The company made the announcement through its official developer portal. Until now, a cutoff point for app updates had been expected, but not set in stone.

Newly submitted apps have had to use the latest iOS SDK and Super Retina support since April.

Apple regularly enforces SDK upgrades as a way of ensuring App Store titles remain compatible and secure. It has also become more aggressive about delisting broken and outdated apps, though the company usually offers developers a chance to fix the situation before scrubbing happens.

Super Retina support is liable to become extremely important this fall, since Apple is expected to ship not one but three new iPhones —5.8- and 6.5-inch OLED models, and a cheaper 6.1-inch LCD device. Since all of these will be bigger than the 5.5-inch iPhone 8 Plus, higher resolutions will be mandatory to maintain pixel density.

Source: appleinsider