(Slowly) Say Goodbye to iOS 3
We just had to decide to drop support for iOS3 in iPeng (for iPhone) with one of the next releases.
Why?
First, you have to move on someday, it’s getting harder and harder with every release to include capabilities of the new platforms and at the same time stay compatible with the old ones. Second, obviously with Apple’s current SDK development (debug) builds in some cases behave differently than distribution builds like they are being released on the App Store. With the 1.4.2 release (iPeng for iPhone) we have an issue that didn’t show up at all during testing and we can reproduce that it only shows up when doing distribution builds which makes it very, very hard to identify let alone fix issues.
Add to that that managing, installing and testing distribution builds under iOS 3 is much harder than under iOS 4 and newer which means we have practically no beta tester support for testing under iOS 3 anymore – nobody found this particular issue, for example, even though beta builds were affected, too.
Under these circumstances we have decided we find it too risky and way too much effort to continue support for these old platforms.
When?
There will be one additional bugfix release for iOS 3, though. So if you see some errors that need addressing, please report them as soon as possible so that we can make sure they are part of that release.
Please report issues to coolio att penguinlovesmusic dott com or use the bug tracker here https://trac.penguinlovesmusic.de/trac/ipengnat/
What Is iOS and Am I Affected?
iOS is the operating system on your iPod or iPhone. If you bought it two years ago, then at that time iOS 3 would have been the version it came with.
If you always did the software updates since then whenever iTunes asked you to, you are probably currently on iOS 4.1.2 or even iOS 5 (if you do already have an iPhone 3GS or newer or a 3rd or 4th generation iPod touch, that is if it has 32 or 64 GB of flash memory or a Retina Display).
You can find out about the operating system version on your device under “Settings->General->Info”, there’s a “Version” field, this is the iOS version.
The following users are affected:
- All users of the 1st generation iPhone (the one with the aluminum back side) and the 1st generation iPod touch (the one without hardware volume keys).
- Users of 2nd generation and 3rd generation devices (iPod Touch 2nd and 3rd generation, iPhone 3G and 3GS) who for some reason or other chose NOT to upgrade their devices to a newer operating system/firmware release. I believe this will especially apply to users of 2nd generation iPod touch devices and iPhone 3G (not 3GS) who found iOS 4.1 to be too slow.
Other devices are not affected.
What Does the Discontinuing of iPeng’s Support for Devices Mean?
For devices listed under 1. and 2., that is.
- You will no longer receive updates for iPeng after the next release (or a possible, unplanned, “really final” bugfix release).
- You can no longer purchase iPeng on the App Store
- If your device is one of the devices mentioned under point 2. above, you can continue to get iPeng updates by updating your device to the latest firmware version using iTunes.
Friday October 21st, 2011 at 03:48 AM
Hi,
I especially bought your product for it’s support of OS 3.X…
The reason why I keep using OS 3.1.3 on my Iphone 3g is that it is the last OS version that runs smooth on the Iphone 3g!!! If you have an Iphone 3g iOS 4.X really isn’t a choice at all since it is WAY to heavy a system to run on that old a phone as the 3g is… (I know more people with the 3g who use OS 3.1.3…).
Friday October 21st, 2011 at 09:51 AM
Thomas, I fully understand your point. Actually, I’m using iOS 3.1.3 on my iPhone 3G as well and I own two device (1st Generation iPod touch) for which an update to iOS 4 is not even available.
However, iPeng should currently work fine with iOS 3 and should continue to do so unless there are big changed to the Logitech server software. We have the next, upcoming major release already covered, if there should be last-minute changes in there which break something, we’ll make another iOS 3 release, of course.
However, I really don’t see a chance to further support iOS 3 with the next major iPeng releases. Apple has moved on by two more generations of iOS and there are changes in the underlying programming model that you simply have to use to support iOS 4 and 5 well and that are not backwards compatible, this was already before making it really hard to develop for both versions.
Now with the new issues showing up when using the iOS 5 SDK we are in a situation where we simply can’t guarantee any quality for iOS 3 builds. Since there are many more people using the new iOS 4 and 5 than the old iOS 3 versions, we just can’t put back support for these versions in favor of iOS 3 support.
The underlying problem here is that the App Store doesn’t support providing different versions of an App for different iOS versions so that we could move on with the main branch but still support the existing iOS 3 compatible version with new builds.
What is really important is that I learn about any serious issues that are still in iPeng right now with iOS 3 if there are any so that I can at least make sure that the last iOS 3 version available is a really stable one.
Wednesday November 2nd, 2011 at 12:23 AM
Hello,
I’m runnng IOS 3.1.3 on my first generation itouch. Will the lastest upgrade to 1.4.3 work on my device? Is this the final bug fix release for IOS 3? It’s a fine app. It works great. Thank you for your support. Do you have any apps for the blackberry.
CAB
Wednesday November 2nd, 2011 at 12:59 AM
1. Yes, it will run on your device. All the updates that you can install should also run on the device. There is one known error, though, which is that you will not be able to set an alarm time.
2. No, this will not be the last update for your device, there will be at least one more which will fix the alarm time issue mentioned above.
3. Sorry, no App for the Blackberry.