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Apps that are broken because of API changes eventually cull themselves too, but much more messily. Especially so when Apple runs the storefront and at some poin

Apps that are broken because of API changes eventually cull themselves too, but much more messily. Especially so when Apple runs the storefront and at some point touches every return - most especially when the original dev is gone or doesn't answer support requests and process refunds, and Apple is the only recourse. I don't know that I'd do it quite this way if it was my call to make, but I don't know what it's like to run the iOS app store, either. Presumably from that perspective this is likely to solve more problems than it creates. Maybe whoever made the decision is wrong about that, but are they more likely to be wrong than I am, with my more or less maximally uninformed perspective on how best to run the business they are actually running? > Between Windows 95 and Windows 7 Windows 7 hit RTM in 2009. > This narrative bothers me because it conflates API support and UI consistency That's sort of fair, I think, but I don't run the Windows 10 or 11 kernel and libraries alone in a headless install; I'm stuck with their godawful UI, too. And their intolerable update scheme, as biddable as a cat but offering far less to make up for it. And WSL2, which is a shiny new wrapper over precisely the same experience I daily had with Virtualbox in 2008 - except where it somehow manages not to be as good. Others can go on, I'm sure, but I can't because that was as far as I got before I gave up and got a Mac Mini to do that work on instead. I'll grant that the back compat counts for something, sure. I've worked with lots of folks in other engineering disciplines who care a lot about it because they really do still use software from 2002 - usually with hardware that's even older. Does it count for as much as every Windows user seems to have to pay for it? That I'm not so sure about. I'll grant, too, that WSL2 makes web development a lot more accessible to a lot more people than ever before, especially folks who are just starting and benefit most from being met where they are. No matter how lacking in comfort I personally may find the way they go about it, I wouldn't give that expansion of access up for anything. But no one I know who uses Windows 10 likes it - and I'm not a member of Silicon Valley-style or any other monoculture, so that "no one" actually counts for something when I say it, and it really is no one. Ultimately, for most such folks I've talked with about this, their reasons are mostly similar to mine, or at least overlapping. I think I have some sense of why that is, and I've explained my view, but maybe I'm wrong about it; I don't suppose I really know that much more about the Windows business's culture than I do that of the App Store. Could be they know exactly what they're doing, but it sure doesn't look that way to me.

pjerem 5y ago
> I don't know that I'd do it quite this way if it was my call to make, but I don't know what it's like to run the iOS app store, either. Presumably from that perspective this is likely to solve more problems than it creates. In pretty much every topic about the App Store, I feel like we a always converge to the same issue : yes Apple is forced to do things (like remove old apps or comply to authoritarian governments) but they put themselves in those situations because they don’t want to lose control over app installation on iOS devices. On Windows, Microsoft could remove an app for any reason they would : there would be minimal impact on users and developers. Developers could choose to update their apps (to comply to new APIs if necessary) or to let them as abandonware for anyone to rediscover them in decades, even if it means some hacking or restoring an old environment : it’s technically doable. When Apple removes your app from the App Store, it’s gone basically forever.
- throwanem 5y ago
  That's essentially true, and it is a real tradeoff. Which side of it is worth more to a given person is probably more of a value judgment than anything, I suspect.

pjerem 5y ago

> I don't know that I'd do it quite this way if it was my call to make, but I don't know what it's like to run the iOS app store, either. Presumably from that perspective this is likely to solve more problems than it creates. In pretty much every topic about the App Store, I feel like we a always converge to the same issue : yes Apple is forced to do things (like remove old apps or comply to authoritarian governments) but they put themselves in those situations because they don’t want to lose control over app installation on iOS devices. On Windows, Microsoft could remove an app for any reason they would : there would be minimal impact on users and developers. Developers could choose to update their apps (to comply to new APIs if necessary) or to let them as abandonware for anyone to rediscover them in decades, even if it means some hacking or restoring an old environment : it’s technically doable. When Apple removes your app from the App Store, it’s gone basically forever.

throwanem 5y ago
That's essentially true, and it is a real tradeoff. Which side of it is worth more to a given person is probably more of a value judgment than anything, I suspect.