With the release of the iPhone 3GS and it's faster processor, I'm worried about not being able to use some great new apps on my older iDevice. For example, if a developer comes out with an app that runs absolutely amazingly on the iPhone 3GS, am I right to assume it'd be difficult, if not impossible, to run on the slower, older iDevices? I may be wrong and just paranoid, I just wanted to see if anyone else had the same concerns.
My concern is that either something like this will happen, or developers will just ignore the higher specs on the new hardware. Or both. Both are likely, and since the latter is just as likely...why did Apple bother doing this so soon? That's what I don't really understand. It feels...it feels like a knee jerk reaction on their part. That's why no one really saw it coming. Everyone pretty much thought "redesign of current hardware" ala 1st gen touch to 2nd gen touch, not a completely true next gen upgrade. It's just too soon, IMHO. Business wise, too soon. Fragments the development base, as well as the userbase (and confuses new users at that) or simply underutilized to the point where it's just a loss for Apple (increased cost of SGX over MBX-lite). Had they released it in a year and a half to two years, giving the current hardware configuration (ARM11 and MBX-lite) a 4 year life cycle, then a greater amount of current users would be "most ready" to upgrade.
I agree. I think Apple is updating the hardware WAAY too fast for people to keep up. As much as I love staying up to date, I don't have the money to fork out for a new iPhone/iTouch every 6 months. They definitely should have waited at the very least a year before doing this. Now there will be 3GS developers and everyone else. And now us older iDevice users won't be able to use some of the apps the 3GS developers are coming out with because our device just can't handle it.
Yeah I've also been some what worried about the fallout, of yet another set of hardware specs that the devs will have to optimize for.
I see what you are saying spiffyone. It does feel... eh.. not "rushed" just.. too soon almost. I won't lie, I like how Apple is updating things and really competing and all.. They just need to realize that not everyone is willing to pay the extra money to upgrade if their contract hasn't run out yet. I could see that becoming a main big problem. Cnbigcan43 and I thing that it would be AMAZINGLY a great idea if Apple would implement a store credit system for trading in old Apple hardware for their recycling system. One nice thing is that Apple doesn't always deliver everything we ask for but they make up for it and also they surprise us with things we didn't even know we wanted. Here's to hoping Apple finds a way to make everything right!
I would not worry too much about app's not working on older devices, the touch 2g is already much faster then a 3g iphone but most if not all games work on all devices, if the 3gS is any faster then a 2g touch some games may need a low/high graphics setting just like a pc game. My main worry is that devs may start making mistakes or give up with the iphone because of a too bigger range of device powers, but it's not stopped pc games in the past or present.
It's an erroneous comparison (comparing the difference that 2nd "gen" iPod touch had over the rest vs. what 3Gs has over them all). The 2nd "gen" touch simply had a faster clocked ARM11 CPU. The GPU was the same MBX-lite that 1st "gen" iPhone, iPod touch, and iPhone 3G had. 3Gs, however, has a brand new GPU. SGX vs. MBX-lite. And that's not a minor upgrade as the 2nd "gen" touch was with the higher clocked ARM11. The change in GPU is a drastic one: it's a full generation ahead of the rest of the platform devices. SGX isn't a slightly updated MBX...it's the next gen successor to MBX. The differences with the 2nd "gen" iPod touch mainly had to do with frame rate with minor (very minor) graphical upgrades available due to the higher speed. But this is different. It's a whole new beast. Better speed, more graphical ability. Shaders, for one, which MBX doesn't do. Actually...it kinda has...or at least slowed them down compared to the past. We've seen PC centric developers more and more move toward the home console releases. Why? Because developing with one specification in mind is much easier, and less costly, than developing for a slew of them as PC devs had to do increasingly as time went on with all the different CPU and GPU configurations available with each PC. Now they just spec for one type of system (usually the XBox 360).
Yea, I've been kind of worried about that. Some games already don't run great on my first gen iPhone so IF developers take full advantage of the new phone, no way will my first gen be able to handle them. The thing is though, I feel like developers won't be taking full advantage of it for a while and by then it will only be a little while until Apple updates the iPhone again with some of the features that we were hoping for in this upgrade.
