I don't think size and resources can effectively combat this sort of accrued technical debt. Once you have to maintain so much cruft it becomes emotionally diff

I don't think size and resources can effectively combat this sort of accrued technical debt. Once you have to maintain so much cruft it becomes emotionally difficult to write good software (at least, I experience this). I have a few personal projects that I have maintained for years, but the motivation required to refactor, clean and maintain the code gets bigger every year. You have to be passionate about the software you write. And unless you can find a team that is passionate about maintaining a 32 bit compatibility layer for old App Store apps, I think it would be a permanent burden on Apple.