[abazigal]

I am on the iOS 9 public beta, and Overcast has been slightly buggy (works for most part, but tapping on the exclamation mark to bring up the podcast summary does nothing).

Today, Overcast just got updated and this issue has been fixed. Overcast now runs on my iOS 9 devices perfectly. And I presume they run every bit as well on iOS 8 as well.

Which got me thinking. Conventional wisdom so far has been that if any apps break due to people trying out a public beta, it's just their luck and developers can't do anything until the public version of iOS 9 ships. All along, that is what we have been led to believe. iMore especially takes great pains to remind users not to post negative reviews of apps just because they malfunction on beta software. Which is fair.

But today, Marco Arment has shown that it is possible to update an app to be compatible with a version of iOS that isn't yet publicly available. I don't know what is the effort involved, but in the very least, it's not the insurmountable task we have been led to believe all along.

Which then begs the question - just how much of this is true? How much of app incompatibilities remain because developers don't want to patch them (yet) for whatever reason remains their own, vs being unable to patch them? I am not saying they are lazy, but in the very least, this argument doesn't seem to hold water any more, does it?

[HankAZ]

Today, Overcast just got updated and this issue has been fixed. Overcast now runs on my iOS 9 devices perfectly. And I presume they run every bit as well on iOS 8 as well.

Which got me thinking. Conventional wisdom so far has been that if any apps break due to people trying out a public beta, it's just their luck and developers can't do anything until the public version of iOS 9 ships. All along, that is what we have been led to believe. iMore especially takes great pains to remind users not to post negative reviews of apps just because they malfunction on beta software. Which is fair.

Which then begs the question - just how much of this is true? How much of app incompatibilities remain because developers don't want to patch them (yet) for whatever reason remains their own, vs being unable to patch them? I am not saying they are lazy, but in the very least, this argument doesn't seem to hold water any more, does it?

The rules are quite simple. With the release of the first developer beta of an iOS release comes a new SDK. That SDK includes new calls, etc that allow the developers to take advantage of the new functionality within the version of iOS. Apple will reject in hand any app updates that take advantage of (i.e., use) the new SDK. Perhaps this is where the "developers can't do anything until..." comments come from.

However, in addition to new functionality within the iOS beta (via the SDK updates/changes), Apple will often modify the way some internals are handled. When these occur, it tend to break the app under the new version if iOS. Developers are able to rework their code to use the new internals so long as they do not use the new SDK for their app.

It's really a simple process and a straight-forward set of rules for developers and their apps during the beta "season". It pretty much boils down to this: If the changes and fixes require the new SDK, then it cannot be "fixed". If it does not, fixes are permitted.

[muchospanish]

Did you read the description Marco added for the update? "Fixed bugs from the future."

[Tartarus]

Did you read the description Marco added for the update? "Fixed bugs from the future."

Even if Marco fixed bugs from the future, he is bound to use the SDK of iOS 8. Apple will simply reject any update including iOS 9 SDK.

This answer should be a hard fact.

No matter what Marco said, the final say is in Apple's hands

[Scatabrain]

Even if Marco fixed bugs from the future, he is bound to use the SDK of iOS 8. Apple will simply reject any update including iOS 9 SDK.

This answer should be a hard fact.

No matter what Marco said, the final say is in Apple's hands

And Marco can test those 8 friendly fixes against 9 and can tell if the fix indeed will also be good for the future.