iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan Compatibility

With the release of iOS 9 for iPhone/iPad, and OS X El Capitan for the Mac, Apple made some significant changes to the software that developers use to make apps like games. Usually, Apple does a great job at making sure that when they release new software, that it remains compatible with existing apps. Unfortunately, this time they released their operating systems with some major flaws. In fact they broke thousands of existing games, and entertainment apps.

This usually doesn’t happen when programmers like me, use only what’s called “public Application Program Interface’s”, (API’s), when developing our apps. This ensures that the developer is using the currently supported software routines and protocols in their apps. When Apple decides to remove or change a function, they “deprecate” it, and give us fair warning.

What appears to have happened this time is that Apple made some “low level” changes to the operating system that are out of reach to “high level” programmers that rely on their API’s. In doing so, many of us have our hands tied until Apple releases software updates to fix these problems.

All of my apps have been affected by this. I’ve been working on updates, but most of the issues are in Apple’s hands. While they have fixed many of the bugs with iOS 9.1 and OS X 10.11.1, they still have some work to do.

In the meantime, while I’m hard at work fixing my apps, make sure that you update your devices to the latest versions of iOS or OS X.