iOS7 has a ton of tiny touches that make life easier (like automatically zooming pixel-doubled iPhone apps on the iPad, and using the retina iPhone assets even on the iPad mini), but it looks like users of older versions of iOS aren’t being left out. Or maybe Apple really, really wants developers to go iOS7-only.
As you can see from Ryan Christensen’s screenshot (running what looks like a version of iOS4), you’re now allowed to download older, compatible versions of apps which have been updated to require a better version of iOS. This might save a friend of mine who can’t run the latest version of popular messaging app Whatsapp? on her old iPhone 3 (not even the 3GS!).
It’s certainly a great way to avoid complaints and bad app store reviews from your least-valuable customers (the kind of people who hate change, and probably are unwilling to pay for things).
Rumor has it that Android was going to do something similar, but Google didn’t have enough hard-drive space in the Play Store to host all the different versions required (#rimshot).
Source: Twitter
