Matt wrote an interesting write up on the potential screen size(s) on the iPhone 6. I just wanted to follow up on it with a few thoughts of my own.

The iPhone has always been a very accessible platform to develop for. The 'licensing' on it has always been very cheap ($100 annually) and the cut that Apple takes is very competitive, (30% per sale.) Other than monetary reasons, it is fairly easy to learn to program for. An entire application can be programmed with little to no actual coding, and the code is fairly easy to learn from a beginner stand point.

One of the most amazing features though, is only ever having to worry about one or two screen sizes at a time. We programmed ColorGuess and ColorGuess+ fairly poorly, and really only thought about the 4'' screen, and crammed all our stuff into the 3.5'' screen last minute. We've been more careful with Block'd, using content size references instead of static screen sizes, and so far it seems to morph into the 3.5'' screen pretty well.

But these are easy, why? You may ask. The widths are the same. Let me share a Vine that's been circling my Twitter quite a bit recently:

With the potential for multiple widths coming up with the iPhone 6, the barrier for new programmers to get into iPhone development is going to become even steeper, and the market for newbies that don't want to deal with 3-4 different screen sizes, is going to vastly shrink.

I'm okay with a larger screen, it's going to have to be a fact of life, I believe. I don't like it, but I'll deal. But please Apple, don't give us two different sizes to deal with. Especially if one of the sizes is essentially an iPad mini with a microphone.

Austin