Download older versions of iOS

Might be better time spent to find older devices fossilized at whatever iOS you need to test on.

Sorry KMT, but that is ridiculous! Even MS has all their previous OS's for download. I am sure they are laying around here somewhere. Apple?

You better off finding them other websites. Look at iclarified. Beware though, it's not supported nor official...

Even if you do download older .ipsw s from external websites, Apple don't sign them anymore - i.e you won't get past the setup stage.

It's a lost cause - there are, however, simulators for testing your apps on older versions of iOS.

simulators for testing? Googled it but got a load of crap. Any good suggestions?

Yes, there's a very good guide here:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/iOS_Simulator_Guide/GettingStartedwithiOSSimulator.html

So, is there a way to run the simulator in iOS 8.0, test your app and then switch to 8.1 and test your app while in XCode? I don't think so my friend.

I wanna be able to test my app in different versions of the OS. I would think Apple would allow me to do that and not expect everyone to be playing with the latest OS. Any good Apple's here?

Xcode 6.4 offers simulators for 7.1, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3 and 8.4. You're right that there doesn't appear to be an option to download the 8.0 simulator for it. You would have to go to an older Xcode version. I have seen mention of installing app builds to simulators via the command line but haven't tried that myself - if that turns out not to be feasible then you'd have to build with the older Xcode as well, which could be tricky if you're using any new features.

But there's no getting around it - you need to start accumulating test devices if you intend to test on older OS versions. I know I bought an iPhone 4 with a cracked screen for < $100 for my iOS 7 device; my old 4S will be my iOS 8 device etc. Older phones and iPods are fairly cheap. iPads, not so much.

Any luck with this? I need a version a couple of revs before 9.2.1. I don't trust the simulators at all, they can't be used for production testing.

Find an older device on ebay or other places. Once iOS goes to release, only that

version is signed so, older versions are of no use.