New Celebrity App Update Requires IOS 17 or Above (iPhone)?

[NutsAboutGolf]

On 4/30/2024 at 5:26 AM, JLMcruise said:

I have been traveling but did get a call back last week. I was told that it is an                              "Apple requirement"   and those of us with older phones will not be able to use the app. No fix planned for the future.

 

9 minutes ago, Lin336 said:

I can now use the Celebrity app - iPhone 8 OS 16.77.  

 

That's Celebrity for ya...lol...But I'm overall happy that at least some with older phones can use the app

[markeb]

7 minutes ago, NutsAboutGolf said:

 

 

That's Celebrity for ya...lol...But I'm overall happy that at least some with older phones can use the app

The App Store still say 17 or higher. 

[NutsAboutGolf]

2 minutes ago, markeb said:

The App Store still say 17 or higher. 

 

I saw that and the last app update was a week ago

[markeb]

58 minutes ago, omahabob said:

Alienating a large portion of your customer base does not increase net revenue. Quite the contrary. I lost count of the number of times I did version testing of software upgrades. It usually took a few seconds at most. Whatever their reasoning, and I freely admit they may have reasons that are not glaringly obvious here, it just seems counterproductive to alienate a large portion of your customer base. 

 

Come Sail With Celebrity! Unless You Don't Have the Latest iPhone!

 

Is it a large portion of their customer base? I don't know. I'm not an iOS app developer so I don't know if they chose to use an API that was native to iOS 17 and not present in iOS 16 or lower. I don't know if they did that for convenience or cost or both. Or did they just not do the version testing to validate the software. Again, the actual developers probably don't know anyone with an iPhone that won't run iOS 17. (And their statement of work clearly didn't require compatibility below iOS 17.)

 

I did a random look at a number of other apps, including banking and credit card apps, and many of them support iOS as low as 13 (surprisingly). So it certainly seems likely Celebrity could support earlier versions of iOS if they chose to.

 

What I am confident of is they actually KNOW how many users of their apps are running an iOS version lower than 17 and how many have an iPhone that won't support iOS 17. At least at the RCG level, since they're probably using the same app developer for RCI as Celebrity. And if that data said it was really a large portion of their customers, they'd have made the app downward compatible. The RCI population may raise the iPhone and iOS versions. Or they are truly criminally stupid. 

 

And you don't need the latest iPhone. Just newer than 8.

[omahabob]

1 hour ago, markeb said:

 

Is it a large portion of their customer base? I don't know.

I don't know either. But iOS 17 has about a 60% market share on iOS devices worldwide, so that seems to indicate a lot of people could be out of luck. But again, we obviously aren't privy to all the facts. That's why I keep saying this doesn't "seem" to make sense. And, as a long time tech geek, although I find this topic interesting, it isn't greatly related to cruising. So, since we're short on facts here, I won't continue to belabor the point.

Edited May 2 by omahabob

[Charles4515]

1 hour ago, markeb said:

Is it a large portion of their customer base? I don't know. I'm not an iOS app developer so I don't know if they chose to use an API that was native to iOS 17 and not present in iOS 16 or lower. I don't know if they did that for convenience or cost or both. Or did they just not do the version testing to validate the software. Again, the actual developers probably don't know anyone with an iPhone that won't run iOS 17. (And their statement of work clearly didn't require compatibility below iOS 17.)

Probably their customer base who have iOS 17 is similar to that of the general population. About 75%. The actual developers don’t have to know anyone who runs an earlier version or every model iPhone. There are simulators. Those run on a Mac. Also there is an Apple test app TestFlight. I am beta testing for an app. The developers send me an email. I open the app and then update from TestFlight. They can see from that app any issues when I use the app. They can see what version of iOS I am running their app on. I can also provide feedback. The developers can also contract with a third party company to test their app. 

Edited May 2 by Charles4515