Apple asks developers to check their apps for compatibility with iPhone OS v3. Today, we did. And we are.
The iPhone OS v3 Beta 5 SDK for iPhone, however, is not compatible with iPhone OS v2.x: although the new iPhone SDK relies on the existing SDK it is partially incompatible. Some steps of the update can’t be reversed and it’s huge for a small device. Here are some of the issues:
- installs next to an existing 2.2.2.1 SDK with ~5GB each
- device must be reset to delivery status then updated
- update is irreversible and makes it a pure dev-device and might stop working as consumer device
- the appstore does not accept v3 apps yet, so you need both SDKs
- v3 built apps won’t run on os2. v2 built applications can’t be deployed directly to a OS v3 device: you must use SDK 3
- an application built in v2, must be deployed with v3, which makes on-device debugging impossible
- the beta 5 SDK does not accept your certificates, so you order a new developer certificate
- the provisioning profiles are also not accepted, so you create them again, update all device information and applications
- the beta 5 SDK does not build applications with ‘_’ in their name. the simulator is fine with it
- relative paths in the projects are somehow incompatible. if you need to use both SDKs, copy your folders completely
- the simulators of both SDKs clash regularly
- using Unity3d with the mix of SDKs seems impossible (one is needed to build, the newer for deployment)
…and this list is not event complete. There are more problems, waiting and missing application icon graphics is not the worst of those.
Let’s hope for a nice final.