Ready for the iOS 6 App Store Retirement?

Mike Bluestein

January 15th, 20140 0

Apple recently announced that in order to publish new apps and updates to the app store after January 31st, you must build against the iOS 7 SDK. This is no problem for Xamarin.iOS developers, since we’ve been shipping support for iOS 7 since day one.

Here are 7 good reasons to take the opportunity to fully iOS7-ify your app while you’re at it:

Don’t let your app look stale. iOS 7 apps have a distinct look and feel and leverage a full-screen experience that focuses on content over chrome. Take a look at the iOS 7 User Interface Overview and iOS 6 & 7 Compatibility Tips.
There are an abundance of great new APIs, ranging from new mapping APIs to speech synthesis, motion effects, and multi-tasking, just to name just a few. See the iOS 7 API Tour for more information.
iOS 7 apps can connect to other nearby devices via the Multipeer Connectivity framework, as shown in the post Send the Monkey a Message with Multipeer Connectivity.
Text capabilities are dramatically enhanced. The post Create Rich Text Features in iOS with Text Kit talks about this in greater detail.
iBeacons bring device location support over Bluetooth Low Energy, enabling exciting new scenarios, such as indoor location a reality. See Apple Stores use iBeacons (and so can you!) for an example of using iBeacons in a commercial setting.
Core Image has many great new filters including the ability to generate QR codes.
Animation has made dramatic strides in iOS 7 both with new view and controller APIs, Sprite Kit for games, and the built-in physics engine of UIKitDynamics. The article Introduction to iOS 7 talks about many of the new animation features.