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Apple says all new iPhone apps must support iOS 11 SDK, iPhone X display as of April

Starting in April, developers submitting new titles to the iOS App Store will have no choice but to use the iOS 11 SDK — and if they're supporting the iPhone, offer iPhone X display compatibility.

That includes Super Retina resolution, and interface accommodations for the notch, Apple said in an email to developers on Thursday. When publishing through iTunes Connect, apps will require iPhone X screenshots, even if they're just produced through Xcode's iPhone X simulator.

Apple has yet to set an equivalent deadline for app updates.

Today's notice is likely a signal that that Apple considers the iPhone X the new template for the iPhone moving forward. The company is expected to ship three new iPhones this fall, including 5.8- and 6.5-inch OLED models and a 6.1-inch LCD variant. All of these may include some sort of display notch, since they're expected to offer Face ID across the board.



14 Comments

wood1208 10 Years · 2938 comments

Paves path fro Apps to support iPhone X style 3 iPhones in September.

bobolicious 10 Years · 1177 comments

I am tempted to procure an older iPhone due to all the apps I can no longer use with Apple's 'one way ticket' to iOS11 and lack of restore point option in the name of supposed progress, and frog boiling... Can we blame developers for not wanting to upgrade apps, especially the free ones ?

mavemufc 8 Years · 326 comments

Need them to do the same with the app updates as well, think it’s crazy that I’ve had the X for more than 3 months now and still have 15/20 apps which haven’t been updated to the screen size! It’s also very annoying.

seanismorris 8 Years · 1624 comments

mavemufc said:
Need them to do the same with the app updates as well, think it’s crazy that I’ve had the X for more than 3 months now and still have 15/20 apps which haven’t been updated to the screen size! It’s also very annoying.

Is that 15 of 20 apps that haven’t updated screen size?

Or, 15 to 20 apps?  Big difference if you have 50 apps installed in the 2nd scenario...

StrangeDays 8 Years · 12986 comments

I am tempted to procure an older iPhone due to all the apps I can no longer use with Apple's 'one way ticket' to iOS11 and lack of restore point option in the name of supposed progress, and frog boiling... Can we blame developers for not wanting to upgrade apps, especially the free ones ?

Sure we can. Paid ones, too. I have several that are too lazy to do it. At least some because they foolishly outsourced app development to off-shore teams that use cross-platform SDKs and APIs rather than the native iOS SDK. They realize their apps don't scale to new screen resolutions, can't use iOS hardware features, etc, so then they sit on them for months or years.

It wasn't that long ago that apps still didn't support the 6 series resolutions natively, instead relying on iOS scaling.