Devs Explain Why Forced Updates Are A Preservation Nightmare
May 7, 2022 9:04 AM Subscribe
I mean, this is just the Silicon Valley mindset in a nutshell, right? Everything old is broken and needs to be replaced by shiny new things, preferably with a subscription model attached?
It's always Year Zero at1 Infinite Loop One Apple Park Way.
Apple makes zero dollars on free stuff
Even that isn't totally true-- the free games make their core business (hardware) more attractive by having a rich ecosystem of software.
posted by gwint at 9:25 AM on May 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
It's always Year Zero at
Apple makes zero dollars on free stuff
Even that isn't totally true-- the free games make their core business (hardware) more attractive by having a rich ecosystem of software.
posted by gwint at 9:25 AM on May 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
I think it’s fine. A lot of these aren’t being updated and some of the biggest complainers admit that some of the apps depend on internet based frameworks and just don’t work anymore.
Nothing is stopping them from preserving this internally, but there is no reason why Apple and Google (which has similar requirements) should host things that are broken.
This is another good article on the topic: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/04/apple-moves-to-delist-older-app-store-apps-frustrating-developers/
posted by jmauro at 9:26 AM on May 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
Nothing is stopping them from preserving this internally, but there is no reason why Apple and Google (which has similar requirements) should host things that are broken.
This is another good article on the topic: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/04/apple-moves-to-delist-older-app-store-apps-frustrating-developers/
posted by jmauro at 9:26 AM on May 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
Apple makes zero dollars on free stuff
Doesn't it charge a $99 annual fee to be listed in the app store?
posted by trig at 9:34 AM on May 7, 2022 [10 favorites]
Doesn't it charge a $99 annual fee to be listed in the app store?
posted by trig at 9:34 AM on May 7, 2022 [10 favorites]
Couldn't you just write a script to change a line of code that's commented out that says "this is the new version" with today's date send that into Apple every 3 months?
posted by nushustu at 9:47 AM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by nushustu at 9:47 AM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
It is an absolute nightmare to try and ship a cross-platform product on IOS. XCode has a lot of problems and crashes often (or did when I last tried a year ago), and Apple constantly changes the code signing/security policies so whatever process you used 6 months ago probably won't work today. And any new submissions to the store need to use all the new policies and libraries. This isn't a big problem if you're developing multiple pieces of software for IOS because you would be working natively in that ecosystem, but if you just have one old game to maintain it is very difficult
On something like Steam, publishing an update to an old game is pretty easy as long as your have your original build system setup on an old PC or VM, but publishing an update for many of these old pieces of IOS software is impossible without breaking compatibility for older devices because Apple's policies have changed to require newer versions of libraries/etc. Policies like this are ultimately detrimental to Apple, I would never work on a piece of IOS software at this point unless it was directly funded by Apple (which many IOS games are)
My suspicion is the goal of this is twofold: To force consumers to update to a new IOS device because all of the software they depend on has been removed from the store, and to head off security issues with the older versions of IOS and the libraries these programs are using.
posted by JZig at 9:49 AM on May 7, 2022 [12 favorites]
On something like Steam, publishing an update to an old game is pretty easy as long as your have your original build system setup on an old PC or VM, but publishing an update for many of these old pieces of IOS software is impossible without breaking compatibility for older devices because Apple's policies have changed to require newer versions of libraries/etc. Policies like this are ultimately detrimental to Apple, I would never work on a piece of IOS software at this point unless it was directly funded by Apple (which many IOS games are)
My suspicion is the goal of this is twofold: To force consumers to update to a new IOS device because all of the software they depend on has been removed from the store, and to head off security issues with the older versions of IOS and the libraries these programs are using.
posted by JZig at 9:49 AM on May 7, 2022 [12 favorites]
(Obviously, my idea above is to update games that don't need to change anything for updated operating systems. If the game isn't going to run on more modern operating systems without major updates, I don't know what to tell you. This is the very nature of software. It's not a bug, it's a feature.)
posted by nushustu at 9:50 AM on May 7, 2022
posted by nushustu at 9:50 AM on May 7, 2022
host things that are broken
Removing broken apps is fine. Removing apps just because they are old or don't get many downloads is not. It is retroactively changing the rules of the platform.
...send that into Apple every 3 months
Even if this were a trivial thing to do (it isn't because trying to recompile old apps with the latest Apple SDK with the latest version of XCode is often a lot of work) it is still an unfair burden on developers.
This is the very nature of software
Tell that to the 50 year old software that runs your bank. Not supporting old software is not some immutable rule of the universe, it's a culture of a subset of companies.
I mean, seriously, we've got everything backwards. I want to be able to have my personal information disappear after a certain amount of time, but the software I've purchased to work for as long as possible.
posted by gwint at 9:55 AM on May 7, 2022 [67 favorites]
Removing broken apps is fine. Removing apps just because they are old or don't get many downloads is not. It is retroactively changing the rules of the platform.
...send that into Apple every 3 months
Even if this were a trivial thing to do (it isn't because trying to recompile old apps with the latest Apple SDK with the latest version of XCode is often a lot of work) it is still an unfair burden on developers.
This is the very nature of software
Tell that to the 50 year old software that runs your bank. Not supporting old software is not some immutable rule of the universe, it's a culture of a subset of companies.
I mean, seriously, we've got everything backwards. I want to be able to have my personal information disappear after a certain amount of time, but the software I've purchased to work for as long as possible.
posted by gwint at 9:55 AM on May 7, 2022 [67 favorites]
Tell that to the 50 year old software that runs your bank. Not supporting old software is not some immutable rule of the universe, it's a culture of a subset of companies.
This isn't really a fair comparison. There's all sorts of old software running incredibly important things, often on long-discontinued hardware. And everyone who's doing that is a) paying a bunch of money to keep it going (see the job security and pay of COBOL programmers) and b) bearing the consequences of not having budgeted/planned for the future, whether that's migrating to newer infrastructure themselves or attempting to pressure their suppliers to stop using fucking Windows 95 for critical machinery. (And yeah, some small manufacturing businesses are just screwed on that front. They don't have the leverage to force the suppliers upstream from them to offer something not on Windows 95 or XP, with concomitant security holes.)
posted by hoyland at 10:03 AM on May 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
This isn't really a fair comparison. There's all sorts of old software running incredibly important things, often on long-discontinued hardware. And everyone who's doing that is a) paying a bunch of money to keep it going (see the job security and pay of COBOL programmers) and b) bearing the consequences of not having budgeted/planned for the future, whether that's migrating to newer infrastructure themselves or attempting to pressure their suppliers to stop using fucking Windows 95 for critical machinery. (And yeah, some small manufacturing businesses are just screwed on that front. They don't have the leverage to force the suppliers upstream from them to offer something not on Windows 95 or XP, with concomitant security holes.)
posted by hoyland at 10:03 AM on May 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
tl;dr consumers are not banks
posted by hoyland at 10:05 AM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by hoyland at 10:05 AM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
a) paying a bunch of money to keep it going (see the job security and pay of COBOL programmers) and b) bearing the consequences of not having budgeted/planned for the future, whether that's migrating to newer infrastructure themselves or attempting to pressure their suppliers to stop using fucking Windows 95 for critical machinery.
I don't know I've seen job listings for some of these outdated jobs and they actually aren't that high, some are shockingly low. I'm guessing it is a weird quirk of the job market in that people capable and willing to take care of 50 year old COBOL code aren't competing for high priced jobs and vice versa.
But I'm not against Apple on this one. Two years and no security updates? Not one? Apple's hardware has an incredibly short timespan. Even not accounting for Apple things like 3G are phased out, etc. Apps on a gated platform like the AppStore are like chalk drawings on the sidewalk, someone shouldn't complain the rain washes it away.
posted by geoff. at 10:17 AM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
I don't know I've seen job listings for some of these outdated jobs and they actually aren't that high, some are shockingly low. I'm guessing it is a weird quirk of the job market in that people capable and willing to take care of 50 year old COBOL code aren't competing for high priced jobs and vice versa.
But I'm not against Apple on this one. Two years and no security updates? Not one? Apple's hardware has an incredibly short timespan. Even not accounting for Apple things like 3G are phased out, etc. Apps on a gated platform like the AppStore are like chalk drawings on the sidewalk, someone shouldn't complain the rain washes it away.
posted by geoff. at 10:17 AM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Removing apps just because they are old or don't get many downloads is not. It is retroactively changing the rules of the platform.
Apple not only keeps changing its dev rules, but also interprets them as needed for given a business or political scenario (e.g., China, Russia, Microsoft, etc.) to justify whatever. So it goes.
One reason for all this is that they want to push devs to use the latest frameworks and hardware to keep app offerings fresh and in step with current product lines. From a business standpoint, this is entirely rational.
Not being overly sentimental has been their business model since Jobs came back and brutally cut products left and right to keep Apple alive. This approach is part and parcel of the culture.
As a developer of apps that target iOS and Mac platforms, among others, it is one of those things I have gotten used to and have become neutral to. You have to keep up. It just is, and that's pretty much that.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:18 AM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Apple not only keeps changing its dev rules, but also interprets them as needed for given a business or political scenario (e.g., China, Russia, Microsoft, etc.) to justify whatever. So it goes.
One reason for all this is that they want to push devs to use the latest frameworks and hardware to keep app offerings fresh and in step with current product lines. From a business standpoint, this is entirely rational.
Not being overly sentimental has been their business model since Jobs came back and brutally cut products left and right to keep Apple alive. This approach is part and parcel of the culture.
As a developer of apps that target iOS and Mac platforms, among others, it is one of those things I have gotten used to and have become neutral to. You have to keep up. It just is, and that's pretty much that.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:18 AM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
(The irony is I'm advocating for keeping up apps up to date on a website that hasn't materially changed in more than 20 years)
posted by geoff. at 10:20 AM on May 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by geoff. at 10:20 AM on May 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
tl;dr consumers are not banks
Fair enough. I mean, you can still pretty easily run 40 year old DOS games on a new Windows box, but point taken. I'm realizing now that part of what really rubs me wrong about this is that because iOS is a closed platform, when the company that owns the platform decides to disappear your app, the app is truly disappeared. The incredible and diverse work that has gone into platform emulation won't likely save these apps since the apps need to be cryptographically signed to work on the OS. OTOH, I expect to be humbled by the acumen of future generation of emulation hackers. Still, a pox on this shit.
posted by gwint at 10:38 AM on May 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
Fair enough. I mean, you can still pretty easily run 40 year old DOS games on a new Windows box, but point taken. I'm realizing now that part of what really rubs me wrong about this is that because iOS is a closed platform, when the company that owns the platform decides to disappear your app, the app is truly disappeared. The incredible and diverse work that has gone into platform emulation won't likely save these apps since the apps need to be cryptographically signed to work on the OS. OTOH, I expect to be humbled by the acumen of future generation of emulation hackers. Still, a pox on this shit.
posted by gwint at 10:38 AM on May 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
I’m a happy user of ios hardware - I understand that this is a walled garden setup, it’s the price I pay for these devices. I open the App Store as little as possible, because it’s like having candy coloured knives shoved into my eyeballs. I’m sorry for the legit devs that got caught up in this, but judging by the quality of what is on the App Store, they’re not the problem.
posted by The River Ivel at 10:39 AM on May 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 10:39 AM on May 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
I mean, you can still pretty easily run 40 year old DOS games on a new Windows box, but point taken.
No you can't since we're all on 64-bit Windows which removed the ability to run 16-bit code by default. You need to specifically install either a compatibility layer capable of interpreting 16-bit code and thunking it back to 32-bits (doing the work Windows on Windows used to do) or run a virtual machine that runs 16-bit code which usually means emulation.
For the vast majority of people Windows has been broken for 16-bit software for over a decade.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 11:08 AM on May 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
No you can't since we're all on 64-bit Windows which removed the ability to run 16-bit code by default. You need to specifically install either a compatibility layer capable of interpreting 16-bit code and thunking it back to 32-bits (doing the work Windows on Windows used to do) or run a virtual machine that runs 16-bit code which usually means emulation.
For the vast majority of people Windows has been broken for 16-bit software for over a decade.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 11:08 AM on May 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
I think this is 100% fine. New iOS releases come out all the time, on-platform resources change, if you’re not willing to check that your app will work on the most modern release then tough patooties.
In short, apps are never "done" because the environment they run in keeps changing. If your model is that you finish the app and never look at it again then your model broken.
I hold up for example one of my own apps, which was broken when Apple decided to change one obscure character in one obscure font. It was still in the App Store, you could still pay for it and run it, but the higher difficulty layers were unusable.
I failed to do basic maintenance, and Apple forcing me to would have been a good, not bad, thing.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:09 AM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
In short, apps are never "done" because the environment they run in keeps changing. If your model is that you finish the app and never look at it again then your model broken.
I hold up for example one of my own apps, which was broken when Apple decided to change one obscure character in one obscure font. It was still in the App Store, you could still pay for it and run it, but the higher difficulty layers were unusable.
I failed to do basic maintenance, and Apple forcing me to would have been a good, not bad, thing.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:09 AM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
Your Childhood Pet Rock: You can use DOSBox for pretty much everything but databases and it gets it right most of the time. It's mostly used for games, be we also used it at my last university to run our Thermogravimetric Analysis instrument without having to maintain a 486.
posted by Canageek at 11:38 AM on May 7, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by Canageek at 11:38 AM on May 7, 2022 [11 favorites]
there is no reason why Apple and Google (which has similar requirements) should host things that are broken.
Not broken, deliberately obsoleted. And fine, Apple shouldn't be forced to host them. But the problem is they won't let anybody else host them either. Plenty of apps that I've bought over the years were niche products -- I can't find identical replacements for them. And they just stopped working even though they were working beautifully before. At least with Android you have third party appstores.
It's as though bookstores and libraries agreed to stop caring books that were more than two years old. You want to read Baldwin? Hurston? Tolstoy? Better hope that someone is reissuing then in a new edition, because all the old copies are off the market.
The other thing is that the overwhelming majority of app sales tend to be in the first year. Developers already have little incentive to keep updating apps unless they're ad or subscription supported. This is just going to make the buy-up-front model even less appealing, and even worse for the freeware model. The developer puts in x amount of hours to write an app for free, and no matter how well made and useful it is, unless they keep spending their own time continuously updating it, it will 100% guaranteed be pulled in a few years. The software as books paradigm is replaced by software as fast fashion,
posted by xigxag at 11:38 AM on May 7, 2022 [21 favorites]
Not broken, deliberately obsoleted. And fine, Apple shouldn't be forced to host them. But the problem is they won't let anybody else host them either. Plenty of apps that I've bought over the years were niche products -- I can't find identical replacements for them. And they just stopped working even though they were working beautifully before. At least with Android you have third party appstores.
It's as though bookstores and libraries agreed to stop caring books that were more than two years old. You want to read Baldwin? Hurston? Tolstoy? Better hope that someone is reissuing then in a new edition, because all the old copies are off the market.
The other thing is that the overwhelming majority of app sales tend to be in the first year. Developers already have little incentive to keep updating apps unless they're ad or subscription supported. This is just going to make the buy-up-front model even less appealing, and even worse for the freeware model. The developer puts in x amount of hours to write an app for free, and no matter how well made and useful it is, unless they keep spending their own time continuously updating it, it will 100% guaranteed be pulled in a few years. The software as books paradigm is replaced by software as fast fashion,
posted by xigxag at 11:38 AM on May 7, 2022 [21 favorites]
It's as though bookstores and libraries agreed to stop caring books that were more than two years old.
No it is as if you only got a car to be an Uber driver and that Uber wanted cars that were new, well maintained and safe. For every well maintained '67 Cadillac de Ville there's a dozen unsafe Kia Amanti's without working airbags and squeal when braking.
This is nothing new, remember Adobe Flash? For games that people want to preserve there will eventually be emulators.
posted by geoff. at 11:51 AM on May 7, 2022
No it is as if you only got a car to be an Uber driver and that Uber wanted cars that were new, well maintained and safe. For every well maintained '67 Cadillac de Ville there's a dozen unsafe Kia Amanti's without working airbags and squeal when braking.
This is nothing new, remember Adobe Flash? For games that people want to preserve there will eventually be emulators.
posted by geoff. at 11:51 AM on May 7, 2022
Mobile apps are on some level like paper plates: a disposable medium for serving equally ephemeral content. Can you draw art on a paper plate or a cocktail napkin? Yes, of course. But you shouldn't be surprised when your cocktail napkin sketches get thrown away or fall apart, that's the nature of the medium. If you want to make durable art, there are plenty of other platforms better suited to that purpose. (And the argument that it's easier to get people to pay attention to your napkin sketches than your archival prints-- well, I'm sympathetic, but that's a broader indictment of the whole attention economy rather than a technical failing of paper napkins).
posted by Pyry at 11:54 AM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Pyry at 11:54 AM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
But importantly, why are Mobile Apps like paper plates?
There is, in fact, no good reason for mobile apps to be paper plates other than the perverse incentives of Apple and Google.
posted by pan at 12:13 PM on May 7, 2022 [28 favorites]
There is, in fact, no good reason for mobile apps to be paper plates other than the perverse incentives of Apple and Google.
posted by pan at 12:13 PM on May 7, 2022 [28 favorites]
My last job was in product security so perhaps I'm biased. I wholeheartedly support getting rid of apps that contain or depend on insecure libraries, frameworks, or APIs. But I also know it's a PITA to get developers to update (what appears to be) working software and even harder to convince customers that they should update for security reasons alone. Kicking developers and users in the butt often ends up as your only option.
It's a different story when you're talking about older code that still runs fine and doesn't represent a security risk. That just feels like Apple/Google flexing their might as a reminder of who really runs the show.
posted by tommasz at 12:27 PM on May 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
It's a different story when you're talking about older code that still runs fine and doesn't represent a security risk. That just feels like Apple/Google flexing their might as a reminder of who really runs the show.
posted by tommasz at 12:27 PM on May 7, 2022 [6 favorites]
Everyone takes it so personally! Like every update is a personal affront designed to inconvenience them specifically!
It’s not about you - it’s about your device; Humans being a thing-we-have-to-put-up-with side effect. Because there’s another group of a-hole humans out there trying to break your device and commit all kinds of unspeakable evils on the world. Apple, Google and all the software developers can’t fix stupid users, but they can and do fix the hardware and software.
Yes, Virginia, that means your (well, really, my) iPhone 6S Plus will be out-of-date soon (actually, a year or two ago) and while it still functions as a phone, everything else you (meaning: me) want to do with it runs less and less well (quite poorly, in fact). Yes, you (me, again) are carrying around a computer more powerful than what was on the Space Shuttle to casually take naked pictures of (no, not me) your junk, but even the Space Shuttle came to an end.
It may seem like you’re getting the business, but really, you are the business because a bunch of endlessly creative jerkwads want to give you the business a thousand times a second and fighting that is a hard business problem.
Get rid of those guys, gals and their non-binary pals (shoutout to JKL-A) and then we can have more stable software and hardware for longer.
But you’ll still be a side-effect.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 12:31 PM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
It’s not about you - it’s about your device; Humans being a thing-we-have-to-put-up-with side effect. Because there’s another group of a-hole humans out there trying to break your device and commit all kinds of unspeakable evils on the world. Apple, Google and all the software developers can’t fix stupid users, but they can and do fix the hardware and software.
Yes, Virginia, that means your (well, really, my) iPhone 6S Plus will be out-of-date soon (actually, a year or two ago) and while it still functions as a phone, everything else you (meaning: me) want to do with it runs less and less well (quite poorly, in fact). Yes, you (me, again) are carrying around a computer more powerful than what was on the Space Shuttle to casually take naked pictures of (no, not me) your junk, but even the Space Shuttle came to an end.
It may seem like you’re getting the business, but really, you are the business because a bunch of endlessly creative jerkwads want to give you the business a thousand times a second and fighting that is a hard business problem.
Get rid of those guys, gals and their non-binary pals (shoutout to JKL-A) and then we can have more stable software and hardware for longer.
But you’ll still be a side-effect.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 12:31 PM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
These are marginal-reproduction-cost digital goods.
If they're art like movies and music, there's no reason to obsolete them because they're not on the latest libraries and platform tools.
If they're functional things, interacting beyond the device, the security footprint is a good reason to reconsider whether the art poses risk to Apple's customers. The annual fee to publish into the App Store and the rolling releases so that XCode is only valid on the latest macOS is unecessarily tricky. Plus Apple saying that they have the safest mechanisms for users despite horrid zero-click exploits used by government-calibre spy agencies to access your iPhone and iPad.
In summary, working software shouldn't die off, but sometimes working software has silent bugs with security impact -- a land of contrasts.
posted by k3ninho at 12:35 PM on May 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
If they're art like movies and music, there's no reason to obsolete them because they're not on the latest libraries and platform tools.
If they're functional things, interacting beyond the device, the security footprint is a good reason to reconsider whether the art poses risk to Apple's customers. The annual fee to publish into the App Store and the rolling releases so that XCode is only valid on the latest macOS is unecessarily tricky. Plus Apple saying that they have the safest mechanisms for users despite horrid zero-click exploits used by government-calibre spy agencies to access your iPhone and iPad.
In summary, working software shouldn't die off, but sometimes working software has silent bugs with security impact -- a land of contrasts.
posted by k3ninho at 12:35 PM on May 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
That's exactly how I feel, tommasz: if this were specifically targeted at apps that had known problems (e.g., using an old toolset that now has known security flaws, accessing use data using deprecated means) then I'd be okay with it. But targeting apps because *only* they haven't been updated for any specific or general reason strikes me as unethical.
posted by ElKevbo at 12:36 PM on May 7, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by ElKevbo at 12:36 PM on May 7, 2022 [11 favorites]
Your Childhood Pet Rock: You can use DOSBox for pretty much everything but databases and it gets it right most of the time. It's mostly used for games, be we also used it at my last university to run our Thermogravimetric Analysis instrument without having to maintain a 486.
Yeah and I can trivially emulate 68K using SheepShaver. Usually when people are talking about Windows famed backwards compatibility they're talking about native execution. These days anyone can execute just about anything on any platform thanks to emulation.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 1:31 PM on May 7, 2022
Yeah and I can trivially emulate 68K using SheepShaver. Usually when people are talking about Windows famed backwards compatibility they're talking about native execution. These days anyone can execute just about anything on any platform thanks to emulation.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 1:31 PM on May 7, 2022
But targeting apps because *only* they haven't been updated for any specific or general reason strikes me as unethical.
Short-sighted, perhaps, but hardly unethical. I mean, if the developer can’t be assed enough to update their 99-cent twitch gem game after six years on the app store, can you really say Apple should give a bigger shit than them? It doesn’t take anything much more than a tweak to the code to avoid deletion. All this outrage is ridiculous.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:55 PM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Short-sighted, perhaps, but hardly unethical. I mean, if the developer can’t be assed enough to update their 99-cent twitch gem game after six years on the app store, can you really say Apple should give a bigger shit than them? It doesn’t take anything much more than a tweak to the code to avoid deletion. All this outrage is ridiculous.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:55 PM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
>All this outrage is ridiculous.
Then ridicule some outrage, see how far that goes as a rhetorical stance.
>It doesn’t take anything much more than a tweak to the code to avoid deletion.
It takes maintaining $100 per year membership of the developer programme, secure storage of your Public/Private Key Infrastructure cryptographic credentials, the latest version of nacOS and XCode, and hoping that your project that worked way back then still works on contemporary libraries today. Maybe also a refresh gets reviewed and denied access by Apple's submission and release process.
posted by k3ninho at 2:36 PM on May 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
Then ridicule some outrage, see how far that goes as a rhetorical stance.
>It doesn’t take anything much more than a tweak to the code to avoid deletion.
It takes maintaining $100 per year membership of the developer programme, secure storage of your Public/Private Key Infrastructure cryptographic credentials, the latest version of nacOS and XCode, and hoping that your project that worked way back then still works on contemporary libraries today. Maybe also a refresh gets reviewed and denied access by Apple's submission and release process.
posted by k3ninho at 2:36 PM on May 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
There are a lot of garbage, zombie apps out there and as a consumer I’m glad that Apple is going to take proactive action to delist ones that are not actively maintained.
posted by interogative mood at 4:09 PM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by interogative mood at 4:09 PM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
It is possible to not promote a thing without actually removing it.
posted by wierdo at 4:17 PM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by wierdo at 4:17 PM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Many of the seminal iOS apps got left behind long ago with the transition to 64-bit. There will be an emulator one of these days, but in the meantime the only option is to get an old device and jailbreak.
And it's not because the developers are necessarily lazy -- consider the case of Forget-Me-Not, an early beloved maze game whose gameplay likely "inspired" the Crossy Road folks for their Pac-Man licensed game. The developer wasn't willing to pay the $99 fee anymore, likely because of a failed move from paid to IAP, and someone stepped in and contributed so it could stay online.
App stores are not mechanisms for preservation, is what I'm saying.
posted by credulous at 4:24 PM on May 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
And it's not because the developers are necessarily lazy -- consider the case of Forget-Me-Not, an early beloved maze game whose gameplay likely "inspired" the Crossy Road folks for their Pac-Man licensed game. The developer wasn't willing to pay the $99 fee anymore, likely because of a failed move from paid to IAP, and someone stepped in and contributed so it could stay online.
App stores are not mechanisms for preservation, is what I'm saying.
posted by credulous at 4:24 PM on May 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm genuinely surprised to see so many people here arguing that mobile apps should just be considered so disposable. Even just from a game development standpoint, we are already in a time where it's really, really hard to archive software, or to access older titles, especially on mobile. They may be tied to remote services or SDKs that no longer exist, or they are basically unplayable from physical media without a day one patch. This just rubs salt in the wound.
Think about titles that had innovative mechanics, or that may have polished something in an interesting way, or even just represent the events and age in which they were designed. Something like Device 6, which was last updated in 2020--that could easily disappear. As a result, we have a lot of playable game history through, say 2008, and then it starts to look a lot more patchy depending on the state of emulation and whether archivists were able to extract software from the machine. Imagine if you couldn't watch a cult movie from three or four years ago because they took it off the shelves.
While I understand the problem of security (although I think, given as much as Apple crows about its OS engineering, there's some irony there), this would be much less of an issue if it were even possible to install software outside of the App Store on iOS. It's true that on Windows, you have to resort to DOSBox or something, but that option is available, and even the built-in support for old binaries is astoundingly good, all things considered. There is no equivalent for iOS. As a result, the platform is a black hole for software history. At least to me, that's genuinely upsetting.
posted by Four String Riot at 4:28 PM on May 7, 2022 [17 favorites]
Think about titles that had innovative mechanics, or that may have polished something in an interesting way, or even just represent the events and age in which they were designed. Something like Device 6, which was last updated in 2020--that could easily disappear. As a result, we have a lot of playable game history through, say 2008, and then it starts to look a lot more patchy depending on the state of emulation and whether archivists were able to extract software from the machine. Imagine if you couldn't watch a cult movie from three or four years ago because they took it off the shelves.
While I understand the problem of security (although I think, given as much as Apple crows about its OS engineering, there's some irony there), this would be much less of an issue if it were even possible to install software outside of the App Store on iOS. It's true that on Windows, you have to resort to DOSBox or something, but that option is available, and even the built-in support for old binaries is astoundingly good, all things considered. There is no equivalent for iOS. As a result, the platform is a black hole for software history. At least to me, that's genuinely upsetting.
posted by Four String Riot at 4:28 PM on May 7, 2022 [17 favorites]
You want outrage, how about Disney buying up a mobile game publisher only to liquidate its assets and pull all their titles from the App Store, including at least one BAFTA Award-winning puzzle game.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:42 PM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Rhaomi at 4:42 PM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
Apple's walled garden being awful for archivists and indie devs sucks, but on the other hand Apple has been openly hostile to tinkerers, modders, indie developers, free software advocates, punks, zinesters, hackers, and fans of standardized equipment since well before the day a proprietary screw or unnecessary glue first fucked over an Apple user with an otherwise easy to solve problem.
Yes, it is unfair of them.
posted by surlyben at 5:10 PM on May 7, 2022 [12 favorites]
Yes, it is unfair of them.
posted by surlyben at 5:10 PM on May 7, 2022 [12 favorites]
I mean I don't think it's normatively good that the mobile world is built around planned obsolescence, disposability, and an endless churn of 'new and improved', but I do think that's descriptively accurate.
posted by Pyry at 5:14 PM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Pyry at 5:14 PM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
I've hated Apple's model for ages, but most intensely since I started supporting my kids' school in 2006. Intentional hw obsolescence, killing off their servers and making you move to stacks of Minis, poor to non-existent enterprise management tools, extortionate Store taxes even on educational or non-profit publishers, and basically prioritizing profit over any concern for customers at every turn. I've ranted against Apple before, but it's been a while and I have to make my annual pledge to avoid them like the plague. Android's not perfect, but it's far less terrible.
posted by Cris E at 5:33 PM on May 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Cris E at 5:33 PM on May 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
I mean, if the developer can’t be assed enough to update their 99-cent twitch gem game after six years on the app store, can you really say Apple should give a bigger shit than them?
Developers get sick, they die, they go out of business. The problem isn't that Apple doesn't give a shit, the problem is that they give too much of a shit and won't permit third party app stores. Allow that, and this issue becomes a non-issue.
But anyway, so what, yet another knockoff of pipe dream or zelda is lost to the world. Why does this even matter? But it's more than that. Let's say you buy an electronic device. It uses a companion phone app to control some settings. After a while the company stops making the device. Even so it's built like a brick, still works very well, could last for 50 years. You go to resell it, but whoever you sell it to has no access to the (now removed) companion app, and the device's functionality is severely limited, or made inconvenient.
Or you are studying a foreign language that's not super popular. Fortunately there's this one woman in the communitywho has created a practice/reference app that's amazing, and really has helped in your studies. One day she passes away unexpectedly and her app ceases development. At least she's left behind an unparalleled achievement that will forever benefit future generations. Oh no, it won't. It got dereferenced by Apple.
posted by xigxag at 8:06 PM on May 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
Developers get sick, they die, they go out of business. The problem isn't that Apple doesn't give a shit, the problem is that they give too much of a shit and won't permit third party app stores. Allow that, and this issue becomes a non-issue.
But anyway, so what, yet another knockoff of pipe dream or zelda is lost to the world. Why does this even matter? But it's more than that. Let's say you buy an electronic device. It uses a companion phone app to control some settings. After a while the company stops making the device. Even so it's built like a brick, still works very well, could last for 50 years. You go to resell it, but whoever you sell it to has no access to the (now removed) companion app, and the device's functionality is severely limited, or made inconvenient.
Or you are studying a foreign language that's not super popular. Fortunately there's this one woman in the communitywho has created a practice/reference app that's amazing, and really has helped in your studies. One day she passes away unexpectedly and her app ceases development. At least she's left behind an unparalleled achievement that will forever benefit future generations. Oh no, it won't. It got dereferenced by Apple.
posted by xigxag at 8:06 PM on May 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
Bit rot is a real thing and just like ancient manuscripts and other antiques if the regular preventative maintenance and preservation work isn’t done it won’t last.
posted by interogative mood at 9:19 PM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 9:19 PM on May 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'm not sure I buy the argument that this is all OK because somebody might eventually develop an emulator.
Many of these apps are already falling off of the memory horizon, and have absolutely no way to be run on modern hardware OR old hardware that has been (irreversibly) upgraded.
Meanwhile, prospects of developing a usable iOS emulator to run old software seem incredibly grim, particularly in light of the immense difficulty of installing or extracting applications from iOS without interacting with the iOS App Store.
DOSBox exists because DOS was around for a long time, and the decline of DOS compatibility was long, slow, and gradual. DOSBox probably wouldn't exist if a time-bomb irrevocably killed every single DOS application on Y2K and Microsoft subsequently sued everybody who tried to work around the issue.
posted by schmod at 9:33 PM on May 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
Many of these apps are already falling off of the memory horizon, and have absolutely no way to be run on modern hardware OR old hardware that has been (irreversibly) upgraded.
Meanwhile, prospects of developing a usable iOS emulator to run old software seem incredibly grim, particularly in light of the immense difficulty of installing or extracting applications from iOS without interacting with the iOS App Store.
DOSBox exists because DOS was around for a long time, and the decline of DOS compatibility was long, slow, and gradual. DOSBox probably wouldn't exist if a time-bomb irrevocably killed every single DOS application on Y2K and Microsoft subsequently sued everybody who tried to work around the issue.
posted by schmod at 9:33 PM on May 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
Mixed feelings about this, myself.
On one hand, this is exactly the sort of heavyhanded, "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it further" sort of shit that Apple is infamous for. If you are developing for iOS, get used to it. When Apple says "jump", you better be moving upwards and asking when it's okay to stop. This shit ain't a democracy. You pay for the pleasure of developing for their platform, for distribution on their App Store, for access to their customers. Apple is merely sharing their wealth with you, in exchange for enriching their ecosystem. Don't like the deal? Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way to another platform.
I am not an iOS developer, nor do I have any interest in becoming one, because honestly? It seems like a terrible fucking deal. I cannot imagine a worse platform to develop for. Everything about the process sounds goddamn awful. (Including, hilariously, that if you make an app that's too good, and becomes too popular with too many users, Apple will take notice and just build that into the next version of the OS or their first-party apps and completely hose you. Good luck!)
But what do I have in my pocket? An iPhone, of course. Why? Because as a user, I think it's the best mobile device out there. (Ideal? No. Best on the market right now? Yes.) As a user, I don't give a shit how horrendous Apple is to developers. In fact, their Vlad The Developer Impaler attitude makes the platform better. The $99 ante to even get an app in the App Store? Great. It weeds out a huge amount of the total dogshit apps that clog up the Play Store. As a user, if I decide I need an image editor, I don't want 100,000 of them. I want, like, 5. Maybe 10. And I want them to be really good, using the most up-to-date technologies, taking advantage of the latest silicon, built according to the latest best practices, and tested on hardware identical to mine. I don't care if it's easy for some kid in his basement to make an app and get it on the Store, in fact, I want it to be really hard. Preferably must-have-a-QA-department hard. And as a user, I'll pay for that. As little as possible, naturally, but I'll pay.
This is the absolute opposite of the attitude I have towards my desktop computer. On my computer, I want to be able to download anything I want, execute any code I want, modify any file I want, poke at any bits I want. I want to be able to run stuff written by weirdos in basements in dead programming languages forty years ago through three levels of emulation, and I don't even want the software to know what hardware it's running on. (In fact, I consider it personally offensive if the OS tells apps whether they're running in emulation. That is none of their business, and maybe not even yours, Mr. General Purpose Operating System. Stay the fuck in your lane.)
The biggest problem I have with Apple is that they sometimes seem to forget that a mobile device and a PC are two very different things. One is a general-purpose computer, that I expect to be in full and complete control of, so help me god and Richard M. Stallman. The other is a pocket-size appliance for running my life, and I'll be in a world of hurt if it stops working. There's a Valles Marineris-sized chasm between the reliability/control tradeoffs I'm willing to make on each.
For the record, I'm admittedly being a bit hyperbolic; I realize there are some legitimate concerns about Apple's attitude. But at least for the moment, their heavyhanded approach to managing development on iOS has produced the only mobile OS that ticks the boxes I need/want, which has a strong emphasis on security and consistency at the expense of basically everything else.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:24 PM on May 7, 2022 [20 favorites]
On one hand, this is exactly the sort of heavyhanded, "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it further" sort of shit that Apple is infamous for. If you are developing for iOS, get used to it. When Apple says "jump", you better be moving upwards and asking when it's okay to stop. This shit ain't a democracy. You pay for the pleasure of developing for their platform, for distribution on their App Store, for access to their customers. Apple is merely sharing their wealth with you, in exchange for enriching their ecosystem. Don't like the deal? Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way to another platform.
I am not an iOS developer, nor do I have any interest in becoming one, because honestly? It seems like a terrible fucking deal. I cannot imagine a worse platform to develop for. Everything about the process sounds goddamn awful. (Including, hilariously, that if you make an app that's too good, and becomes too popular with too many users, Apple will take notice and just build that into the next version of the OS or their first-party apps and completely hose you. Good luck!)
But what do I have in my pocket? An iPhone, of course. Why? Because as a user, I think it's the best mobile device out there. (Ideal? No. Best on the market right now? Yes.) As a user, I don't give a shit how horrendous Apple is to developers. In fact, their Vlad The Developer Impaler attitude makes the platform better. The $99 ante to even get an app in the App Store? Great. It weeds out a huge amount of the total dogshit apps that clog up the Play Store. As a user, if I decide I need an image editor, I don't want 100,000 of them. I want, like, 5. Maybe 10. And I want them to be really good, using the most up-to-date technologies, taking advantage of the latest silicon, built according to the latest best practices, and tested on hardware identical to mine. I don't care if it's easy for some kid in his basement to make an app and get it on the Store, in fact, I want it to be really hard. Preferably must-have-a-QA-department hard. And as a user, I'll pay for that. As little as possible, naturally, but I'll pay.
This is the absolute opposite of the attitude I have towards my desktop computer. On my computer, I want to be able to download anything I want, execute any code I want, modify any file I want, poke at any bits I want. I want to be able to run stuff written by weirdos in basements in dead programming languages forty years ago through three levels of emulation, and I don't even want the software to know what hardware it's running on. (In fact, I consider it personally offensive if the OS tells apps whether they're running in emulation. That is none of their business, and maybe not even yours, Mr. General Purpose Operating System. Stay the fuck in your lane.)
The biggest problem I have with Apple is that they sometimes seem to forget that a mobile device and a PC are two very different things. One is a general-purpose computer, that I expect to be in full and complete control of, so help me god and Richard M. Stallman. The other is a pocket-size appliance for running my life, and I'll be in a world of hurt if it stops working. There's a Valles Marineris-sized chasm between the reliability/control tradeoffs I'm willing to make on each.
For the record, I'm admittedly being a bit hyperbolic; I realize there are some legitimate concerns about Apple's attitude. But at least for the moment, their heavyhanded approach to managing development on iOS has produced the only mobile OS that ticks the boxes I need/want, which has a strong emphasis on security and consistency at the expense of basically everything else.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:24 PM on May 7, 2022 [20 favorites]
Remind me again how consoles and PC are dead and mobile gaming is the future..
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:39 AM on May 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:39 AM on May 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
Google's announcement will affect me, I have an old app in the Play Store that still makes me a bit of money from ad clicks, but my knowledge of the Android API is years out of date so there's no way I can update it without a huge amount of work. There are thousands of errors I would have to fix to target the latest API and I don't even know what any of them mean. Programming was just a hobby for me and it's not something I have much interest in nowadays. So I'm slightly disappointed but not too bothered. I think most of my money comes from a hardcore of users who already have the app installed so perhaps it will continue even if the app is not available to new users. However I do sympathise with people who want their apps to continue to be available.
posted by mokey at 2:40 AM on May 8, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by mokey at 2:40 AM on May 8, 2022 [8 favorites]
I have a second-hand iPhone that usually doesn't let me install apps because they aren't compatible with the old phone. So if they would just move the apps that haven't updated onto some kind of store for old phones, that would be a win for both of us.
posted by RobotHero at 6:15 AM on May 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by RobotHero at 6:15 AM on May 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
A couple things to note.
Apple posted a clarifcation of their process which includes two relevant details:
- they're only reaching out if the app has been not updated and has fallen below some threshold of downloads over the past year. Apps that haven't been updated but are still popular are not being considered for removal.
- Apple also explicitly mentions an appeal process, at least in the clarification. So if you app is not getting downloaded and hasn't been updated, Apple reaches out. At that point you can update the app, or say "hey, no update is actually needed on this". It's not clear how readily Apple responds to appeals, but anecdotal evidence suggests it's at least not uncommon for that to be fine.
From a platform maintenance perspective... I can't be mad at this policy. It does hurt preservation efforts. But everything about the closed and cryptographically signed combination of iOS and the app store is a nightmare on this front. This is just one more thing on the pile.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 6:28 PM on May 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
Apple posted a clarifcation of their process which includes two relevant details:
- they're only reaching out if the app has been not updated and has fallen below some threshold of downloads over the past year. Apps that haven't been updated but are still popular are not being considered for removal.
- Apple also explicitly mentions an appeal process, at least in the clarification. So if you app is not getting downloaded and hasn't been updated, Apple reaches out. At that point you can update the app, or say "hey, no update is actually needed on this". It's not clear how readily Apple responds to appeals, but anecdotal evidence suggests it's at least not uncommon for that to be fine.
From a platform maintenance perspective... I can't be mad at this policy. It does hurt preservation efforts. But everything about the closed and cryptographically signed combination of iOS and the app store is a nightmare on this front. This is just one more thing on the pile.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 6:28 PM on May 8, 2022 [2 favorites]
> Apple's hardware has an incredibly short timespan.
I don't understand this statement. I just got a new macbook. My old one was from 2014. I also just replaced my iphone, which was from 2016 and still getting updates. Six years is not "incredibly short" in the world of mobile phones. Android phones do not, as a rule, get OS updates for 6+ years after release.
The laptop... had seen better days, and I held on to it longer longer than was reasonable. The phone on the other hand was still doing well, aside from the aging battery. I could have opted to replace the battery instead of getting a new phone, and kept it for another couple years.
Incredibly short compared to what?
posted by vibratory manner of working at 6:37 PM on May 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
I don't understand this statement. I just got a new macbook. My old one was from 2014. I also just replaced my iphone, which was from 2016 and still getting updates. Six years is not "incredibly short" in the world of mobile phones. Android phones do not, as a rule, get OS updates for 6+ years after release.
The laptop... had seen better days, and I held on to it longer longer than was reasonable. The phone on the other hand was still doing well, aside from the aging battery. I could have opted to replace the battery instead of getting a new phone, and kept it for another couple years.
Incredibly short compared to what?
posted by vibratory manner of working at 6:37 PM on May 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
The workaround is to not sell your old iPhones. Start your own little iPhone museum, with each one filled with its own era of apps that run on its own generation of iOS. Every three months, power them up, recharge them, and then shutdown. Replace battery every decade.
(I only started doing this with my iPhone 6 Plus running iOS 12, and I wish I'd taken my own advice earlier because I truly pine for a chance to relive some of my favorite 32 bit apps running on my trusty old iPhone 3GS and iPhone 5. Flight Control, I hardly knew ye.)
posted by fairmettle at 12:57 AM on May 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
(I only started doing this with my iPhone 6 Plus running iOS 12, and I wish I'd taken my own advice earlier because I truly pine for a chance to relive some of my favorite 32 bit apps running on my trusty old iPhone 3GS and iPhone 5. Flight Control, I hardly knew ye.)
posted by fairmettle at 12:57 AM on May 9, 2022 [1 favorite]
Flight Control, I hardly knew ye
Not familiar with the details but it looks like EA bought the dev and then did fuck all with it. Hasn't been on sale on iOS since 2015, and the HD version hasn't been updated since 2011.
posted by pwnguin at 10:50 AM on May 9, 2022
Not familiar with the details but it looks like EA bought the dev and then did fuck all with it. Hasn't been on sale on iOS since 2015, and the HD version hasn't been updated since 2011.
posted by pwnguin at 10:50 AM on May 9, 2022
Apple's hardware has an incredibly short timespan.
Yeah, I've got some side-eye for this statement as well. I mean, I guess all phones have short lifespans in an absolute sense, compared to, say, a good fountain pen or typewriter. But Apple basically shamed Google into lengthening the support lifespan of its devices, so it's weird to call out Apple.
Because I'm a huge nerd, I have a spreadsheet of every phone I've purchased since 2005, including how much I paid, and how long each one lasted until it started to suck (which I define as no more OS updates, or significant performance degradation while running common apps). This "Time To Suck" metric is what finally drove me to iOS in 2018.
Here's a selection, along with the amortized cost-per-month for the phone (taking into account resale value if there was any):
When I switched to iOS in 2018, I bought a used iPhone 6S for $290. And had it not been for an unfortunate incident involving a hot tub and a bathing suit with pockets, I could still be using that phone right now. The 6S is still getting updates! (It's probably going to reach the end of the road this year, but still—that's a crazy long lifespan for a phone.) If not for the aforementioned hot tub incident, I'd be approaching month 51, and assuming zero residual value, the monthly cost would be under $5/mo! Those are flip-phone prices.
As it happened, after drowning the 6S, I went and bought an iPhone 7 (best I could get for under $300 at the time), and used it for 39 months, before it too met a bad end. (If anyone wants to go get it, I know exactly where it is, but you'll need a SCUBA setup.) But I couldn't get too angry at the friend who dropped it overboard, because I'd already gotten the monthly cost down to a bit over $7. It didn't owe me anything. And then I went out and bought another gently-used sub-$300 phone, the SE, which I plan to have until it either starts to suck, or it falls into a volcano or something.
Android phones look like a "Sam Vimes Boots" item; they're cheaper upfront (if bought new), but just don't last, and get you into a nasty upgrade treadmill.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:46 AM on May 9, 2022
Yeah, I've got some side-eye for this statement as well. I mean, I guess all phones have short lifespans in an absolute sense, compared to, say, a good fountain pen or typewriter. But Apple basically shamed Google into lengthening the support lifespan of its devices, so it's weird to call out Apple.
Because I'm a huge nerd, I have a spreadsheet of every phone I've purchased since 2005, including how much I paid, and how long each one lasted until it started to suck (which I define as no more OS updates, or significant performance degradation while running common apps). This "Time To Suck" metric is what finally drove me to iOS in 2018.
Here's a selection, along with the amortized cost-per-month for the phone (taking into account resale value if there was any):
- Nexus One: 13 months to suck, $26.54/mo.
- Samsung Galaxy SII 4G (SGH-T989): 18 months, $13.33/mo
- Google Moto X: 16 months, $24.37/mo
- Google Nexus 5X (32GB model): 17 months, $8.88/mo
- Motorola Moto G3: 18 months, $12.22/mo
When I switched to iOS in 2018, I bought a used iPhone 6S for $290. And had it not been for an unfortunate incident involving a hot tub and a bathing suit with pockets, I could still be using that phone right now. The 6S is still getting updates! (It's probably going to reach the end of the road this year, but still—that's a crazy long lifespan for a phone.) If not for the aforementioned hot tub incident, I'd be approaching month 51, and assuming zero residual value, the monthly cost would be under $5/mo! Those are flip-phone prices.
As it happened, after drowning the 6S, I went and bought an iPhone 7 (best I could get for under $300 at the time), and used it for 39 months, before it too met a bad end. (If anyone wants to go get it, I know exactly where it is, but you'll need a SCUBA setup.) But I couldn't get too angry at the friend who dropped it overboard, because I'd already gotten the monthly cost down to a bit over $7. It didn't owe me anything. And then I went out and bought another gently-used sub-$300 phone, the SE, which I plan to have until it either starts to suck, or it falls into a volcano or something.
Android phones look like a "Sam Vimes Boots" item; they're cheaper upfront (if bought new), but just don't last, and get you into a nasty upgrade treadmill.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:46 AM on May 9, 2022
It's interesting that the devs affected by this, who aren't making money on these apps, haven't open sourced them. Canabalt was a popular game from 2009. There is an updated copy in the App Store, but who knows if that will last another 13 years. The developer put the code on GitHub in 2010: any archivists or fans can download it, fire up Xcode, and run it on a vintage iPhone (or fix bugs and run on a modern iPhone).
posted by Monochrome at 1:17 PM on May 9, 2022
posted by Monochrome at 1:17 PM on May 9, 2022
Eh, OS updates on Android (at least with Google's phones and those running Android One) are pretty overrated. The vast majority of the stuff that matters is updated independently of the underlying OS version. I can pull my Nexus 6 out of a drawer, let it spend a while updating itself, and it'll run the latest version of everything I actually use. I still do sometimes, just for funsies. The battery is pretty useless at this point, though.
The main downside is that you might lose some defense in depth from various exploits. It's always possible there could be a zero day in Play Services or whatever that could be chained into a kernel bug that never got patched because the device was out of support.
Also, because app developers are allowed to continue supporting older API versions, you rarely run into the problem of being unable to update apps because you aren't on the latest OS version. Google does eventually stop surfacing apps targeting old API versions, but so far it's always been beyond 5 years later and it doesn't apply to apps that target newer versions but still support older versions.
posted by wierdo at 8:09 PM on May 9, 2022
The main downside is that you might lose some defense in depth from various exploits. It's always possible there could be a zero day in Play Services or whatever that could be chained into a kernel bug that never got patched because the device was out of support.
Also, because app developers are allowed to continue supporting older API versions, you rarely run into the problem of being unable to update apps because you aren't on the latest OS version. Google does eventually stop surfacing apps targeting old API versions, but so far it's always been beyond 5 years later and it doesn't apply to apps that target newer versions but still support older versions.
posted by wierdo at 8:09 PM on May 9, 2022
I also don't agree with the comments about Apple's short lifespan for hardware and the 2014 Mac Mini I use every single day for work testifies to that, along with my 2017 MacBook Air.
I used to be a diehard non-Apple user and continued to be so until I just got sick of everything not working for unknowable reasons and the need I felt to be paranoid about various forms of attack. But what really sent me over to the Apple camp was I lost interest in building PCs and setting them up just so and re-configuring and adding hardware just because. I got to the point where I just wanted to turn something on and have it work. This is what the closed shop of Apple gives me - anything I buy or download for any of my Apple devices will just work instead of being part of an OS that supports any old piece of shit you can cobble together and jam a USB socket into or download.
This closed shop, obviously, extends to the App Store and has the same benefit, although I'm dubious about what quality checks might be done given the number of apps that just don't work. I'm happy to have a smaller choice of apps if I can have confidence they work and aren't going to attack me. I'm happy to spend a bit more (well, a lot more) for hardware that is going to just work when I plug it in and I don't have to search for drivers or re-configure systems to make that happen. I do genuinely feel for developers that are under pressure to update an app that works perfectly and think Apple should provide a way for them to prove that instead of just forcing updates, but the moving target of security alone means some level of updating is likely going to be required.
The way Apple does this stuff is universally shitty, for developers at least. But Apple really doesn't give a shit about them unless they're making Apple money and that's obvious. As a consumer, though, I'm glad they're doing it even though I wish they were nicer about it.
posted by dg at 8:32 PM on May 9, 2022
I used to be a diehard non-Apple user and continued to be so until I just got sick of everything not working for unknowable reasons and the need I felt to be paranoid about various forms of attack. But what really sent me over to the Apple camp was I lost interest in building PCs and setting them up just so and re-configuring and adding hardware just because. I got to the point where I just wanted to turn something on and have it work. This is what the closed shop of Apple gives me - anything I buy or download for any of my Apple devices will just work instead of being part of an OS that supports any old piece of shit you can cobble together and jam a USB socket into or download.
This closed shop, obviously, extends to the App Store and has the same benefit, although I'm dubious about what quality checks might be done given the number of apps that just don't work. I'm happy to have a smaller choice of apps if I can have confidence they work and aren't going to attack me. I'm happy to spend a bit more (well, a lot more) for hardware that is going to just work when I plug it in and I don't have to search for drivers or re-configure systems to make that happen. I do genuinely feel for developers that are under pressure to update an app that works perfectly and think Apple should provide a way for them to prove that instead of just forcing updates, but the moving target of security alone means some level of updating is likely going to be required.
The way Apple does this stuff is universally shitty, for developers at least. But Apple really doesn't give a shit about them unless they're making Apple money and that's obvious. As a consumer, though, I'm glad they're doing it even though I wish they were nicer about it.
posted by dg at 8:32 PM on May 9, 2022
If you are developing for iOS, get used to it.
This is how I feel too. One the one hand, it totally sucks for iOS developers, but on the other hand, it's not like Apple has been in any way secretive about their ruthless control of the App Store and generally not giving a shit about developers in the first place. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
posted by whir at 8:55 AM on May 10, 2022
This is how I feel too. One the one hand, it totally sucks for iOS developers, but on the other hand, it's not like Apple has been in any way secretive about their ruthless control of the App Store and generally not giving a shit about developers in the first place. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
posted by whir at 8:55 AM on May 10, 2022
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posted by Ferreous at 9:13 AM on May 7, 2022 [1 favorite]