Apple had previously announced that developers of new apps must support 64-bit architectures (to take full advantage of the A7 and A8 technology) by February 1st, 2015. Today, Apple has reminded developers of this deadline as well as clarifying the situation for existing apps.
Updates to existing apps must be made 64-bit compatible by June 1, 2015. After that date, any submissions of only 32-bit apps will be rejected by App Review. The process for updating apps to support 64-bit architectures is not trivial, but it is not particularly difficult either. Therefore, these rules shouldn’t be seen as punitive — Apple is just nudging the developer community forward.
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Makes sense.
A nudge is sorely needed. More like, a purge. The App Store should have any app not recently updated or properly compiled with the iOS 8 SDK purged from the store.
That would probably take their overinflated numbers down below 300,000 Apps.
I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. For one, an app should be always available for download for users that bought it. Secondly, there’s no reason to completely ban those apps: if there are users wanting it, they can download/pay for them; if there are none, Apple are the one paying for hosting them. Also, the developers are still paying their yearly license which requires them to provide support (or refund) when users need it. It’s not like they’re going to get promoted and popular, anyway.
I propose two improvements which won’t limit users’ freedom: no counting of abandoned apps (unless Apple aren’t counting them already), and a label next to the get/buy button and/or a warning before continuing the purchase/download.
If they did purge old apps, it’d decrease iOS’ size too. iOS currently contains obsolete iPhone OS 2 API just to keep those apps from crashing. I’m partly guilty for that, I still have Apple’s poker game on my 5S. (Why did they ever abandon it?! :-[ ) iOS 8 still contains some really old bugs only activated in old apps because some of them were programmed to deal with them.
Well, I hope that older apps that haven’t been upgraded in years will still work! I have ‘MotoChaser’ and it still works now on my iPhone 6… It’s a motorcycle race game… (Freeverse Inc app of old..)