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The future of iOS is 64-bit only: Apple to stop support of 32-bit apps

282 points by intuzhq 10y ago

cameldrv 10y ago
I'm not sure that this means what the article says it means. Apple was selling the iPhone 5C in India until less than a year ago. Dropping support for the new OS that soon would be uncharacteristic for the iPhone. Instead, they may simply be dropping support for 32 bit apps on a 64 bit CPU. Having to support 64 bit and 32 bit apps one a single device forces them to ship two versions of every shared library, and is probably annoying for them in various types of interprocess communication, because, for example, CGFloat and integer types are different sizes. My guess is that they will release a 32 bit version of iOS and a 64 bit version, and each one will only run apps for the native processor word size.
- FollowSteph3 10y ago
  They did something like this for the worst gen iPads. Two years and support was dropped. I believe they've also done it for Mac hardware too. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if they did it for an economy model of the iPhone.
  - valuearb 10y ago
    It had 256 megs of ram. I'm running the latest OS on an iPhone 5c that is 4 and a half years old. The pace of change in phones/tablets has been tremendous since the iPhone and iPad were released. Current versions are more than 10x faster and ship with much more ram. There aren't infinite resources at any company (unless you want the army of programmers failed model from IBM of yore), focusing limited engineering resources on most important issues is crucial to making progress. You got an iPad that worked well. They stopped enhancing it after 2 years. When did your car maker stopped enhancing your car?
    - mikeash 10y ago
      The trouble with the car analogy is that internet-connected devices need constant security updates, whereas cars don't. A car built ten years ago is as safe as it ever was, minus whatever problems arise from wear and tear. A device running iPhone OS 1.0 will probably not survive long on the internet of 2017.
ashread123 10y ago
The future of the internets world is in hackers hands. Hackers are exposed to you by texting 19193076946 for more details on how you can get a real hacker to work for you
BuckRogers 10y ago
I can only presume part of a long ramp up for an iOS Macbook play.
- ash_gti 10y ago
  UIKit and AppKit are pretty different, I don't see them convereging anytime soon.
- millstone 10y ago
  If you have no 32 bit processes on the system, then 32-bit shared libraries don't have to be loaded (saving RAM), can be omitted from the system entirely (saving disk space), and don't have to enter into the test matrix (saving engineering time). I suspect it's as simple as those optimizations.
  - ProAm 10y ago
    With hardware SO cheap, and the amount of RAM or disk space these take up it would be self destructive for Apple to ostracize so many customers over something that is literally dirt cheap to accommodate.
    - sroussey 10y ago
      No, the 32bit libs will cause havoc with the CPU cache. Good to drop them.
      - ProAm 10y ago
        Yeah sure burn more customer goodwill after the last batch of MacBook Pro's... Apple is in customer maintenance mode, Tim Cook especially, technically this might make sense ,just be prepared for customer backlash at a time when Apple really doesnt need anymore of that.
    - johncolanduoni 10y ago
      Tell that to everyone who has trouble finding enough free space to do an iOS upgrade.
ClassyJacket 10y ago
"This includes the iPhone 5, 5c, and older, the standard version of the iPad (so not the Air or the Pro), and the first iPad mini." This implies there is still a "standard" iPad for sale. In fact, the iPad Air was simply the successor to the iPad 4, and the iPad Pro was the successor to the iPad Air 2. There is no "standard iPad" on sale anymore, and there hasn't been for years. This won't directly affect any device Apple has sold in some time. The iPhone 5C is the last iPhone they released that was 32bit, and was likely to be dropped for software updates with the release of iOS 11 anyway. In short, there's nothing to worry about, except if you want to run an app that hasn't been updated in 2+ years
- josephpmay 10y ago
  My dad still uses an iPhone 5. Will he be unable to download any app updates until he gets a new phone?
  - orbitur 10y ago
    Depends on individual developers and how easily Xcode 9 will let devs target older devices. For example, the iPad 2 can't upgrade to iOS 10, but plenty of apps still support iOS 9.
  - X-Istence 10y ago
    Yep. Nor will he be able to get the latest version of iOS. So just like any other upgrade that removed older devices from the supported list.
    - xenadu02 10y ago
      Based on what evidence? Apple still accepts 32-bit slices if you want to submit them. 64-bit slices are required.
  - ClassyJacket 10y ago
    I see no reason Apple would prevent people from continuing to upload dual 32 and 64 bit apps for now, as they currently do.
ClassyJacket 10y ago
"This includes the iPhone 5, 5c, and older, the standard version of the iPad (so not the Air or the Pro), and the first iPad mini." This implies there is still a "standard" iPad for sale. In fact, the iPad Air was simply the successor to the iPad 4, and the iPad Pro was the successor to the iPad Air 2. There is no "standard iPad" on sale anymore, and there hasn't been for years. This won't directly affect any device Apple has sold in some time. The iPhone 5C is the last iPhone they released that was 32bit, and was likely to be dropped for software updates with the release of iOS 11 anyway. In short, there's nothing to wor except where users want to run apps that haven't been updated in 2+ years
reilly3000 10y ago
iPhone 5 users are plentiful and will be pretty livid if they are locked out of a future major version over this issue. Apple just can't get out of their own way these days. If I were an iPhone 5 user and was forced into a twinked device like the iPhone SE or iPhone 7 I would probably leave the entire ecosystem and hundreds of dollars worth of DRM purchases behind.
- mustoffa 10y ago
  There are literally dozens of us!
- X-Istence 10y ago
  Do you have stats for how plentiful iPhone 5 users are? The Apple iPhone 5 was released in 2012. Apple has provided those users with 5 years of updates (assuming September is when they will release the new iPhone and also update the major iOS version number). 5 years is a long time in the mobile handset business... I doubt too many people will be livid about anything.
  - bruceb 10y ago
    You assume everyone purchased the iphone 5 in 2012. The iphone 5c was still selling new in India less than a year ago. Also new ones still listed for sale direct from Walmart it appears: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Apple-iPhone-5C-8GB-AT-T-Locked/45722852 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Apple-iPhone-5C-8GB-AT-T-Locked/4... If you purchased a new device and in less than a year support is dropped, yeah you might be livid.
    - tuxracer 10y ago
      Standard practice in the world of Android phones. To add even more salt to that wound the OS was probably a couple years out of date when you bought it as well.
  - dan1234 10y ago
    I keep an eye on David Smith’s published iOS version stats[0] which say around 23% of his users are running a 32bit CPU. This includes iPhone 5/5C and older iPads. https://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/ https://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/
markcerqueira 10y ago
> Since a 64-bit processor processes more data at a time than a 32-bit processor, you get faster performance. Is this true? If I recall correctly, 32-bit to 64-bit doesn't always necessarily mean "end-user performance improvements."
- fulafel 10y ago
  It's false - if you want to process many bits at once, you use SIMD instructions, which you have on 32-bit too. Generally, other things equal, going from 32 to 64 bit word size makes things slower because pointers suddenly double in size, and you can fit fewer program objects in your caches. In practice there are a slew of miscellaneous improvements in the new 64-bit revision of an instruction set that makes up for some of the slowdown. This is less pronounced on ARM, but was big on x86 because a big flaw, the register count, was fixed.
  - Sanddancer 10y ago
    However, ARMv8 also increased the power of the SIMD portion of the chip, going from a 64 bit wide set of registers to one that's 128 bits wide. So SIMD-heavy code will see a decent speedup because you can process more data per clock.
    - fulafel 10y ago
      128-bit NEON has been available on 32-bit ARM for a long time, since Cortex-A8 (2005) or so.
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  Yep. If it's just 32->64 there may even be a slow down as you need to pull bigger things through the various busses. However, Armv8 also brought a huge improvement to the instruction set, so recompiling with the proper optimizations will bring performance increases in a lot of programs.
- xenadu02 10y ago
  sigh Technically it doesn't. In practice only two architectures matter: x86 and ARM. Both brought cleaned-up ISAs, expanded the number of general-purpose registers, made some features required, and made other improvements during the transition. So for all practical purposes: YES, the 64-bit transition has actual real benefits to end users besides the larger address space.
cooper12 10y ago
Say what you will about legacy support or planned obsolescence, but Apple has been constantly pushing the computing envelope exactly because they don't have to be Microsoft and get held back by older technology.
- averagewall 10y ago
  Yes, only Apple could get away with this and it's great that they're willing to sacrifice a few short term $ for the long term benefit. Sure, a lot of software will become useless. Same as happened with all the Mac architecture changes over the past couple of decades. Apple developers should should expect to stay on the ball and users should expect not to start depending on old unsupported software. If you prefer longer backward compatibility, and no rush to keep updating everything, use Windows, but pay the price in ugliness. I'll be glad when all 32 bit platforms are out of use. There's so much duplicated code around and time wasted debugging 32/64 bit mixups.
  - simonh 10y ago
    > Yes, only Apple could get away with this Android phone vendors drop support for their devices and software like a stone all the time, but it's just considered business as usual. Apple twitches in a vaguely unexpected way and the internet burns down in paranoid outrage. Personally, I'm going to wait until we actually find out what this means.
    - saurik 10y ago
      So, some people are talking about iOS itself possibly dropping support for 32-bit hardware, while others (including myself) are talking about issues with existing hardware not even being able to run things that will soon no longer be downloadable, and are taking this as an opportunity to lament over the lack of historical preservation of software. FWIW, you might mean the former, but I'm going to address the latter. In one of the few really legitimately "open" things Google does with Android, they provide emulators for their devices and downloadable historic stock firmwares; and because they don't have control over their hardware, they don't have the ability to implement "actually good" DRM on their application archive files. Apple has set up an environment where when they sunset something, it will actually fade from existence: that is not the case with Android.
azinman2 10y ago
For Apple this must be a dream -- drop everything that's explicitly 32-bit. Make some compiler improvements easier, possibly drop some silicon costs, remove lots of #ifdef __LP64__, simplify the kernel, etc.
- valleyer 10y ago
  Don't forget that the newest Apple Watch is 32-bit.
  - richardwhiuk 10y ago
    Apple Watch (from a development perspective) runs bitcode, not armv6/armv7/armv7s.
    - 0x0 10y ago
      32bit bitcode. You can't go from LLVM bitcode to both 32bit and 64bit as far as I understand. You need "bit-specific" (architecture-specific) bitcode.
saurik 10y ago
The Ars Technica article on this issue cuts to the heart of why this is so devastating: there is tons of software--software which was really interesting and I dare say "seminal" for this important era of computing; and which is not old or outdated by any sane standard--that this destroys access to going forward, for essentially no benefit. Apple insisted that they get to curate something of critical value, but they don't comprehend the moral weight of that responsibility, and now want to just go around burning down their Apple-branded libraries. It is absolutely sickening, and is the kind of thing we probably need to solve using regulation (which, of course, is likely never going to happen, given how even companies we would have assumed were on our side often have lobbyists fighting for the ability to lock down ecosystems). https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/future-ios-release-will-soon-end-support-for-unmaintained-32-bit-apps/ https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/future-ios-release-wil...
- Athas 10y ago
  Said software can still be run using emulators, can it not? There is lots of (well, some) potentially useful software out there that only runs on machines no longer in production. A good solution is also to make source code freely available, then the best programs will not die.
  - saurik 10y ago
    I happen to know someone who had managed to build an emulator for iOS, but it could only emulate one particular old device (the key thing to understand is that we had a bootrom exploit that let us dump a lot of the code and encryption keys from these older devices). The issue with Apple goes well beyond distribution of apps: they also control the hardware, and they use that control to shroud the software; and unlike with a typical game console, there is a ton of software running on the device as part of a network of dependencies. But like, we can go further: as it stands, without exploits for security vulnerabilities for these devices, it isn't even possible to get a copy of the apps to run in an emulator, due to the as-yet uncracked DRM used by Apple (which may or may not use hardware AES keys; I still haven't figured this out). So even if you had an iPhone emulator (and you don't, and might not for a very long time, if ever), you also need to obtain an unencrypted copy of Trainyard (the app in the banner image of this article) to run on it, as if they really are using hardware AES keys for that, your emulator is going to be missing those. Essentially, I would argue that we are moving into a post-emulator reality. It was really easy to write a Nintendo emulator, and it was sort of OK to write a Nintendo 64 emulator. The existence of Wii and PS3 emulators is only due to bugs in security of systems, often the kind that are caused by people too often using unsafe languages like C. Imagine a world where people with intent to lock things down and the experience to know how to do it well are also coding in secure-by-default languages: you get to a point where even a scanning tunneling microscope isn't enough to get you access to the code either from the console or from the game.
0x0 10y ago
This really, really sucks for people who paid good money for 32bit apps. Or even expensive external hardware items that require ancient apps to be useful. Even if the apps are removed from the app store (and Apple has gone on a rampage removing old apps), existing customers always could keep the apps installed until now. If apps stop working and disappear, they will lose a whole lot of the trust that people had in the app store. I'm also curious about how this will affect the usually impressive rate of upgrades to the latest iOS version among active app-purchasing users.
- danudey 10y ago
  The fact that those apps are still 32-bit means they're unmaintained. The fact that they're unmaintained means that they're likely to break at some arbitrary OS update anyway. Even common apps like Tweetbot, by reputable developers, will break on a new major version, so your app that hasn't been updated in years is probably going to die off soon anyway. The only way to make sure to keep those apps open is to keep from updating iOS, and if you do that this doesn't affect you anyway.
  - 0x0 10y ago
    There's no reason apps should break on arbitrary OS updates as long as they are well-behaved and stick to documented UIKit APIs and so on. I have apps from 2009 that work perfectly well for the task they need to do. The companies have long since folded and closed down their app store account. Others have similar apps, perhaps controlling $1000+ worth of DVR equipment. I think (and hope) Apple may be underestimating the effect of a vocal minority still requiring these apps, and the chilling effect this may have on paid apps or even free apps for the made-for-iphone hardware program in the app store in general.
    - saurik 10y ago
      And a lot of games hardly even use UIKit, relying only on OpenGL ES and some input handling logic: these are the kinds of apps I would expect to essentially never break (and would usually assume a platform bug if they did break).
general_ai 10y ago
I wonder if they will at some point remove the crap that's needed for 32 bit mode from the die. That could shrink the die size a tiny bit.
kriro 10y ago
So basically 4.5 years support max. for your devices (iPhone 5 was September 2012; iPad 4 October 2012)? Also aren't there a lot of these "old" iPads out there with people "refusing to update"? I think technically it makes a lot of sense but for customers this is pretty bad. Compared to Microsoft's 15 years of extended support for an OS (iirc. 5 is standard). Ubuntu LTS is 5 years. Sure there's a difference when you're the hardware vendor and the OS vendor but still I'm not sure this is a great move.
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  If this is bad for customers, pretty much every Android device except the Nexus must be a living hell. How many Android handsets (including "flagships") launch with an already outdated OS version and never get updated?
  - tyfon 10y ago
    Even though the OS itself is not updated, most of the libraries etc gets updated via the google services package. Not that I am defending not updating the OS, but its not nearly as bad as removing the support completely. I still have a HTC Desire HD (bought in 2011) that gets updates in this way. I still keep it around to see how long it will live (that's one solid phone), but my main phone is a nexus
  - izacus 10y ago
    Yeah, that's true, but Google is pretty good at backwards compatibility and most of the applications out there still support at least Andorid 4.1, released 5 years ago. If I read this correctly, Apple will stop letting people upload and distribute apps for iPhone 5C, which is significantly newer, right?
  - Sargos 10y ago
    This is markedly different because most applications written for the first versions of Android still work even on the newest version of the OS. Apple is explicitly breaking 32bit applications from running on the device/OS. Remember we are talking about application compatibility which is not much related to OS updates.
mrmondo 10y ago
So glad this is happening, it'll be a nice forced purge of old outdated apps, also there is no good reason to have a 32bit app in 2017...
yoz-y 10y ago
It would be good to start some kind of initiative to try to get in contact with developers of unmaintained apps and tu to convince them to do one last build. Or to release the software to open source or at least work with somebody to keep them going. Many will likely not respond but if there is a chance to salvage at least some of them it would be a win.
- makecheck 10y ago
  “One last build” generally isn’t enough because software might have many issues, including: — Dependencies on other 32-bit libraries that have not changed. — Dependencies on entire OS frameworks that have not migrated to 64-bit (and Apple has at least one of these). — Having a “plug-in” feature, whereby cherished plug-ins have not all migrated to 64-bit so the user must then choose a 64-bit subset. — Any number of problems in the code itself, such as improper assumptions made about the sizes of data structures or creative solutions that only made sense on 32-bit platforms. After a simple recompile, the code may crash in places or consume much more memory. Floating-point values may produce subtly different results, creating issues all over the place.
djrogers 10y ago
So developers have roughly 9 months to update their apps or they won't run on 5 year old hardware? This doesn't sound as devastating as some of the tweets and headlines would imply (that seems to be common these days).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dan1234 10y ago
  Not really, the iPhone 5C was sold worldwide up until September 2015 and was sold in India until February 2016 so anyone still using it will be stuck.
  - cowsandmilk 10y ago
    The article makes a claim that Apple will drop 32 bit in the OS that Apple has never said. I'm fairly certain that is wrong. All Apple has said is that it will remove apps from the App store that don't support 64-bit. Journalists shouldn't make stuff like that up.
    - dan1234 10y ago
      Yeah, that changes everything. I’m all for Apple forcing developers to include 64bit support in their builds.
    - bluesign 10y ago
      I agree totally, the point is cleaning up app store. Most of those legacy apps are already buggy or consuming too much power
- masklinn 10y ago
  > This doesn't sound as devastating as some of the tweets and headlines would imply (that seems to be common these days). Most of these applications are games, the developer may not even be alive anymore at this point and there's no ROI in updating working complete games just because they are old. Your basic actual game (not the F2P/IAP garbage) just creates an opengl context and handles touch input, that stuff only breaks when the OS itself breaks core API, I've got many games from my early 3G/iPhoneOS2 days which still run fine on a 7 running iOS10 (though not all of them).
anonova 10y ago
Arch Linux also recently announced phasing out the 32-bit distribution (though multilib will still be available).[1] Perhaps the start of a trend. [1]: https://www.archlinux.org/news/phasing-out-i686-support/ https://www.archlinux.org/news/phasing-out-i686-support/
- kogepathic 10y ago
  That's a different kettle of fish. Multilib means you can still run 32-bit binaries. Although given Linux doesn't have a stable ABI, I haven't found that 32-bit Linux binaries age well (e.g. if you run something from 10 years ago, it's probably using OSS, enjoy trying to wrap that to alsa...). Arch is deprecating the i686 only distribution. Which IMHO is a good idea. Multilib support is generally excellent, and to my knowledge no one who is shipping i686 systems (e.g. industrial PCs with a 10 year availability) is using Arch Linux anyway.
  - andreyv 10y ago
    From my experience, the aoss wrapper works pretty well. I had the UT99 Loki/UTPG port running with it with no problems.
bostand 10y ago
Even without having read the article (the site is down for me) I can say this is a wise decision. Currently the 64-bit arm cpu can also run 32-bit code. To support this it contains a 32-bit emulation layer that also exists in a few other places such as caches. By removing that, apple will be able to 1. Shrink the CPU, hence making room for more cores or bigger caches. 2. Reduce power usage by removing a significant number of gates. 3. Simplify the OS code significantly, which will probably improve performance and security.
- exDM69 10y ago
  Yes, it would be a smart move if they can actually drop the 32 bit mode from the CPU/SoC but I wouldn't be so sure about that. Having the 32 bit mode may still be required for the firmware/bootloader/OS early boot environment. The 32 bit mode may be partially or fully implemented using microcode and the actual silicon area that could be saved by this might not be that big. What comes to OS and firmware, yes it could be simpler but most of the code is probably there already. Getting rid of it would mean more engineering work, not less (in the short term). On the other hand, removing the parts would reduce maintenance burden in the long run. And Apple doesn't care about supporting old hardware anyway so they might as well drop it. I work with ARM SoC's but the above is no more than an educated guess as I don't know details about their CPU architecture or firmware/bootloader/OS software, take it with a grain of salt.
  - nicky0 10y ago
    Presumably they can write their firmware using 64-bit code too? is there a reason it would still be 32-bit?
    - exDM69 10y ago
      If it's all their code, yes they can do it (it might be a lot of engineering, though). But it might contain 3rd party code or dependencies to something that's non trivial to port to 64 bits. If you go look at the boot procedure of a modern ARM SoC, it's pretty complex (also it's different for every SoC, there's no governing standard like the "PC is for x86"). The CPU may go through several operating modes and the procedure of booting up the cores is non-trivial. I do not think it's impossible, but the benefits for all that engineering work may not be as great as GP suggests. They are in a pretty unique position as they control all the hardware and the software, though.
jmkni 10y ago
It would be nice if they published a list of the software which will no longer be supported. There is a definite opportunity for app developers here.
Traubenfuchs 10y ago
Does anyone have a comprehensive list of the advantages (and disadvantages besides: "Old software won't work anymore.") of this decision? Does it reduce engineering/research effort, production costs, chip size, size of binaries, duration of compilation, programming effort and improve performance: If yes, by how much?
andrei512 10y ago
this translates to: swift will be included with the next iOS
- masklinn 10y ago
  That makes no sense. You can already develop iOS (or tvOS) applications in Swift, the runtime bits are provided by the pre-existing Objective-C runtime.
  - zydeco 10y ago
    Every app that uses Swift embeds its own copy of the Swift runtime libraries, since they are not part of the system (the ABI isn't stable yet).
Frogolocalypse 10y ago
TIL there are still 32-bit apps for apples.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
EugeneOZ 10y ago
Online banking app of my bank is 32-bit, so for me it means "don't update anymore".
- Laforet 10y ago
  Years ago TomTom released an update for their GPS app that won't run on older iOS versions and they had to add a warning in the description so people don't buildly update and get locked out forever until they buy a new phone. I believe there is a mechanism in place now that serves the last working version to older devices.
- al2o3cr 10y ago
  Nobody at the bank could be bothered to push the "Build" button in Xcode since JUNE 2015? (when they stopped accepting 32-bit apps) Sounds like you need to upgrade your bank...
  - ValentineC 10y ago
    I'm guessing it's more because they want to support customers who might still be on iOS 6. The 64-bit compiler only came with the iOS 7 SDK. Five years doesn't seem like a long time at banks, even though iOS 6 probably has a whole bunch of privilege escalation exploits that wouldn't be very nice to deal with.
    - massysett 10y ago
      Seems to be a good reason to have a mobile website as well as apps. Though I've never bothered to see if my main bank even has a decent mobile website because I always use the app. But another bank I use has only a mobile website and has no app.
  - EugeneOZ 10y ago
    How often you upgrade your banks just because your phone asks you to do so?
johndoe4589 10y ago
> Ever launch an app on your iPhone and then get a pop-up warning that says the app may slow down your iPhone? Noooooo :( Pleas say it ain't so... "PDF Highlighter" by omz:software is one of my favorite apps on the iPad. The only PDF app that doesn't have a million things I don't need, and has a beautiful summary of all the highlights you make in your PDFS..plus Dropbox .. plus OCR. Oh, and highlight colors that don't look like they were put in by a 3 year old jesus. What's up with all those annotate aps using FF0 yellow or F00 red? What happened to design? Why do all these PDF apps have to suck so bad as a reading experience? Sigh. https://appadvice.com/app/pdf-highlighter/400191310 https://appadvice.com/app/pdf-highlighter/400191310
acqq 10y ago
The first apps I've bought for my iPhone were dictionaries. The owners of the dictionary material sold the right to the app developers, but didn't extend it, therefore the developer doesn't even have the right to publish an updated version, even if it would be only a recompile with the never compilers for them. Which means that even if I've paid for the content, now I'll have to purchase it again from another developer only because some random limitation is introduced, and even that purchases can soon disappear again.
magoghm 10y ago
It feels really weird to me that now 32 bit CPUs aren't considered good enough even for a telephone. Maybe I'm getting old.
- Sargos 10y ago
  Did you write this just to be snarky and call it a "telephone"? An iPhone is more complex than the desktop computer you wrote this comment on and you know it.
Malic 10y ago
I'm upset that all of my Llamasoft/Jeff Minter games will go by the wayside. Minter did not find it profitable to make iOS games, so he let his Apple Developer subscription lapse; there won't be a 64-bit recompile of Gridrunner for iOS. I might have to get an Android device just for classic games, like his. http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=376 http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=376
- valuearb 10y ago
  I'd be mad at Jeff Minter. Not Apple.
rebootthesystem 10y ago
One of the consequences of this move will be to flush out tens or hundreds of thousands of applications from the App Store. Why? It's a simple matter of economics: Creating apps for iOS is, and has been, for a long time, unprofitable for most developers. Last I looked, most can't earn a living, which means they are working for far less than what they could otherwise earn doing something else. A good deal of the existing 32 bit apps are simply going to die off as developers abandon them. This could be good, of course, as it might improve discoverability in certain categories. Time will tell.
mnd999 10y ago
So the Squeezebox remote app is finally going to break. How annoying.

282 points by intuzhq 10y ago

I'm not sure that this means what the article says it means. Apple was selling the iPhone 5C in India until less than a year ago. Dropping support for the new OS that soon would be uncharacteristic for the iPhone. Instead, they may simply be dropping support for 32 bit apps on a 64 bit CPU. Having to support 64 bit and 32 bit apps one a single device forces them to ship two versions of every shared library, and is probably annoying for them in various types of interprocess communication, because, for example, CGFloat and integer types are different sizes. My guess is that they will release a 32 bit version of iOS and a 64 bit version, and each one will only run apps for the native processor word size.

FollowSteph3 10y ago
They did something like this for the worst gen iPads. Two years and support was dropped. I believe they've also done it for Mac hardware too. So it wouldn't surprise me at all if they did it for an economy model of the iPhone.
- valuearb 10y ago
  It had 256 megs of ram. I'm running the latest OS on an iPhone 5c that is 4 and a half years old. The pace of change in phones/tablets has been tremendous since the iPhone and iPad were released. Current versions are more than 10x faster and ship with much more ram. There aren't infinite resources at any company (unless you want the army of programmers failed model from IBM of yore), focusing limited engineering resources on most important issues is crucial to making progress. You got an iPad that worked well. They stopped enhancing it after 2 years. When did your car maker stopped enhancing your car?
  - mikeash 10y ago
    The trouble with the car analogy is that internet-connected devices need constant security updates, whereas cars don't. A car built ten years ago is as safe as it ever was, minus whatever problems arise from wear and tear. A device running iPhone OS 1.0 will probably not survive long on the internet of 2017.

ashread123 10y ago

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BuckRogers 10y ago

I can only presume part of a long ramp up for an iOS Macbook play.

ash_gti 10y ago
UIKit and AppKit are pretty different, I don't see them convereging anytime soon.
millstone 10y ago
If you have no 32 bit processes on the system, then 32-bit shared libraries don't have to be loaded (saving RAM), can be omitted from the system entirely (saving disk space), and don't have to enter into the test matrix (saving engineering time). I suspect it's as simple as those optimizations.
- ProAm 10y ago
  With hardware SO cheap, and the amount of RAM or disk space these take up it would be self destructive for Apple to ostracize so many customers over something that is literally dirt cheap to accommodate.
  - sroussey 10y ago
    No, the 32bit libs will cause havoc with the CPU cache. Good to drop them.
    - ProAm 10y ago
      Yeah sure burn more customer goodwill after the last batch of MacBook Pro's... Apple is in customer maintenance mode, Tim Cook especially, technically this might make sense ,just be prepared for customer backlash at a time when Apple really doesnt need anymore of that.
  - johncolanduoni 10y ago
    Tell that to everyone who has trouble finding enough free space to do an iOS upgrade.

ClassyJacket 10y ago

"This includes the iPhone 5, 5c, and older, the standard version of the iPad (so not the Air or the Pro), and the first iPad mini." This implies there is still a "standard" iPad for sale. In fact, the iPad Air was simply the successor to the iPad 4, and the iPad Pro was the successor to the iPad Air 2. There is no "standard iPad" on sale anymore, and there hasn't been for years. This won't directly affect any device Apple has sold in some time. The iPhone 5C is the last iPhone they released that was 32bit, and was likely to be dropped for software updates with the release of iOS 11 anyway. In short, there's nothing to worry about, except if you want to run an app that hasn't been updated in 2+ years

josephpmay 10y ago
My dad still uses an iPhone 5. Will he be unable to download any app updates until he gets a new phone?
- orbitur 10y ago
  Depends on individual developers and how easily Xcode 9 will let devs target older devices. For example, the iPad 2 can't upgrade to iOS 10, but plenty of apps still support iOS 9.
- X-Istence 10y ago
  Yep. Nor will he be able to get the latest version of iOS. So just like any other upgrade that removed older devices from the supported list.
  - xenadu02 10y ago
    Based on what evidence? Apple still accepts 32-bit slices if you want to submit them. 64-bit slices are required.
- ClassyJacket 10y ago
  I see no reason Apple would prevent people from continuing to upload dual 32 and 64 bit apps for now, as they currently do.

ClassyJacket 10y ago

"This includes the iPhone 5, 5c, and older, the standard version of the iPad (so not the Air or the Pro), and the first iPad mini." This implies there is still a "standard" iPad for sale. In fact, the iPad Air was simply the successor to the iPad 4, and the iPad Pro was the successor to the iPad Air 2. There is no "standard iPad" on sale anymore, and there hasn't been for years. This won't directly affect any device Apple has sold in some time. The iPhone 5C is the last iPhone they released that was 32bit, and was likely to be dropped for software updates with the release of iOS 11 anyway. In short, there's nothing to wor except where users want to run apps that haven't been updated in 2+ years

reilly3000 10y ago

iPhone 5 users are plentiful and will be pretty livid if they are locked out of a future major version over this issue. Apple just can't get out of their own way these days. If I were an iPhone 5 user and was forced into a twinked device like the iPhone SE or iPhone 7 I would probably leave the entire ecosystem and hundreds of dollars worth of DRM purchases behind.

mustoffa 10y ago
There are literally dozens of us!
X-Istence 10y ago
Do you have stats for how plentiful iPhone 5 users are? The Apple iPhone 5 was released in 2012. Apple has provided those users with 5 years of updates (assuming September is when they will release the new iPhone and also update the major iOS version number). 5 years is a long time in the mobile handset business... I doubt too many people will be livid about anything.
- bruceb 10y ago
  You assume everyone purchased the iphone 5 in 2012. The iphone 5c was still selling new in India less than a year ago. Also new ones still listed for sale direct from Walmart it appears: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Apple-iPhone-5C-8GB-AT-T-Locked/45722852 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Apple-iPhone-5C-8GB-AT-T-Locked/4... If you purchased a new device and in less than a year support is dropped, yeah you might be livid.
  - tuxracer 10y ago
    Standard practice in the world of Android phones. To add even more salt to that wound the OS was probably a couple years out of date when you bought it as well.
- dan1234 10y ago
  I keep an eye on David Smith’s published iOS version stats[0] which say around 23% of his users are running a 32bit CPU. This includes iPhone 5/5C and older iPads. https://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/ https://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/

markcerqueira 10y ago

> Since a 64-bit processor processes more data at a time than a 32-bit processor, you get faster performance. Is this true? If I recall correctly, 32-bit to 64-bit doesn't always necessarily mean "end-user performance improvements."

fulafel 10y ago
It's false - if you want to process many bits at once, you use SIMD instructions, which you have on 32-bit too. Generally, other things equal, going from 32 to 64 bit word size makes things slower because pointers suddenly double in size, and you can fit fewer program objects in your caches. In practice there are a slew of miscellaneous improvements in the new 64-bit revision of an instruction set that makes up for some of the slowdown. This is less pronounced on ARM, but was big on x86 because a big flaw, the register count, was fixed.
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  However, ARMv8 also increased the power of the SIMD portion of the chip, going from a 64 bit wide set of registers to one that's 128 bits wide. So SIMD-heavy code will see a decent speedup because you can process more data per clock.
  - fulafel 10y ago
    128-bit NEON has been available on 32-bit ARM for a long time, since Cortex-A8 (2005) or so.
Sanddancer 10y ago
Yep. If it's just 32->64 there may even be a slow down as you need to pull bigger things through the various busses. However, Armv8 also brought a huge improvement to the instruction set, so recompiling with the proper optimizations will bring performance increases in a lot of programs.
xenadu02 10y ago
sigh Technically it doesn't. In practice only two architectures matter: x86 and ARM. Both brought cleaned-up ISAs, expanded the number of general-purpose registers, made some features required, and made other improvements during the transition. So for all practical purposes: YES, the 64-bit transition has actual real benefits to end users besides the larger address space.

cooper12 10y ago

Say what you will about legacy support or planned obsolescence, but Apple has been constantly pushing the computing envelope exactly because they don't have to be Microsoft and get held back by older technology.

averagewall 10y ago
Yes, only Apple could get away with this and it's great that they're willing to sacrifice a few short term $ for the long term benefit. Sure, a lot of software will become useless. Same as happened with all the Mac architecture changes over the past couple of decades. Apple developers should should expect to stay on the ball and users should expect not to start depending on old unsupported software. If you prefer longer backward compatibility, and no rush to keep updating everything, use Windows, but pay the price in ugliness. I'll be glad when all 32 bit platforms are out of use. There's so much duplicated code around and time wasted debugging 32/64 bit mixups.
- simonh 10y ago
  > Yes, only Apple could get away with this Android phone vendors drop support for their devices and software like a stone all the time, but it's just considered business as usual. Apple twitches in a vaguely unexpected way and the internet burns down in paranoid outrage. Personally, I'm going to wait until we actually find out what this means.
  - saurik 10y ago
    So, some people are talking about iOS itself possibly dropping support for 32-bit hardware, while others (including myself) are talking about issues with existing hardware not even being able to run things that will soon no longer be downloadable, and are taking this as an opportunity to lament over the lack of historical preservation of software. FWIW, you might mean the former, but I'm going to address the latter. In one of the few really legitimately "open" things Google does with Android, they provide emulators for their devices and downloadable historic stock firmwares; and because they don't have control over their hardware, they don't have the ability to implement "actually good" DRM on their application archive files. Apple has set up an environment where when they sunset something, it will actually fade from existence: that is not the case with Android.

azinman2 10y ago

For Apple this must be a dream -- drop everything that's explicitly 32-bit. Make some compiler improvements easier, possibly drop some silicon costs, remove lots of #ifdef __LP64__, simplify the kernel, etc.

valleyer 10y ago
Don't forget that the newest Apple Watch is 32-bit.
- richardwhiuk 10y ago
  Apple Watch (from a development perspective) runs bitcode, not armv6/armv7/armv7s.
  - 0x0 10y ago
    32bit bitcode. You can't go from LLVM bitcode to both 32bit and 64bit as far as I understand. You need "bit-specific" (architecture-specific) bitcode.

saurik 10y ago

The Ars Technica article on this issue cuts to the heart of why this is so devastating: there is tons of software--software which was really interesting and I dare say "seminal" for this important era of computing; and which is not old or outdated by any sane standard--that this destroys access to going forward, for essentially no benefit. Apple insisted that they get to curate something of critical value, but they don't comprehend the moral weight of that responsibility, and now want to just go around burning down their Apple-branded libraries. It is absolutely sickening, and is the kind of thing we probably need to solve using regulation (which, of course, is likely never going to happen, given how even companies we would have assumed were on our side often have lobbyists fighting for the ability to lock down ecosystems). https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/future-ios-release-will-soon-end-support-for-unmaintained-32-bit-apps/ https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/01/future-ios-release-wil...

Athas 10y ago
Said software can still be run using emulators, can it not? There is lots of (well, some) potentially useful software out there that only runs on machines no longer in production. A good solution is also to make source code freely available, then the best programs will not die.
- saurik 10y ago
  I happen to know someone who had managed to build an emulator for iOS, but it could only emulate one particular old device (the key thing to understand is that we had a bootrom exploit that let us dump a lot of the code and encryption keys from these older devices). The issue with Apple goes well beyond distribution of apps: they also control the hardware, and they use that control to shroud the software; and unlike with a typical game console, there is a ton of software running on the device as part of a network of dependencies. But like, we can go further: as it stands, without exploits for security vulnerabilities for these devices, it isn't even possible to get a copy of the apps to run in an emulator, due to the as-yet uncracked DRM used by Apple (which may or may not use hardware AES keys; I still haven't figured this out). So even if you had an iPhone emulator (and you don't, and might not for a very long time, if ever), you also need to obtain an unencrypted copy of Trainyard (the app in the banner image of this article) to run on it, as if they really are using hardware AES keys for that, your emulator is going to be missing those. Essentially, I would argue that we are moving into a post-emulator reality. It was really easy to write a Nintendo emulator, and it was sort of OK to write a Nintendo 64 emulator. The existence of Wii and PS3 emulators is only due to bugs in security of systems, often the kind that are caused by people too often using unsafe languages like C. Imagine a world where people with intent to lock things down and the experience to know how to do it well are also coding in secure-by-default languages: you get to a point where even a scanning tunneling microscope isn't enough to get you access to the code either from the console or from the game.

0x0 10y ago

This really, really sucks for people who paid good money for 32bit apps. Or even expensive external hardware items that require ancient apps to be useful. Even if the apps are removed from the app store (and Apple has gone on a rampage removing old apps), existing customers always could keep the apps installed until now. If apps stop working and disappear, they will lose a whole lot of the trust that people had in the app store. I'm also curious about how this will affect the usually impressive rate of upgrades to the latest iOS version among active app-purchasing users.

danudey 10y ago
The fact that those apps are still 32-bit means they're unmaintained. The fact that they're unmaintained means that they're likely to break at some arbitrary OS update anyway. Even common apps like Tweetbot, by reputable developers, will break on a new major version, so your app that hasn't been updated in years is probably going to die off soon anyway. The only way to make sure to keep those apps open is to keep from updating iOS, and if you do that this doesn't affect you anyway.
- 0x0 10y ago
  There's no reason apps should break on arbitrary OS updates as long as they are well-behaved and stick to documented UIKit APIs and so on. I have apps from 2009 that work perfectly well for the task they need to do. The companies have long since folded and closed down their app store account. Others have similar apps, perhaps controlling $1000+ worth of DVR equipment. I think (and hope) Apple may be underestimating the effect of a vocal minority still requiring these apps, and the chilling effect this may have on paid apps or even free apps for the made-for-iphone hardware program in the app store in general.
  - saurik 10y ago
    And a lot of games hardly even use UIKit, relying only on OpenGL ES and some input handling logic: these are the kinds of apps I would expect to essentially never break (and would usually assume a platform bug if they did break).

general_ai 10y ago

I wonder if they will at some point remove the crap that's needed for 32 bit mode from the die. That could shrink the die size a tiny bit.

kriro 10y ago

So basically 4.5 years support max. for your devices (iPhone 5 was September 2012; iPad 4 October 2012)? Also aren't there a lot of these "old" iPads out there with people "refusing to update"? I think technically it makes a lot of sense but for customers this is pretty bad. Compared to Microsoft's 15 years of extended support for an OS (iirc. 5 is standard). Ubuntu LTS is 5 years. Sure there's a difference when you're the hardware vendor and the OS vendor but still I'm not sure this is a great move.

johncolanduoni 10y ago
If this is bad for customers, pretty much every Android device except the Nexus must be a living hell. How many Android handsets (including "flagships") launch with an already outdated OS version and never get updated?
- tyfon 10y ago
  Even though the OS itself is not updated, most of the libraries etc gets updated via the google services package. Not that I am defending not updating the OS, but its not nearly as bad as removing the support completely. I still have a HTC Desire HD (bought in 2011) that gets updates in this way. I still keep it around to see how long it will live (that's one solid phone), but my main phone is a nexus
- izacus 10y ago
  Yeah, that's true, but Google is pretty good at backwards compatibility and most of the applications out there still support at least Andorid 4.1, released 5 years ago. If I read this correctly, Apple will stop letting people upload and distribute apps for iPhone 5C, which is significantly newer, right?
- Sargos 10y ago
  This is markedly different because most applications written for the first versions of Android still work even on the newest version of the OS. Apple is explicitly breaking 32bit applications from running on the device/OS. Remember we are talking about application compatibility which is not much related to OS updates.

mrmondo 10y ago

So glad this is happening, it'll be a nice forced purge of old outdated apps, also there is no good reason to have a 32bit app in 2017...

yoz-y 10y ago

It would be good to start some kind of initiative to try to get in contact with developers of unmaintained apps and tu to convince them to do one last build. Or to release the software to open source or at least work with somebody to keep them going. Many will likely not respond but if there is a chance to salvage at least some of them it would be a win.

makecheck 10y ago
“One last build” generally isn’t enough because software might have many issues, including: — Dependencies on other 32-bit libraries that have not changed. — Dependencies on entire OS frameworks that have not migrated to 64-bit (and Apple has at least one of these). — Having a “plug-in” feature, whereby cherished plug-ins have not all migrated to 64-bit so the user must then choose a 64-bit subset. — Any number of problems in the code itself, such as improper assumptions made about the sizes of data structures or creative solutions that only made sense on 32-bit platforms. After a simple recompile, the code may crash in places or consume much more memory. Floating-point values may produce subtly different results, creating issues all over the place.

djrogers 10y ago

So developers have roughly 9 months to update their apps or they won't run on 5 year old hardware? This doesn't sound as devastating as some of the tweets and headlines would imply (that seems to be common these days).

deleted 10y ago
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dan1234 10y ago
Not really, the iPhone 5C was sold worldwide up until September 2015 and was sold in India until February 2016 so anyone still using it will be stuck.
- cowsandmilk 10y ago
  The article makes a claim that Apple will drop 32 bit in the OS that Apple has never said. I'm fairly certain that is wrong. All Apple has said is that it will remove apps from the App store that don't support 64-bit. Journalists shouldn't make stuff like that up.
  - dan1234 10y ago
    Yeah, that changes everything. I’m all for Apple forcing developers to include 64bit support in their builds.
  - bluesign 10y ago
    I agree totally, the point is cleaning up app store. Most of those legacy apps are already buggy or consuming too much power
masklinn 10y ago
> This doesn't sound as devastating as some of the tweets and headlines would imply (that seems to be common these days). Most of these applications are games, the developer may not even be alive anymore at this point and there's no ROI in updating working complete games just because they are old. Your basic actual game (not the F2P/IAP garbage) just creates an opengl context and handles touch input, that stuff only breaks when the OS itself breaks core API, I've got many games from my early 3G/iPhoneOS2 days which still run fine on a 7 running iOS10 (though not all of them).

anonova 10y ago

Arch Linux also recently announced phasing out the 32-bit distribution (though multilib will still be available).[1] Perhaps the start of a trend. [1]: https://www.archlinux.org/news/phasing-out-i686-support/ https://www.archlinux.org/news/phasing-out-i686-support/

kogepathic 10y ago
That's a different kettle of fish. Multilib means you can still run 32-bit binaries. Although given Linux doesn't have a stable ABI, I haven't found that 32-bit Linux binaries age well (e.g. if you run something from 10 years ago, it's probably using OSS, enjoy trying to wrap that to alsa...). Arch is deprecating the i686 only distribution. Which IMHO is a good idea. Multilib support is generally excellent, and to my knowledge no one who is shipping i686 systems (e.g. industrial PCs with a 10 year availability) is using Arch Linux anyway.
- andreyv 10y ago
  From my experience, the aoss wrapper works pretty well. I had the UT99 Loki/UTPG port running with it with no problems.

bostand 10y ago

Even without having read the article (the site is down for me) I can say this is a wise decision. Currently the 64-bit arm cpu can also run 32-bit code. To support this it contains a 32-bit emulation layer that also exists in a few other places such as caches. By removing that, apple will be able to 1. Shrink the CPU, hence making room for more cores or bigger caches. 2. Reduce power usage by removing a significant number of gates. 3. Simplify the OS code significantly, which will probably improve performance and security.

exDM69 10y ago
Yes, it would be a smart move if they can actually drop the 32 bit mode from the CPU/SoC but I wouldn't be so sure about that. Having the 32 bit mode may still be required for the firmware/bootloader/OS early boot environment. The 32 bit mode may be partially or fully implemented using microcode and the actual silicon area that could be saved by this might not be that big. What comes to OS and firmware, yes it could be simpler but most of the code is probably there already. Getting rid of it would mean more engineering work, not less (in the short term). On the other hand, removing the parts would reduce maintenance burden in the long run. And Apple doesn't care about supporting old hardware anyway so they might as well drop it. I work with ARM SoC's but the above is no more than an educated guess as I don't know details about their CPU architecture or firmware/bootloader/OS software, take it with a grain of salt.
- nicky0 10y ago
  Presumably they can write their firmware using 64-bit code too? is there a reason it would still be 32-bit?
  - exDM69 10y ago
    If it's all their code, yes they can do it (it might be a lot of engineering, though). But it might contain 3rd party code or dependencies to something that's non trivial to port to 64 bits. If you go look at the boot procedure of a modern ARM SoC, it's pretty complex (also it's different for every SoC, there's no governing standard like the "PC is for x86"). The CPU may go through several operating modes and the procedure of booting up the cores is non-trivial. I do not think it's impossible, but the benefits for all that engineering work may not be as great as GP suggests. They are in a pretty unique position as they control all the hardware and the software, though.

jmkni 10y ago

It would be nice if they published a list of the software which will no longer be supported. There is a definite opportunity for app developers here.

Traubenfuchs 10y ago

Does anyone have a comprehensive list of the advantages (and disadvantages besides: "Old software won't work anymore.") of this decision? Does it reduce engineering/research effort, production costs, chip size, size of binaries, duration of compilation, programming effort and improve performance: If yes, by how much?

andrei512 10y ago

this translates to: swift will be included with the next iOS

masklinn 10y ago
That makes no sense. You can already develop iOS (or tvOS) applications in Swift, the runtime bits are provided by the pre-existing Objective-C runtime.
- zydeco 10y ago
  Every app that uses Swift embeds its own copy of the Swift runtime libraries, since they are not part of the system (the ABI isn't stable yet).

Frogolocalypse 10y ago

TIL there are still 32-bit apps for apples.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

EugeneOZ 10y ago

Online banking app of my bank is 32-bit, so for me it means "don't update anymore".

Laforet 10y ago
Years ago TomTom released an update for their GPS app that won't run on older iOS versions and they had to add a warning in the description so people don't buildly update and get locked out forever until they buy a new phone. I believe there is a mechanism in place now that serves the last working version to older devices.
al2o3cr 10y ago
Nobody at the bank could be bothered to push the "Build" button in Xcode since JUNE 2015? (when they stopped accepting 32-bit apps) Sounds like you need to upgrade your bank...
- ValentineC 10y ago
  I'm guessing it's more because they want to support customers who might still be on iOS 6. The 64-bit compiler only came with the iOS 7 SDK. Five years doesn't seem like a long time at banks, even though iOS 6 probably has a whole bunch of privilege escalation exploits that wouldn't be very nice to deal with.
  - massysett 10y ago
    Seems to be a good reason to have a mobile website as well as apps. Though I've never bothered to see if my main bank even has a decent mobile website because I always use the app. But another bank I use has only a mobile website and has no app.
- EugeneOZ 10y ago
  How often you upgrade your banks just because your phone asks you to do so?

johndoe4589 10y ago

> Ever launch an app on your iPhone and then get a pop-up warning that says the app may slow down your iPhone? Noooooo :( Pleas say it ain't so... "PDF Highlighter" by omz:software is one of my favorite apps on the iPad. The only PDF app that doesn't have a million things I don't need, and has a beautiful summary of all the highlights you make in your PDFS..plus Dropbox .. plus OCR. Oh, and highlight colors that don't look like they were put in by a 3 year old jesus. What's up with all those annotate aps using FF0 yellow or F00 red? What happened to design? Why do all these PDF apps have to suck so bad as a reading experience? Sigh. https://appadvice.com/app/pdf-highlighter/400191310 https://appadvice.com/app/pdf-highlighter/400191310

acqq 10y ago

The first apps I've bought for my iPhone were dictionaries. The owners of the dictionary material sold the right to the app developers, but didn't extend it, therefore the developer doesn't even have the right to publish an updated version, even if it would be only a recompile with the never compilers for them. Which means that even if I've paid for the content, now I'll have to purchase it again from another developer only because some random limitation is introduced, and even that purchases can soon disappear again.

magoghm 10y ago

It feels really weird to me that now 32 bit CPUs aren't considered good enough even for a telephone. Maybe I'm getting old.

Sargos 10y ago
Did you write this just to be snarky and call it a "telephone"? An iPhone is more complex than the desktop computer you wrote this comment on and you know it.

Malic 10y ago

I'm upset that all of my Llamasoft/Jeff Minter games will go by the wayside. Minter did not find it profitable to make iOS games, so he let his Apple Developer subscription lapse; there won't be a 64-bit recompile of Gridrunner for iOS. I might have to get an Android device just for classic games, like his. http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=376 http://minotaurproject.co.uk/blog/?p=376

valuearb 10y ago
I'd be mad at Jeff Minter. Not Apple.

rebootthesystem 10y ago

One of the consequences of this move will be to flush out tens or hundreds of thousands of applications from the App Store. Why? It's a simple matter of economics: Creating apps for iOS is, and has been, for a long time, unprofitable for most developers. Last I looked, most can't earn a living, which means they are working for far less than what they could otherwise earn doing something else. A good deal of the existing 32 bit apps are simply going to die off as developers abandon them. This could be good, of course, as it might improve discoverability in certain categories. Time will tell.

mnd999 10y ago

So the Squeezebox remote app is finally going to break. How annoying.