Pokémon Go is one of those apps that if you play it on a regular basis, you can’t live without it being on your phone. It’s that perfect go-to to kill some time and catch some Pokémon on your quest to hit that elusive level 40. I have been playing since the launch and am still only level 33, such a pro. But what happens when you update to the newest version of Apple’s iOS and your Pokémon Go app stops working altogether? That’s exactly what happened to anyone who updated their iPhone to Apple’s iOS 14 since the public beta was announced back in June.
Without getting into the super technical details, a bunch of under the hood programming in iOS changed in terms of permissions and that didn’t play well with Niantic’s Pokémon Go app. Anyone who installed the OS was faced with a game that would either crash on the Niantic logo screen back to the iOS home screen or would actually get into the game to be treated to a screenshot stating that you’re playing Pokémon Go on an unsupported OS for Pokémon Go. I was one of those people.
Apple announced the full release of iOS 14 in their live stream this morning to be on September 16th and this caused Niantic to spring into action by first asking their players to not update to the newest version of iOS as the game would not work, only to Tweet out a few hours later that a patch had been released and that it was now safe to update devices.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Apple and their products, but when they pull things like this, it really makes me wonder what’s going on. Sure location-based privacy is super important, but you would think that with what is possibly the most popular app on their App Store, they would have let Niantic know about this.