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I am having trouble summoning the outrage I see in the other comment threads here. The App Store is stuffed full of abandonware. Apple should be more aggressive

I am having trouble summoning the outrage I see in the other comment threads here. The App Store is stuffed full of abandonware. Apple should be more aggressive with this, not less. If you can't recompile your app and patch up support for recent OSes and recent devices on an ongoing basis, then your business model is not sustainable. I know, I used to sell iOS apps. The market right now is absolutely flooded with indie games, some light pruning is probably for the best.

gcheong 4y ago
If they actually gave any indication of what exactly they think needs to be updated other than the age of the app I would tend to agree but if an app is considered complete and running fine on current devices then it’s not abandonware.
gameswithgo 4y ago
Aulig 4y ago
iOS and Android usually have perfect backwards compatibility, so there's no technical reason to require a new build. The apps work perfectly fine on new devices automatically.
- scarface74 4y ago
  iOS does not have “perfect backward compatibility”.
Tams80 4y ago
I hope that boot's tasty.
seba_dos1 4y ago
> then your business model is not sustainable As if that was the concern there at all. Most people who publish free games consider them "art", not "business model".
freeone3000 4y ago
What is "abandonware"? Software does not have an expiration date. If it runs, if it does everything it does originally, I don't see the point for "patching support" for the sake of it.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Apple removed all support for 32 bit code from the hardware that’s one thing. But even more recently, there were deprecated APIs that eventually Apple stopped supporting.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    Of course these are deliberate (and awful) policies that Apple is entirely in control of. Software doesn’t rot: operating systems deliberately choose to break backwards compatibility and their vendors deliberately choose to simply deem old software as too old.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Apple removed hardware support for 32 bit apps on ARM. Should Apple have wasted the die space instead of using it for new features? Have you read “The Old New Thing” Microsoft blog? There are all sort of special case hacks in Windows just to keep one version of one third party app running. Should Apple also have kept shipping its 68K emulator from 1994 in its 2022 ARM Macs?
      - _v7gu 4y ago
        Yes.
Siira 4y ago
Excellent logic for a curation platform. Unfortunately, the App Store is a monopoly on app distribution, not a curation platform.
wodenokoto 4y ago
Why should I lose access to an app I’ve potentially paid for and enjoy just because someone else don’t have time to do a specific dance dictated by Apple?
logicalmonster 4y ago
How about using the carrot and not the stick? If you say something like “apps that are recently updated and using all of the latest APIs should be ranked higher within Apple’s search algorithm and recommendations”, that would make quite a bit of sense to me as an incentive to keep development and progress moving forward with all of the updated tech. But it makes no sense to force devs to expend the effort to recompile and update an App just for the sake of staying on a store if everything is already working perfectly as intended with no security issues. This is especially a crap deal for small developers without endless resources to continuously be working on rebuilding and retooling projects just for the sake of Apple’s inability to do search and discovery well.
- ianlevesque 4y ago
  A lot of the comments here are focusing on indie developers, but honestly the worst offenders are huge companies that aren't focused on software, like HVAC, IoT, automotive. They'll hire out a subcontractor once to throw an app over the fence and let it rot. There's no market pressure up front when you are buying a washing machine to evaluate the support model for the companion apps, so this isn't a problem that solves itself. Apple has now forced these companies to maintain their stuff, and the market will be better off for it.
  - noobermin 4y ago
    I somehow can't believe Apple cares that much about either group, regardless of who in some manufactured statistical methodology you feel is the "worst offender." This has more to do with control than anything else, because I am unable to imagine a better fitting explanation. May be the "why" isn't really what you were addressing with your comment, but if it was, this can't be a "why."
  - tempnow987 4y ago
    No kidding. I still kick myself for a few things I bought with these types of apps (they become unusable). Ugh, you really need to buy from major vendors. Ie, a dash cam with a partial app from 6 years ago never update, lots of bugs. IoT is horrible as well. HVAC I got luckyish so far by going with Samsung (app works OK in my view).
Hackbraten 4y ago
Older games sell a lot worse than freshly released ones. Non-game apps somewhat depend on freshness too, but I’d guess not so heavily. That would make ongoing maintenance more expensive for games than for other apps. Maybe Apple should honor that and allow more slack for games.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Older games have reviews from outside of the app store, friends recommendations and brand awareness. Freshness is important to one category of user, older brands another.
layer8 4y ago
If people are still downloading and using an app, that should be reason enough to keep it. I would understand removing apps that virtually no one has downloaded, and also actually used, in the past two years. This may conceivably have even been the case here, but then Apple should communicate exactly that.
com2kid 4y ago
Removing by sale / usage rate might be fair. No one opened your app in 2 years? It gets the boot. If an app is still actively being used, removing it hurts developers and users! I have apps on my Android phone that haven't been updated in years. They work just fine. Heck on my MacBook I use an app that wad last updated in 2016 or so, and I consider it a vital pri0 part of my daily workflow!
- noobermin 4y ago
  I want to give Apple the benefit of the doubt and assume they, some of the brightest minds in the world wouldn't have thought of it (and it's possible), but the fact they didn't and chose to do it by update implies they are intending to force people to use their new APIs for that reason for the most part.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    "Some of the brightest minds in the world" also leave up obvious scams[1] until the media reports on them. Perhaps competent App Store curation is just not a priority. [1] https://boisefoundry.com/scam-apps-on-apples-macos-app-store-wont-let-you-quit-until-you-pay/ https://boisefoundry.com/scam-apps-on-apples-macos-app-store...
brundolf 4y ago
Games in particular usually don't use a lot of system UIs or other integrations (and so are less likely to break or visibly age), are often developed on a shoestring budget (so developers will have less time and resources to keep updating them over time), and have artistic value. Kicking them off the only store on a closed platform is erasure of artistic history. It's doubly insulting when they still work perfectly without modification. For comparison: I've never heard of a game getting kicked off of a console's store because of a "lack of updates". The stores themselves usually shut down eventually - which is its own problem - but at least there's a reasonable business argument for why the company can't be expected to offer that service indefinitely.
- scarface74 4y ago
  And consoles only change hardware or operating systems once every six or seven years.
  - brundolf 4y ago
    And the store usually stays online for another 3-4 years after the console's successor has come out
    - hedora 4y ago
      And, then, after a few years, emulators become available. I just realized all but one of the ps2 games in my closet (not counting Dance Dance Revolution, for lack of a controller pad) appear to run fine on my phone. It's a good thing I don't care for online gaming!
    - scarface74 4y ago
      And the App Store still works on a 1st gen iPad from 2010 running iOS 5. As of a couple of years ago, I was able to restore my old one and re download the “last compatible version” of Netflix, Crackle and Plex. There are plenty of old 32 but apps that are “unavailable” in the App Store that are still available to older devices. Apple explicitly said that the authors app would still be available to people who already owned it.
Asooka 4y ago
Microsoft somehow manage to maintain backwards compatibility for much longer than two years.
- threeseed 4y ago
  Windows only really works on x86 and is a mess of legacy and semi-deprecated APIs. Too much backwards compatibility is as bad as too little.
- 1123581321 4y ago
  On the other hand, trust in a random Windows download on the Internet is low, and the Microsoft Store engages in app curation.
  - hedora 4y ago
    I haven't had this experience at all. I've never had trouble finding reputable sources of windows software online, nor have I used the Microsoft store. (Windows user on and off from win 3.1 to 8)
    - 1123581321 4y ago
      That is different from whether an average user would find a random piece of software trustworthy. I also have used Windows for decades and know where to look and how to tell if something is trustworthy. App stores are about expanding willingness to download and try software far beyond people like you and me.
Hammershaft 4y ago
> The market right now is absolutely flooded with indie games, some light pruning is probably for the best. By arbitrarily removing perfectly working older games? This is why indie devs such as Vlambeer that used to make quality mobile games now avoid ios and android like the plague. https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-google-game-dev-problems-1203191551/ https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-g... The result of this is mobile games require significantly more upkeep then games on PC or consoles, and as a result the only games that are profitable in the long run are those that exploit their users with f2p microtransactions. The end result of this is the sea of uninspired exploitative trash that makes up the games market on ios and android.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  Yes, this is exactly right. And it doesn't make sense for games that have no online component (like those made by Vlambeer) to need updating for security/privacy reasons. Apple consistently misses the mark on what makes a platform good for games and then makes empty promises about "getting serious about gaming".
- andai 4y ago
  >Ismail said that either Apple has to start designing for backward compatibility support on their end or that people are going to have to get used to the idea of games dying and disappearing.
  - noobermin 4y ago
    Not sure why you're being downvoted because that is the expectation, and honestly, it's fine for people who are software developers and not users because it guarentees they'll always have jobs.
poisonborz 4y ago
Just imagine this requirement on any other operating system.
kitsunesoba 4y ago
As a dev myself, I agree. You can’t really expect to just toss a binary over the wall and forget about the project for the next decade. Software is an ongoing commitment and periodic recompiles and fixes should factor into architecture and planning. Some decisions early on can save you a lot of pain. For instance, building your app with stock UI widgets to the greatest extent possible and limiting custom widgets and third party stuff to a minimum goes a LONG way for making your apps weather new OS versions better. These days my UIKit apps only need a handful of minor changes when a new OS version is released, making them trivial to maintain. Choosing Unity was a big part of the problem in this case because Unity is terrible about maintaining particular versions of their engines over time. Devs need to start dumping Unity over this, because it’s the only way that Unity is ever going to fix it.
- howinteresting 4y ago
  This is simply false. Some software is an ongoing commitment. Other software can just be done and never need to be updated. An indie game with no online component falls squarely in the latter bucket.
- MattRix 4y ago
  Worth noting that Unity now has a system of maintaining LTS versions of each of their major yearly releases. They’re doing a LOT of stuff wrong these days but at least they’ve improved on that front.
- hedora 4y ago
  I build my software to last. Almost no one else seems to care, but I am too stubborn and lazy to do it any other way.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  > You can’t really expect to just toss a binary over the wall and forget about the project for the next decade. Auugghh! This is the wrongest thing I’ve read on HN since 2021 COVID threads. Sorry you get the distinction! Software absolutely should keep working as it did the first day it was released. The binary is the same, no cosmic rays have flipped any bits, so why should it stop executing exactly the same, but for a deliberate choice made by the platform to break backwards compatibility? This idea that software should have to get recompiled over and over with the latest SDK simply to keep doing the same thing is maybe the worst idea ever thought of in software: and Apple leads the charge.

gcheong 4y ago

If they actually gave any indication of what exactly they think needs to be updated other than the age of the app I would tend to agree but if an app is considered complete and running fine on current devices then it’s not abandonware.

gameswithgo 4y ago

Aulig 4y ago

iOS and Android usually have perfect backwards compatibility, so there's no technical reason to require a new build. The apps work perfectly fine on new devices automatically.

scarface74 4y ago
iOS does not have “perfect backward compatibility”.

Tams80 4y ago

I hope that boot's tasty.

seba_dos1 4y ago

> then your business model is not sustainable As if that was the concern there at all. Most people who publish free games consider them "art", not "business model".

freeone3000 4y ago

What is "abandonware"? Software does not have an expiration date. If it runs, if it does everything it does originally, I don't see the point for "patching support" for the sake of it.

scarface74 4y ago
Apple removed all support for 32 bit code from the hardware that’s one thing. But even more recently, there were deprecated APIs that eventually Apple stopped supporting.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  Of course these are deliberate (and awful) policies that Apple is entirely in control of. Software doesn’t rot: operating systems deliberately choose to break backwards compatibility and their vendors deliberately choose to simply deem old software as too old.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Apple removed hardware support for 32 bit apps on ARM. Should Apple have wasted the die space instead of using it for new features? Have you read “The Old New Thing” Microsoft blog? There are all sort of special case hacks in Windows just to keep one version of one third party app running. Should Apple also have kept shipping its 68K emulator from 1994 in its 2022 ARM Macs?
    - _v7gu 4y ago
      Yes.

Siira 4y ago

Excellent logic for a curation platform. Unfortunately, the App Store is a monopoly on app distribution, not a curation platform.

wodenokoto 4y ago

Why should I lose access to an app I’ve potentially paid for and enjoy just because someone else don’t have time to do a specific dance dictated by Apple?

logicalmonster 4y ago

How about using the carrot and not the stick? If you say something like “apps that are recently updated and using all of the latest APIs should be ranked higher within Apple’s search algorithm and recommendations”, that would make quite a bit of sense to me as an incentive to keep development and progress moving forward with all of the updated tech. But it makes no sense to force devs to expend the effort to recompile and update an App just for the sake of staying on a store if everything is already working perfectly as intended with no security issues. This is especially a crap deal for small developers without endless resources to continuously be working on rebuilding and retooling projects just for the sake of Apple’s inability to do search and discovery well.

ianlevesque 4y ago
A lot of the comments here are focusing on indie developers, but honestly the worst offenders are huge companies that aren't focused on software, like HVAC, IoT, automotive. They'll hire out a subcontractor once to throw an app over the fence and let it rot. There's no market pressure up front when you are buying a washing machine to evaluate the support model for the companion apps, so this isn't a problem that solves itself. Apple has now forced these companies to maintain their stuff, and the market will be better off for it.
- noobermin 4y ago
  I somehow can't believe Apple cares that much about either group, regardless of who in some manufactured statistical methodology you feel is the "worst offender." This has more to do with control than anything else, because I am unable to imagine a better fitting explanation. May be the "why" isn't really what you were addressing with your comment, but if it was, this can't be a "why."
- tempnow987 4y ago
  No kidding. I still kick myself for a few things I bought with these types of apps (they become unusable). Ugh, you really need to buy from major vendors. Ie, a dash cam with a partial app from 6 years ago never update, lots of bugs. IoT is horrible as well. HVAC I got luckyish so far by going with Samsung (app works OK in my view).

Hackbraten 4y ago

Older games sell a lot worse than freshly released ones. Non-game apps somewhat depend on freshness too, but I’d guess not so heavily. That would make ongoing maintenance more expensive for games than for other apps. Maybe Apple should honor that and allow more slack for games.

ipaddr 4y ago
Older games have reviews from outside of the app store, friends recommendations and brand awareness. Freshness is important to one category of user, older brands another.

layer8 4y ago

If people are still downloading and using an app, that should be reason enough to keep it. I would understand removing apps that virtually no one has downloaded, and also actually used, in the past two years. This may conceivably have even been the case here, but then Apple should communicate exactly that.

com2kid 4y ago

Removing by sale / usage rate might be fair. No one opened your app in 2 years? It gets the boot. If an app is still actively being used, removing it hurts developers and users! I have apps on my Android phone that haven't been updated in years. They work just fine. Heck on my MacBook I use an app that wad last updated in 2016 or so, and I consider it a vital pri0 part of my daily workflow!

noobermin 4y ago
I want to give Apple the benefit of the doubt and assume they, some of the brightest minds in the world wouldn't have thought of it (and it's possible), but the fact they didn't and chose to do it by update implies they are intending to force people to use their new APIs for that reason for the most part.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  "Some of the brightest minds in the world" also leave up obvious scams[1] until the media reports on them. Perhaps competent App Store curation is just not a priority. [1] https://boisefoundry.com/scam-apps-on-apples-macos-app-store-wont-let-you-quit-until-you-pay/ https://boisefoundry.com/scam-apps-on-apples-macos-app-store...

brundolf 4y ago

Games in particular usually don't use a lot of system UIs or other integrations (and so are less likely to break or visibly age), are often developed on a shoestring budget (so developers will have less time and resources to keep updating them over time), and have artistic value. Kicking them off the only store on a closed platform is erasure of artistic history. It's doubly insulting when they still work perfectly without modification. For comparison: I've never heard of a game getting kicked off of a console's store because of a "lack of updates". The stores themselves usually shut down eventually - which is its own problem - but at least there's a reasonable business argument for why the company can't be expected to offer that service indefinitely.

scarface74 4y ago
And consoles only change hardware or operating systems once every six or seven years.
- brundolf 4y ago
  And the store usually stays online for another 3-4 years after the console's successor has come out
  - hedora 4y ago
    And, then, after a few years, emulators become available. I just realized all but one of the ps2 games in my closet (not counting Dance Dance Revolution, for lack of a controller pad) appear to run fine on my phone. It's a good thing I don't care for online gaming!
  - scarface74 4y ago
    And the App Store still works on a 1st gen iPad from 2010 running iOS 5. As of a couple of years ago, I was able to restore my old one and re download the “last compatible version” of Netflix, Crackle and Plex. There are plenty of old 32 but apps that are “unavailable” in the App Store that are still available to older devices. Apple explicitly said that the authors app would still be available to people who already owned it.

Asooka 4y ago

Microsoft somehow manage to maintain backwards compatibility for much longer than two years.

threeseed 4y ago
Windows only really works on x86 and is a mess of legacy and semi-deprecated APIs. Too much backwards compatibility is as bad as too little.
1123581321 4y ago
On the other hand, trust in a random Windows download on the Internet is low, and the Microsoft Store engages in app curation.
- hedora 4y ago
  I haven't had this experience at all. I've never had trouble finding reputable sources of windows software online, nor have I used the Microsoft store. (Windows user on and off from win 3.1 to 8)
  - 1123581321 4y ago
    That is different from whether an average user would find a random piece of software trustworthy. I also have used Windows for decades and know where to look and how to tell if something is trustworthy. App stores are about expanding willingness to download and try software far beyond people like you and me.

Hammershaft 4y ago

> The market right now is absolutely flooded with indie games, some light pruning is probably for the best. By arbitrarily removing perfectly working older games? This is why indie devs such as Vlambeer that used to make quality mobile games now avoid ios and android like the plague. https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-google-game-dev-problems-1203191551/ https://variety.com/2019/gaming/features/android-ios-apple-g... The result of this is mobile games require significantly more upkeep then games on PC or consoles, and as a result the only games that are profitable in the long run are those that exploit their users with f2p microtransactions. The end result of this is the sea of uninspired exploitative trash that makes up the games market on ios and android.

AlexandrB 4y ago
Yes, this is exactly right. And it doesn't make sense for games that have no online component (like those made by Vlambeer) to need updating for security/privacy reasons. Apple consistently misses the mark on what makes a platform good for games and then makes empty promises about "getting serious about gaming".
andai 4y ago
>Ismail said that either Apple has to start designing for backward compatibility support on their end or that people are going to have to get used to the idea of games dying and disappearing.
- noobermin 4y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted because that is the expectation, and honestly, it's fine for people who are software developers and not users because it guarentees they'll always have jobs.

poisonborz 4y ago

Just imagine this requirement on any other operating system.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

As a dev myself, I agree. You can’t really expect to just toss a binary over the wall and forget about the project for the next decade. Software is an ongoing commitment and periodic recompiles and fixes should factor into architecture and planning. Some decisions early on can save you a lot of pain. For instance, building your app with stock UI widgets to the greatest extent possible and limiting custom widgets and third party stuff to a minimum goes a LONG way for making your apps weather new OS versions better. These days my UIKit apps only need a handful of minor changes when a new OS version is released, making them trivial to maintain. Choosing Unity was a big part of the problem in this case because Unity is terrible about maintaining particular versions of their engines over time. Devs need to start dumping Unity over this, because it’s the only way that Unity is ever going to fix it.

howinteresting 4y ago
This is simply false. Some software is an ongoing commitment. Other software can just be done and never need to be updated. An indie game with no online component falls squarely in the latter bucket.
MattRix 4y ago
Worth noting that Unity now has a system of maintaining LTS versions of each of their major yearly releases. They’re doing a LOT of stuff wrong these days but at least they’ve improved on that front.
hedora 4y ago
I build my software to last. Almost no one else seems to care, but I am too stubborn and lazy to do it any other way.
ryandrake 4y ago
> You can’t really expect to just toss a binary over the wall and forget about the project for the next decade. Auugghh! This is the wrongest thing I’ve read on HN since 2021 COVID threads. Sorry you get the distinction! Software absolutely should keep working as it did the first day it was released. The binary is the same, no cosmic rays have flipped any bits, so why should it stop executing exactly the same, but for a deliberate choice made by the platform to break backwards compatibility? This idea that software should have to get recompiled over and over with the latest SDK simply to keep doing the same thing is maybe the worst idea ever thought of in software: and Apple leads the charge.