Open Radar

 
Summary:
UINavigationController is capable of forcing the screen rotation to change, for example when you pop from a landscape view controller to a view controller that only supports portrait. Unfortunately the only way to replicate this behavior with a custom root UIViewController is to disable autorotation, hook into device orientation changes, and rewrite all the code necessary to animate rotations and keep view controller states up-to-date.

As far as I could find from my digging, UINavigationController is using [UIWindow _updateToInterfaceOrientation:animated:], or a related method, to perform the necessary orientation update after the transition animation is completed. Without access to this method, or something similar, it is completely impossible to replicate UINavigationController in a clean manner. With the proscription on subclassing UINavigationController, this limits the customization abilities of developers of mixed orientation applications.