Taposé forced to continue iPad 1 support, left having to warn users not to upgrade
I don’t know what Apple has against the Taposé developer but it has to be something. It was first delayed for four months by the Apple review system, leaving me so pissed at Apple by the time it actually came out that I basically swore off the iPad 3. Taposé has been having some serious performance issues ever since the start, and most of those have to do with the iPad 1.
The iPad 1 is pretty infamous for being a device that should never have made it to market with the amount of RAM it has, as 256MB RAM when the OS uses half of it has created issues for more than just a few app developers. This is also the core of the problem with Taposé, as there’s only so much you can do to support a device that only has a third of the user available RAM that the iPad 2 has.
After trying to fix the problem for the last few months, the Taposé developer tweeted that it had tried to remove iPad 1 support a few weeks ago, and had been met with a “no” by Apple. Since there are third party apps out there that don’t support certain older devices, this likely has to do with the fact that Taposé launched with iPad 1 support, and as such tied itself to supporting it in Apple’s eyes. That’s just speculation, of course, but at least it makes a bit more sense.
Reasons aside, you can’t get around the fact that when a developer drops support for a device, it’s for a reason. Lack of RAM in the iPad 1 is 100% Apple’s fault, and something that should never have happened. It’s ironic to make the argument for dropping device support in a day and age when related news stories are about companies like Samsung making up excuses not to bring new Android versions to old devices. Still, hardware does get outdated, and there comes a time when you have to stop beating a dead horse.
The result of this denied request to drop iPad 1 support is perhaps even more bizarre. In the latest update to the app, the change log actually warns iPad 1 users not to update, as it will make matters worse. That’s despite the fact that development of new features for the app has been halted, pending a fix for the iPad 1 – a fix that may never come. It says quite a bit about the App Store system when developers have to “sneak” warnings not to update into the change log, because they don’t have full control over their own apps.
We’re about a week away from the 8 month anniversary of Taposé being submitted to Apple, with half of that time being wasted in the review process and the other half being wasted trying to support the iPad 1 properly. It’s ironic, but perhaps indicative of Apple’s business practices, that development of an Android version of Taposé has been delayed for who knows how long because of two issues that would never have been an issue on Android to begin with.
