Apple is showing some love for owners of older iOS devices, as new compatibility features in the App Store will now offer a previous version of an app if the current one isn’t compatible with the firmware on your device.
Instead, the company now asks if you’d like to install the last compatible version, which, for some apps, can be over a year old. We’ve successfully installed an older version of Instagram to an iPhone 3GS with iOS 4.3.3 and Twitter to an iPhone 3G running iOS 4.2.1. Although Instagram was “out of date,” the last compatible version of Twitter (featured above) was version 4.3.2, and hit the App Store back on August 18th, 2012.
My wife has an iPhone 4, which we probably won’t update to iOS 7, so this feature will definitely come in handy around our house. (Don’t shed a tear for the beautiful Mrs. Hauk however, as she will inherit my iPhone 5 once I am the proud owner of my new gold “precious.” (Gold is BEST! – Team Coco.)
(UPDATE – 09/19/2013) – CNET reports that Apple has pulled the reins back on the policy a bit, giving app developers the option of making older versions of their app unavailable.
From the announcement on Apple’s iOS developer site:
Previous versions of your apps are now available for re-download by users who have already purchased them, allowing customers to use your apps with older devices which may no longer be supported by the current version of your app. If you do not wish to make these versions available, you can manage the availability of your apps’ previous versions in the Rights and Pricing section of the Manage Your Apps module in iTunes Connect.
