is there a way to have an app run and display as ios 6 on a iphone with iOS 7?

Question

I've just about finished an app that looks fine in iOS 6 but terrible in iOS 7.

Specifically i had used a lot of table views where the cells don't stretch all the way across the screen - as they now do by default in iOS 7. I have used background colour to convey certain information . Under iOS 7 this means that i get coloured headers and footer broken up by white tableview section and this looks terrible

I'm aware that by the time in i get it into the store iOS 7 will be out and maybe i should just rewrite the bits that made it look good on one but rubbish on the other.

What i need to know though is this

Is it possible to tell a iPhone running iOS 7 to run and display the app if the version of iOS 6 was running ? And if so how ?

Answer 1

If you build against the ios 6 SDK it'll drop back down to ios 6 style components, so you need either a copy of XCode 4.6 or copy the ios 6.1 sdk into Xcode 5. Obviously you cannot use any ios 7 API features at that point, and you may have headaches elsewhere.

Theres a flow chart here that shows how it'll build.

Answer 2

i'm afraid it's not possible, you should take some time to port your app to iOS 7 if you want to support the new platform too. take a look at the iOS 7 transition guide. https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/TransitionGuide/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40013174-CH6-SW1

you can make 2 different layouts , one for iOS 6 and one for iOS 7, but if you want your app running on iOS 7 devices you need to add a new layout. https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/TransitionGuide/SupportingEarlieriOS.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40013174-CH14-SW1

Answer 3

You can. However it is a pretty bad way to do it.

The only option would be to develop your app with the old SDK. This means, that you are essentially developing for iOS 6.0 and you cannot use any of the new functionality.

This will cause the device to run the app in a type of compatibility mode and use the old UI.

However I am unsure, how long you'll be allowed to upload from older XCode versions to the App Store.

So really, your best option is to redesign it for iOS7.