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Very true. Apple has removed several of my games (all working perfectly fine) because, well, they felt like it: > Since this app hasn’t been updated within the

Very true. Apple has removed several of my games (all working perfectly fine) because, well, they felt like it: > Since this app hasn’t been updated within the last three years [...] it has been removed from the App Store

musicale 4y ago
I hate this. I don't think it's the right approach to improving search and discoverability in the app store. (My personal suggestion for instantly improving it 100% would be removing ads that eat up the first half-screen of search results on an iPhone.) I also greatly dislike how iOS takes the backwards approach of offloading backward compatibility as a yearly support burden multiplied across every developer - rather than maintaining it in the OS. Platforms are supposed to absorb developer pain for multiplicative benefit - not the other way around.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  As a developer I’m not sure that I agree. Some degree of backwards compatibility is good, but it quickly becomes an unwieldy burden that acts as a ball and chain on the development of the OS and platform toolkit. Among modern operating systems, iOS is probably the worst in terms of backwards compatibility but it’s also one of the most pleasant to develop for — UIKit/Cocoa is unrivaled in terms of both breadth and depth. One can easily build a top class iOS app with few or no third party dependencies, which is not the case on most other platforms. I don’t think that’s a coincidence… if the iOS dev team were encumbered with maintaining backwards compatibility for upwards of a decade it would be much more difficult to build such a complete and polished toolkit.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    If iOS had versioned libraries and separate teams maintaining the older branches, would that really impede the modern toolkit? I realize that expanding the scope of a project by adding more developers isn't as simple as it seems, but I feel like there ought to be an organizational/development structure that could make this work. I wouldn't even be opposed to older apps running in some sort of seamless-to-the-user virtual machine.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
pram 4y ago
Yeah this is insane. I bought Sonic CD and Sim Tower for iOS years ago and they're both just completely gone. Not listed, impossible to install. I'm never buying a mobile game again. It blows my goddamn mind.

musicale 4y ago

I hate this. I don't think it's the right approach to improving search and discoverability in the app store. (My personal suggestion for instantly improving it 100% would be removing ads that eat up the first half-screen of search results on an iPhone.) I also greatly dislike how iOS takes the backwards approach of offloading backward compatibility as a yearly support burden multiplied across every developer - rather than maintaining it in the OS. Platforms are supposed to absorb developer pain for multiplicative benefit - not the other way around.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
As a developer I’m not sure that I agree. Some degree of backwards compatibility is good, but it quickly becomes an unwieldy burden that acts as a ball and chain on the development of the OS and platform toolkit. Among modern operating systems, iOS is probably the worst in terms of backwards compatibility but it’s also one of the most pleasant to develop for — UIKit/Cocoa is unrivaled in terms of both breadth and depth. One can easily build a top class iOS app with few or no third party dependencies, which is not the case on most other platforms. I don’t think that’s a coincidence… if the iOS dev team were encumbered with maintaining backwards compatibility for upwards of a decade it would be much more difficult to build such a complete and polished toolkit.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  If iOS had versioned libraries and separate teams maintaining the older branches, would that really impede the modern toolkit? I realize that expanding the scope of a project by adding more developers isn't as simple as it seems, but I feel like there ought to be an organizational/development structure that could make this work. I wouldn't even be opposed to older apps running in some sort of seamless-to-the-user virtual machine.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

pram 4y ago

Yeah this is insane. I bought Sonic CD and Sim Tower for iOS years ago and they're both just completely gone. Not listed, impossible to install. I'm never buying a mobile game again. It blows my goddamn mind.