iPad 3rd Generation, ongoing,developer support query.

[RebornProphet]

Hi folks,

Been a lurker for a while, but thought I'd sign up and join in the fun.

I got my iPad 3rd Gen in June, a 64GB WiFi and Cellular model, and despite the announcement of the 4th Gen I have no plans to sell up or upgrade. I love my device, it does everything it did before Tuesday and then some, but my ONLY concern going forward is developer support.

I'll explain my reasoning.

Right now there is only one Retina iPad on sale, the 4th Gen, and it is this SKU that developers will work with in regard to Retina apps on iPad.

Due to the higher specs, and therefore logically higher requirements of finished apps coded on and for the A6X, how will this effect the iPad 3rd Gen? Will developers bother testing for a device that is no longer sold since it morphed into the 4th Gen? Will they just leave the 3rd Gen to run the iPad 2 versions albeit at an upscaled (and therefore blurred) resolution? Or will they drop support completely and leave their apps to run on the Mini, 2, and 4th Gen?

The likes of Real Racing 3 and Infinity Blade Dungeons are games I am looking forward to and whilst I appreciate that these games will be tweaked further for the A6X, will the iPad 3rd Gen see proper, Retina enabled, developer support and for how much longer? At this rate I wonder if we'll even get iOS 7 next year!

Thanks for reading.

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[twerppoet]

It is, of course, up to the developers. However most developers (the vast majority) have continued to support older models and iOS versions of the iPad. When you consider how many millions of 3rd gen iPads have been sold, to do anything else would be cutting yourself off from a huge market.

Strangely enough, developers, especially the kind who have the talent to code the best apps, generally want to make money from them.

The only real difference between the 3rd gen and 4th gen iPad is speed (at least for the purpose of app creation). Other than a few high end games there are not many apps that need the extra speed to work. Even developers that decide to use the full capabilities of the new processor are likely to have a fallback mode for slower machines; reduce frame rate and object details. So you'll still be able to play the games, if not with quite as much eye candy.

No doubt a few developers will go completely with the newest hardware, but that's nothing new; whether it happened to day or six months from now, it was going to happen. This will be the extreme fringe, those that don't care about money or are planning/creating apps that won't come to full fruition for at least another year. They are unlikely to impact the usability of the 3rd gen iPad to any great degree.