined to see if it's worth it.

Answer 3

Do a cost benefit analysis.

Would an update building with the iOS 5 SDK benefit your customers by fixing existing or probable bugs, adding iOS 5 features, or providing other opportunities to just make a better product? Would an update provide you or your company with an additional marketing opportunity? At what cost in development, test and QA time?

Perhaps it would be a long term advantage in helping keep your development skills more up to date on the new APIs and tools (such as ARC).

But there's also an adage: If it ain't broken, don't "fix" it.