
How to save the 200,000 apps Apple plans to purge from its App Store - adamotaku
https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/17/how-to-save-the-200000-apps-apple-plans-to-purge-from-its-app-store/
======
praseodym
Apple is dropping support for 32-bit apps in iOS 11. Doing this improves
performance as 32-bit libraries need not be loaded alongside 64-bit ones.
Furthermore, it paves the way for Apple SoCs that do not have hardware support
for 32-bit instructions, maybe saving some precious silicon real estate.

[1] [https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/06/ios-11-32-bit-mac-app-
store-6...](https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/06/ios-11-32-bit-mac-app-
store-64-bit/)

~~~
0x0
They could just not load (or even ship) the 32bit libraries unless they were
needed. My guess is they don't want to develop and maintain 32bit versions of
all their frameworks, especially newer features like drag&drop. (For the
hardware part I don't know enough to say whether or not keeping a 32bit armv7
mode around is costly?)

------
mercwear
If you are selling a 100 copies a month this forced refactor could be used to
add additional features and revenue streams to the app. I see the annoyance
with a forced move but I personally vote for better performance vs legacy app
support.

~~~
khedoros1
Why not both, with different versions of the app exposed to users of different
versions of iOS? Or are there not enough people running 5 year old hardware to
make it worth anyone's while?

~~~
scarface74
They already do allow both. They did _not_ announce that they were dropping
App Store support for older devices. Right now you can download older apps on
devices running iOS 5 -- released in 2011.

~~~
khedoros1
Hmm. I guess that most app devs remove older versions of their apps when they
upload newer ones. I've got an iPod Touch that I abandoned years ago because
searches for apps come up exclusively with results that were incompatible with
it. Apps would bug me to update, but then present me with a newly-incompatible
version.

~~~
scarface74
It's not the devs that remove older apps. Apple keeps older versions of the
apps around when you submit a new one.

Now if by "older" iPod touch you mean the first gen one. I can also confirm
that Apple does not allow you to go back that far.

Around January of this year, I reset my first gen iPad running 5.x and was
able to download and use older versions of Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, the CW,
Spotify, Plex, YouTube, Facebook (?) and Google Drive.

Also most of Apple's downloadable apps still work - Pages, Numbers, and
Keynote (?).

Most games will not work.

Edit:

I just noticed you said that you abandoned your old iPod touch years ago
because searches came up empty.

Apple didn't always allow you to download older versions easily.

[https://www.infoq.com/news/2013/09/previous-version-ios-
apps](https://www.infoq.com/news/2013/09/previous-version-ios-apps)

------
passivepinetree
This article seems a little bit overwrought. I don't think that deleting a
bunch of cruft from the app store will "create a cultural black hole for
generations to come."

Sure, there are apps that will probably get deleted that don't deserve to. But
when you play in the walled garden, these are the consequences.

~~~
coldtea
> _This article seems a little bit overwrought. I don 't think that deleting a
> bunch of cruft from the app store will "create a cultural black hole for
> generations to come."_

Plus, if that was our actual concern, we had TONS of other stuff to help
preserve first: digitize all kinds of old books, movies and music and make it
available for example.

iOS apps would be at the very bottom of the cultural landscape for things that
would be missed (and the nature of technology is not such that those are meant
to be evergreen artifacts anyway... nobody much cares that we can't play ZX
Spectrum games easily for example).

~~~
kenshi
You can't really rank or prioritise what cultural artefacts are going to be
missed. It's such a subjective thing.

For example, whilst I enjoyed many retro games back in the day, I can't say I
am too bothered about not being able to play them. But there are many people
who would care, and value these things highly.

And there are certainly old apps I do care about for other reasons: perhaps
they had a novel interface or solved certain problems in an elegant manner.
For example, I would love to be able to easily play around with the software
designed by Kai Krauze.

With art and culture, everything is subjective. One person's high art is
another person's trash.

~~~
coldtea
> _You can 't really rank or prioritise what cultural artefacts are going to
> be missed. It's such a subjective thing._

What people going to miss is subjective. What they should miss is objective.

Or rather, is a subjective decision they don't get to make for themselves.

In the end, everything, even morals, are subjective. But in the end, also,
most societies agreed collectively in some prioritisation, despite what each
individual (or even the majority) prefers. And unless something drastically
changed in how we think about culture, old books and movies and films are more
important than some abandoned 32-bit only iOS apps.

I guess it's a US thing to think it's all about the individual and its
personal taste, but in other cultures at least, there is such a think as a
canon, and while it's still fuzzy and subjective at the edges, it's not like
spandex wearing superheroes or RPGs ever get as important as The Iliad or some
philosophical work, just because the majority got in arrested development
sometime in the 90s and prefer the former over the latter.

~~~
kenshi
I cant argue with you that some works are objectively better than others. Or
that works in much older media are going to be much more culturally
significant than any app.

Personally I think the value of (some of) the older apps is how they are
waypoints in the progression of software design, specifically for touch screen
devices.

I view software as an evolving medium (the ultimate meta-medium), and as such
think its worth preserving at least some of these artefacts for future study.

Perhaps this doesn't count as culture, but I think it's important.

~~~
coldtea
I agree with you too, after all I'm a software developer myself (and I love my
80's Sierra DOS games).

So, it's not like I don't believe that they have some value (ZX games or early
iOS apps), but that I made my stand a little more black and white to get my
point across.

I don't believe most of it is culture to the sense that a book is, mostly
because most of them are quite plain, derivate from numerous other apps for
other platforms, and driven by basic commercial desires. And of course, a book
can be a window in someones mind/thought/philosophy/etc, whereas an app is
mostly a utilitarian endeavour (it's like we don't attach much cultural
importance to past commercial products, e.g. old tv sets or old fridges or old
typewriters -- we might like them as antiques, but that's mostly it).

That said, there are also utilitarian reasons for us wanting software to keep
existing in some form (to open old documents, etc).

------
blazespin
What would be ideal would be the ability to charge for an update. Developers
would be inclined to actually update their apps. My favorite apps have died on
the vine after a few years because it's not worthwhile updating. And so I have
to shift to other, inferior apps. Crazy! The alternative is in app purchases,
but that really complicates things for the user.

~~~
Razengan
> What would be ideal would be the ability to charge for an update.

Some developers do – they release a separate app that could have been provided
as an update and just slap "2" at the end of the name – and I usually find
that scummy. (Looking at you, MacPaw/Gemini.)

------
scarface74
Apple said that the newest version of iOS will not support any 32 bit apps.
Apple did not say that:

a) you would not be allowed to submit apps that have both a 32 and 64 bit
version and supported older iOS versions.

b) That they would discontinue their policy that allows users to download
older compatible versions of apps (that I can confirm works back to my first
gen iPad running iOS 5)

------
walterbell
ARM provides hardware support for virtualization. MacOS includes a hypervisor
framework.

Could Apple support older apps (slowly) in an iOS VM that contains an older
version of iOS?

------
blazespin
Wow, venturbeat redirected me to a malware site. Crazy.

