iPhone - When does a deprecated method usually becomes obsolete?

Question

I'm using some methods in some apps that are now marked as deprecated since iOS5. I'd like to know when these updates will become urgent.

So, usually, when does a deprecated method becomes obsolete ? Is there a chance that this will be with iOS 5.1 ? Or is this always with a major version like iOS 6.0 ?

Answer 1

This depends and changes from method to method and property to property. If you look at something like the

cell.textColor

it has been deprecated since iOS 3.0 and can still be used. So unfortunately there's not a specific answer to the general thing about stuff being deprecated.

Answer 2

As far as I know, no published API has actually been removed from iOS yet, but that's no reason to be complacent. There's no reason to keep using deprecated methods as long as the replacement is available in all the versions of iOS that you need to support.

As for when they'll actually be removed, that's entirely speculation. Keep an eye on the release notes for new versions as they become available. My guess is that they'd only remove them in a major release but there are no guarantees...