Developers received a bit of a surprise from Apple on Thursday. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company told developers in an e-mail that millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers will move to iPhone OS 3.0 this summer and, as a result, it has changed its application review policy.
“Beginning today, all submissions to the App Store will be reviewed on the latest beta of iPhone OS 3.0,” wrote Apple in its e-mail. “If your app submission is not compatible with iPhone OS 3.0, it will not be approved.”
Apple suggested developers begin testing apps now, since iPhone SDK 3.0 beta 5 is now available on the iPhone developer Web site.
Developer Stress
Because Apple hasn’t given developers a release date for iPhone 3.0, some developers reported feeling left in the dark because they must develop applications that operate on 3.0 but don’t use 3.0 features. Currently, developers cannot submit a 3.0-only application since it must run on 2.0.
But Alex Sokirynsky, the developer behind Podcaster and RSS Player, said he wasn’t surprised and neither should any other developer.
“I have been testing RSS Player with the new firmware since 3.0 Beta 1 came out,” Sokirynsky said. “My developer friends and I are all really excited about 3.0. Any good developer should have been planning for this from the initial announcement several months ago.”
On the flip side, Sokirynsky said developers may be stressing over the time it will take to learn the new operating system. “Apple did add a huge amount of new APIs, so this is going to take some time to learn,” he said.
The changes may also force developers to invest more in technology to test new apps running on 3.0, and that could be a hardship for small-development shops.
“Currently, I have a small server setup to serve search results to users,” Sokirynsky said….