Apple now removing outdated apps from the App Store, developers complain | Hacker News Reader

Apple now removing outdated apps from the App Store, developers complain

9to5mac.com

13 pointsbookofjoe8 comments

Apple ruining the experience....they make decisions and typically it's just them want to flex...they are so annoying. Trillion dollars and just unable to offer simple services.... pathetic

This is a two trillion dollar company. And they can't manage simple backward compatibility for two year old apps.

iphone and ios evolved a lot over the years, many things changed

i think it is important to require yearly maintenance for apps

- security reasons

- 3rd party APIs updated/unreachable

- using newer compiler optimization to optimize battery usage

- replacing deprecated APIs

and many more benefits

As noted by others on this topic, some games and other apps are "finished artworks" from years ago. They are "done", like a final version of Tetris, it works fine for what it is and it's done.

I saw a discussion about PS3 that is still fully supported by Sony with live app store servers after 15 years and still fully supports games from PS2 and PS1 from 20+ years ago. Good on Sony.

I don’t know if there’s any right or wrong approach here.

For instance. It’s certainly nice that Windows supports its entire back catalogue. It’s also nice that MacOS has been able to reap the benefit of deprecations, breaking changes, and even 2 architectural shifts.

Though I do think something that’s often missed in this debate are the specific challenges that mobile brings that set it apart from say, the console environment, that really do require a more ‘cooperative’ and ongoing approach to the platform.

Your device really will perform better and present a more cohesive experience if apps can be nudged onto that new privacy API, or an old threading API deprecated and removed.

If old apps no longer run on newer iOS versions for whatever questionable reasons, then we would have a different discussion.

But what happens here is that Apple demands updates although these apps still work.

Edit: And if I understand this correctly, they only look at the date when the app was last updated. Just doing a version bump suffices to fulfill their check. There are not technical requirements that need to be fulfilled.

a phone is different, it is a constrained device

windows get away with it, and as a result the base OS needs 40gb of disk drive

apple has to make sure they ship tiny updates, and don't eat too much storage

every bits the OS can save, is super important

i'd rather have devs maintain their apps yearly, so the OS doesn't need to carry a bloatware of legacy bits

also development becomes easier, nobody wants to make apps for android, it is a shitshow, in comparison

For "finished artwork" perhaps a compromise could be made: no Internet access for those apps. I suspect most would fail.

A PlayStation is no one's personal communication device with access to their email, texts, and other highly confidential pieces of information.

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