Question

If I only have xcode 3 what am I missing? Should I hold off my project until I get xcode 4?

This would be for ios programming.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You’ll be missing the ability to ship software in the App Store. Building for iOS 5 (which is required for App Store acceptance) requires Xcode 4.2. That’s probably the single biggest thing. If you’re just looking to try things out a bit, Xcode 3 will work. But if you’re planning on shipping iOS software, you’ll need to have Xcode 4.

Other than that, it’s mostly just feature updates. Xcode 4 has a number of features intended to speed up development. By sticking with Xcode 3, you’ll be missing out on:

• Automatic Reference Counting
• Storyboards
• The ability to drag directly from Interface Builder to your code
• A much faster compiler
• Various bug fixes
• The ability to follow along with any of the recent tutorials referencing Xcode 4.

By sticking with Xcode 3, you get this:

• The ability to follow along with some of the older tutorials referencing Xcode 3.
• The ability to whine about “the good ol’ days” when you finally switch to Xcode 4.