Again, a new firmware should not break the compatibility of older apps. Particularly not in a store with over 22 000 items on sale. Complain to Apple, not developers. I underline this because in the long run it's the only way to go forward. With a young app store and still only a few titles to update in case something breaks per each developer, it's annoying but feasible for us to test and fix whatever a firmware update may break, but in the long run this will not be sustainable. The platform holder must be the one to make sure of legacy compatibility.
Dude, you probably paid either $0.99 or nothing for a majority of your apps. On top of that, most of them work perfectly with 3.0. And on top of that, most of the ones that don't, probably already have updates either being approved or in the works. My point is, in the rare case where you have an app that is no longer compatible, is it that big of a deal? I get it that you want to say that if you paid for something, you should be able to keep using it. If it's really that important, keep your outdated app with the outdated OS and be happy. And yes, your apps have shelf life. Just like on any other platform. Xbox 360 doesn't support ALL of the old xbox games. Win7 doesn't support ALL of the old XP apps (unless you pay a ridiculous price). OS X 10.5 doesn't support ALL of your old Mac apps either.
When you purchased an ipod touch, you knew apple was a cheap company. You knew they like to charge wherever they can. You should have expected this. It's ten bucks. Just suck it up, pay it, and move on.
No it's not that big of a deal. Still doesn't mean I have to be thrilled. But your right, no sense getting too worked up over POTENTIAL problems. As you said I am quite happy where am at with 2.2.1 or whatever the last one was EDIT: @robert224- I don't think anyone's arguing here about paying the $10. EDIT#2 @iTodd- Those games may have a shelf life but it's much longer than four months. Try a few years.
You have a point. 4 months is a short time. Which app, if you don't mind me asking? However, most people are buying new iphones/ipods every 2 years (at least). The devices themselves get hardware updates every year. And you're paying pennies for your apps, not $50-$100. One should expect shorter lifetimes for their iphone/ipod apps and adjust what they are willing to spend on them accordingly.
Well the app I was most concerned about, GI joyride ended up working fine with 3.0. I was worried as it has been abandoned by the developer's, and although only .99cents is a wonderful game. It came out about 4 months ago, and will be pulled from the app store, for inability to provide a compatibility check. Seeing as how it works fine, I can't really bitch. You have a point as far as the price=longevity, but I can't help but base it on principal. All in all, it's not like I'll die if I lose an app. However there are some classics out there, that don't exsist on other platforms, and just as I still go back and play the nes, I would love to one day come back and play these. Fat chance, since most are from temporary indie teams, whose future is undetermined.
I can agree with this. It would be nice for Apple to have some sort of compatibility mode (similar to rosetta). But for the time being, it isn't there. I'm sure Apple will be forced into doing something like this when we start seeing major hardware updates and new devices in the next few years. But until then, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask the developer I paid money to to update my apps. It's also in the developer's interest to keep their apps compatible and in the app store. And if they don't, again, it's not the end of the world. I'll just have to move on and get a different app with similar functionality.
"Unreasonable" is a term that's highly subjective. While I fully agree that it's in our best interests to keep our customer base happy, I can't by any means agree that it would be reasonable to expect anything beyond what you get in the first download when you buy a game with the current App Store pricing. I don't mean you should expect your games to stop working or malfunction when you update your firmware, but I'm underlining that the responsibility to keep all apps in a working state is totally with the company that sold the $200 device, not the company that made a $1 app.
I think what would be reasonable is a way to mark an app as 'Do not update' or/and allow you to keep previous versions on the computer. This would seem to be a reasonable step. I keep meaning to see if I can get two versions to show in iTunes as my backup drives have many previous versions of several apps.
Apple needs to get it together, they need to not release updates while they are making a new OS. It seems that everytime they do that something gets neglected. I'm so mad right now 10.5.7. is so annoying with intermittent wireless issues. (white macbook) But for me 3.0 works perfectly. I'm not sure why 3.0 isn't working for you guys.
We paid for these things with OUR money -__-, wifi got worse for some strange reason. It won't even connect that far anymore. Apps are not working (i can understand that), also... Games that were tested for the 3.0 RUN SLOWER... This shouldn't be the dev.'s fault, it's Apple. We purchased the devices. Apple has enough money to do this. They have many products to sell, i'm also really disappointed how we (ipod touch users) pay 10 bucks just for an update that isn't well tested -___-, we had to pay for it. So we deserve the best, or they have to have a better firmware.
I don't think it has anything to do with keeping your customer base happy. Don't you want to keep your app in the store so it continues to sell? And if you have an app that no longer sells, most people probably won't notice when it's gone. And when Apple updates the firmware, they have 40 million devices to worry about. They cannot be concerned with checking to make sure each and every app still works. However, it would be in their best interest to make the transition much easier in the future. I don't mean to sound argumentative, but I'm just having a hard time understanding. I'll admit that I have no experience developing apps. How long does it actually take to make the changes and keep the app 3.0 compatible? If the time it takes isn't worth it to you, then just let the app die. If your app is really great and you have confidence in it, why not just make a new version? You could update it and sell it as 2.0.
EXACTLY, we paid a lot for these things (not all of us are freaken super rich), and we expect something to work well (not perfect). Shure... New Apple devices are coming every 2 years, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't update the older models to make it work well. 2.2.1 was pretty good, but without some things. I don't understand how 3.0 could make apps run slower and wifi run worse unless it's push notification. I turned that off, and I got the SAME results. There's almost every one of those programs in Cydia, copy and paste, bluetooth, spotlight, and more. These apps don't slow down the ipod touch/iphone. Though they do make the battery a little less. It's still better. I didn't know that 3.0 would be worse, but oh well.
If a game is selling, say, 5 copies a day, it's better than nothing, but not something that you'd want to pull an engineer out of another project for. But if you pull it from the store, the existing customer base will go postal. Just look at the reaction ngmoco got for announcing that they'd pull Rolando even temporarily. Somehow the customers feel "cheated" if the game they've paid for is no longer available for download and they'd have to rely on their own backups. The incompatibility issues happen because functionality that worked a certain way for an app in the older firmware is changed to be something different. To maintain compatibility, the functionality of older API calls should remain consistent. Accomplishing that would remove the need for checking each and every app, since for them nothing would change. It's not a singular app I'm talking about. Unless the platform holder guarantees legacy compatibility, the strain from supporting low-sales apps becomes extremely uncomfortable. And being forced to choose interrupting your current development to do legacy support for an app that's not really selling much at all vs. taking the PR storm from the customer base yelling bloody murder for their app being pulled - it's not a good choice either way. There'd again be pitchforks if a trivial update was introduced as 2.0. And supporting the first game would, for example, slow down the development of the sequel.
I can see what you're saying. I think the big problem here is that people expect way too much from their $.99 (or $5.99/$9.99 in the ngmoco situation). EDIT: ngmoco's twitter said that they're "listening." I wonder what that means. UPDATE: Rolando 1 is staying. Topple 1 is coming back.
It should be the developers fault. In a number of cases 3.0 problems will have been down to a developer doing something wrong, but it just happened to work with 2.x, other cases possibly devs using features that we were not supposed to and it slipped through review. Yes there were some changes in 3.0 that broke a few things that were done correct and so needed fixing which you might be able to lay at Apples door, but mostly, it is the developers. Apple are acting as a middle man, it is the developers who should, and do have to support their own applications.
Same thing with buggy software on any platform, nothing happens you are stuck with something that doesn't work, no entitlement to a refund, you bought an app that said it was compatible with the previous firmware, and sold as such, not 100% compatible with all future firmware.
No problems with PS3, but Windows service packs have caused plenty of problems. The platform holder can do nothing about apps that are making incorrect assumptions about behaviour, or are doing something they are not supposed to. Apps which do this sort of thing are always at risk of breaking, and it is the developers problem. Now they shouldn't remove things from the firmware that will cause apps not to work, but that just isn't the case here, nothing has disappeared. (or if it has it was already flagged as being deprecated and that it shouldn't have been used)
