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> And even if you don’t want to update the app, Google will eventually start hiding apps from users if the app doesn’t target some minimum API version. This mea

> And even if you don’t want to update the app, Google will eventually start hiding apps from users if the app doesn’t target some minimum API version. This means you can’t just publish an app and leave it at that; it’s several days of work per app per year to keep up with the latest rug-pulls from Google. That's something I just can't understand. If the old API is insecure or whatever, then surely the OS can put some sort of a secure emulator sandbox around old apps. You can run 35 years old NES games but not a 5 years old app? This doesn't make sense. I never particularly liked Microsoft but userspace compatibility is something they got right and Google got wrong.

johnnyanmac 2y ago
>I never particularly liked Microsoft but userspace compatibility is something they got right and Google got wrong. they both have their ups and downs. Windows 11 still has parts of the base OS that feel like they never updated from XP. and I'm sure there's a lot of legacy cruft that ultimately slows down the boot process or many low level OS management. you add a .lot of cruft to make sure you can support 30+ years of legacy software.
lynx23 2y ago
All the smartphone vendors do that. I have lost several iOS apps I once bought, because the developer chased to regularily update his app, which eventually killed it.
- fsflover 2y ago
  > All the smartphone vendors do that. Except those selling GNU/Linux phones running desktop operating systems. Sent from my Librem 5.
  - stackghost 2y ago
    I don't think the Librem 5 is good enough at being a phone to be properly referred to as a phone.
    - fsflover 2y ago
      It depends on your needs. Far from an iPhone but good enough to be my daily driver.
      - exe34 2y ago
        yes, my needs for a phone includes phonecalls and 5G. it's quite a niche to be fair.
        fsflover 2y ago
        Phone calls are basically flawless on the Librem at this point. 5G is indeed lacking.
      - stackghost 2y ago
        How's the battery management these days?
        fsflover 2y ago
        One day in suspend and 4-5 hours screen time. Not much, but usable. Also the battery is replaceable without tools.
theshrike79 2y ago
NES hasn't been updated and upgraded 35 times after the game has been released. That's the difference. It doesn't make sense to keep supporting APIs only a fraction of the user base needs, progress means leaving some users behind.
- bad_user 2y ago
  If apps get removed from the store as a consequence, that's going to be many more users left behind. It's been mentioned time and time again, but it's worth mentioning again — Windows maintaining backwards compatibility is what maintained its hegemony, as compared to it, Linux and macOS look like hobby projects. For the young as well, because games still run on it, without worrying that Apple will invalidate their library due to not being in the mood to maintain 32-bits APIs.
  - rini17 2y ago
    Because MS sells to business. They never hesitated to break compatibility to developers and non-commercial users if it won't affect business.
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    The US Navy was paying $9M to keep Windows XP updated and patched just for them.[0] I bet if you pay Apple similar amounts of money per year, they'll keep specific APIs available just for you. And it's not like updating the app to a new iOS version is a massive undertaking, in most cases it's just a matter of opening the project in XCode, adjusting the OS version, compiling and publishing it again. [0] https://money.cnn.com/2015/06/26/technology/microsoft-windows-xp-navy-contract/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2015/06/26/technology/microsoft-window...
    - bad_user 2y ago
      I can't speak about iOS, but when I open Steam on macOS, I see more than 2/3 of my library unavailable since macOS Catalina, which entirely ruined macOS for gaming for me. Clearly, updating those wasn't so simple. And also, it's unreasonable to expect all software projects to need updates, forever. My hammer doesn't need updates.
aniviacat 2y ago
Take for example an old gallery app that request complete file access. Now the new API adds fine-grained access and removes complete access. What are they gonna do? Give the old gallery app fake file access, making it completely useless? This would make for a very bad user experience. It works for emulators, because noone expects emulators to be well integrated with the system. But it doesn't work for native apps. Many features cannot be preserved. They could preserve some features, but doing so would result in some weird 50% support for old APIs, which wouldn't be great either. In my view, dropping old APIs entirely makes sense. > I never particularly liked Microsoft but userspace compatibility is something they got right With the result of having absolutely zero sandboxing.
- slau 2y ago
  Doesn't the operating system show you a prompt to show which files you want to give the app access to? From the app's perspective, nothing has changed. It gets a handle to a directory and can list files in it. Whether that directory contains 1 or 10000 items makes no difference. Just to be clear: I don't disagree with you. I think it's completely normal to have APIs be deprecated, and this means eventually your app will break and be removed from the store. I just don't think this specific example was entirely justified.
  - aniviacat 2y ago
    Yeah, good point. I actually use GrapheneOS which does exactly that. I don't know why I didn't think of it.
  - ristos 2y ago
    Deprecating an API doesn't mean you have to break work already done. It can just mean that _newer_ apps can't use the deprecated API.
- ristos 2y ago
  > Now the new API adds fine-grained access and removes complete access. > What are they gonna do? Give the old gallery app fake file access, making it completely useless? Can you elaborate on your example here? Couldn't they just do something like replace oldGalleryAppOpensOrWritesToAnyPlace() to askPermissionsForWhichFilesAndFoldersCanBeWrittenTo() or ifSensitiveDirIsNoLongerAccessibleAskPermissionOnWhichFolderToUseForCompat() ?
raincole 2y ago
> You can run 35 years old NES games but not a 5 years old app? This doesn't make sense If you are willing to fill your phone with emulators of every single version of Android, then yes, you can run any old app. This is how we run 35 years old NES games.
- ristos 2y ago
  Would you need every single version of Android? or just a much thinner compatibility layer for deprecated APIs? Newer apps wouldn't be able to use the deprecated API but older apps don't just disappear either
  - raincole 2y ago
    You can (in some cases), but it's completely unrelated to "we can run 35 years old NES games".
    - alexey-salmin 2y ago
      It's all related. Emulation, compatibility and compatibility-through-emulation are very old and well-studied topics. The reason why it's not present on Android is because Google doesn't want to, not because they can't.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago
        >The reason why it's not present on Android is because Google doesn't want to, not because they can't. Sad as it may be, I imagine that lack of desire also comes from consumer demand. Most people don't care about running those 15 year old games, so what's the motivation? For archival's sake, you should be able to seek old APKs and run older ROMS through an android emulator. So the minority of those who care have options.
- eviks 2y ago
  Even if emulator was the only option, why would you need every single version instead of a few old ones that those older apps use?
herbst 2y ago
I always assumed that's their algorithm mostly and not related to the API levels. Apps that stand out most when you open the play store now are often these with heavily inflated user numbers through scummy ads or practice.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

>I never particularly liked Microsoft but userspace compatibility is something they got right and Google got wrong. they both have their ups and downs. Windows 11 still has parts of the base OS that feel like they never updated from XP. and I'm sure there's a lot of legacy cruft that ultimately slows down the boot process or many low level OS management. you add a .lot of cruft to make sure you can support 30+ years of legacy software.

lynx23 2y ago

All the smartphone vendors do that. I have lost several iOS apps I once bought, because the developer chased to regularily update his app, which eventually killed it.

fsflover 2y ago
> All the smartphone vendors do that. Except those selling GNU/Linux phones running desktop operating systems. Sent from my Librem 5.
- stackghost 2y ago
  I don't think the Librem 5 is good enough at being a phone to be properly referred to as a phone.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    It depends on your needs. Far from an iPhone but good enough to be my daily driver.
    - exe34 2y ago
      yes, my needs for a phone includes phonecalls and 5G. it's quite a niche to be fair.
      - fsflover 2y ago
        Phone calls are basically flawless on the Librem at this point. 5G is indeed lacking.
    - stackghost 2y ago
      How's the battery management these days?
      - fsflover 2y ago
        One day in suspend and 4-5 hours screen time. Not much, but usable. Also the battery is replaceable without tools.

theshrike79 2y ago

NES hasn't been updated and upgraded 35 times after the game has been released. That's the difference. It doesn't make sense to keep supporting APIs only a fraction of the user base needs, progress means leaving some users behind.

bad_user 2y ago
If apps get removed from the store as a consequence, that's going to be many more users left behind. It's been mentioned time and time again, but it's worth mentioning again — Windows maintaining backwards compatibility is what maintained its hegemony, as compared to it, Linux and macOS look like hobby projects. For the young as well, because games still run on it, without worrying that Apple will invalidate their library due to not being in the mood to maintain 32-bits APIs.
- rini17 2y ago
  Because MS sells to business. They never hesitated to break compatibility to developers and non-commercial users if it won't affect business.
- theshrike79 2y ago
  The US Navy was paying $9M to keep Windows XP updated and patched just for them.[0] I bet if you pay Apple similar amounts of money per year, they'll keep specific APIs available just for you. And it's not like updating the app to a new iOS version is a massive undertaking, in most cases it's just a matter of opening the project in XCode, adjusting the OS version, compiling and publishing it again. [0] https://money.cnn.com/2015/06/26/technology/microsoft-windows-xp-navy-contract/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2015/06/26/technology/microsoft-window...
  - bad_user 2y ago
    I can't speak about iOS, but when I open Steam on macOS, I see more than 2/3 of my library unavailable since macOS Catalina, which entirely ruined macOS for gaming for me. Clearly, updating those wasn't so simple. And also, it's unreasonable to expect all software projects to need updates, forever. My hammer doesn't need updates.

aniviacat 2y ago

Take for example an old gallery app that request complete file access. Now the new API adds fine-grained access and removes complete access. What are they gonna do? Give the old gallery app fake file access, making it completely useless? This would make for a very bad user experience. It works for emulators, because noone expects emulators to be well integrated with the system. But it doesn't work for native apps. Many features cannot be preserved. They could preserve some features, but doing so would result in some weird 50% support for old APIs, which wouldn't be great either. In my view, dropping old APIs entirely makes sense. > I never particularly liked Microsoft but userspace compatibility is something they got right With the result of having absolutely zero sandboxing.

slau 2y ago
Doesn't the operating system show you a prompt to show which files you want to give the app access to? From the app's perspective, nothing has changed. It gets a handle to a directory and can list files in it. Whether that directory contains 1 or 10000 items makes no difference. Just to be clear: I don't disagree with you. I think it's completely normal to have APIs be deprecated, and this means eventually your app will break and be removed from the store. I just don't think this specific example was entirely justified.
- aniviacat 2y ago
  Yeah, good point. I actually use GrapheneOS which does exactly that. I don't know why I didn't think of it.
- ristos 2y ago
  Deprecating an API doesn't mean you have to break work already done. It can just mean that _newer_ apps can't use the deprecated API.
ristos 2y ago
> Now the new API adds fine-grained access and removes complete access. > What are they gonna do? Give the old gallery app fake file access, making it completely useless? Can you elaborate on your example here? Couldn't they just do something like replace oldGalleryAppOpensOrWritesToAnyPlace() to askPermissionsForWhichFilesAndFoldersCanBeWrittenTo() or ifSensitiveDirIsNoLongerAccessibleAskPermissionOnWhichFolderToUseForCompat() ?

raincole 2y ago

> You can run 35 years old NES games but not a 5 years old app? This doesn't make sense If you are willing to fill your phone with emulators of every single version of Android, then yes, you can run any old app. This is how we run 35 years old NES games.

ristos 2y ago
Would you need every single version of Android? or just a much thinner compatibility layer for deprecated APIs? Newer apps wouldn't be able to use the deprecated API but older apps don't just disappear either
- raincole 2y ago
  You can (in some cases), but it's completely unrelated to "we can run 35 years old NES games".
  - alexey-salmin 2y ago
    It's all related. Emulation, compatibility and compatibility-through-emulation are very old and well-studied topics. The reason why it's not present on Android is because Google doesn't want to, not because they can't.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago
      >The reason why it's not present on Android is because Google doesn't want to, not because they can't. Sad as it may be, I imagine that lack of desire also comes from consumer demand. Most people don't care about running those 15 year old games, so what's the motivation? For archival's sake, you should be able to seek old APKs and run older ROMS through an android emulator. So the minority of those who care have options.
eviks 2y ago
Even if emulator was the only option, why would you need every single version instead of a few old ones that those older apps use?

herbst 2y ago

I always assumed that's their algorithm mostly and not related to the API levels. Apps that stand out most when you open the play store now are often these with heavily inflated user numbers through scummy ads or practice.