This article seems a little bit overwrought. I don't think that deleting a bunch of cruft from the app store will "create a cultural black hole for generations to come."
Sure, there are apps that will probably get deleted that don't deserve to. But when you play in the walled garden, these are the consequences.
I don't think that deleting a bunch of cruft from the app store will "create a cultural black hole for generations to come."
Imagine people had said that same with old DOS games?
The article makes a very valid point regarding digital preservation. The same argument is often made regarding the dangers of DRM or other proprietary data and storage formats.
>This article seems a little bit overwrought. I don't think that deleting a bunch of cruft from the app store will "create a cultural black hole for generations to come."
Plus, if that was our actual concern, we had TONS of other stuff to help preserve first: digitize all kinds of old books, movies and music and make it available for example.
iOS apps would be at the very bottom of the cultural landscape for things that would be missed (and the nature of technology is not such that those are meant to be evergreen artifacts anyway... nobody much cares that we can't play ZX Spectrum games easily for example).
You can't really rank or prioritise what cultural artefacts are going to be missed. It's such a subjective thing.
For example, whilst I enjoyed many retro games back in the day, I can't say I am too bothered about not being able to play them. But there are many people who would care, and value these things highly.
And there are certainly old apps I do care about for other reasons: perhaps they had a novel interface or solved certain problems in an elegant manner. For example, I would love to be able to easily play around with the software designed by Kai Krauze.
With art and culture, everything is subjective. One person's high art is another person's trash.
>You can't really rank or prioritise what cultural artefacts are going to be missed. It's such a subjective thing.
What people going to miss is subjective. What they should miss is objective.
Or rather, is a subjective decision they don't get to make for themselves.
In the end, everything, even morals, are subjective. But in the end, also, most societies agreed collectively in some prioritisation, despite what each individual (or even the majority) prefers. And unless something drastically changed in how we think about culture, old books and movies and films are more important than some abandoned 32-bit only iOS apps.
I guess it's a US thing to think it's all about the individual and its personal taste, but in other cultures at least, there is such a think as a canon, and while it's still fuzzy and subjective at the edges, it's not like spandex wearing superheroes or RPGs ever get as important as The Iliad or some philosophical work, just because the majority got in arrested development sometime in the 90s and prefer the former over the latter.
I cant argue with you that some works are objectively better than others. Or that works in much older media are going to be much more culturally significant than any app.
Personally I think the value of (some of) the older apps is how they are waypoints in the progression of software design, specifically for touch screen devices.
I view software as an evolving medium (the ultimate meta-medium), and as such think its worth preserving at least some of these artefacts for future study.
Perhaps this doesn't count as culture, but I think it's important.
I agree with you too, after all I'm a software developer myself (and I love my 80's Sierra DOS games).
So, it's not like I don't believe that they have some value (ZX games or early iOS apps), but that I made my stand a little more black and white to get my point across.
I don't believe most of it is culture to the sense that a book is, mostly because most of them are quite plain, derivate from numerous other apps for other platforms, and driven by basic commercial desires. And of course, a book can be a window in someones mind/thought/philosophy/etc, whereas an app is mostly a utilitarian endeavour (it's like we don't attach much cultural importance to past commercial products, e.g. old tv sets or old fridges or old typewriters -- we might like them as antiques, but that's mostly it).
That said, there are also utilitarian reasons for us wanting software to keep existing in some form (to open old documents, etc).
> nobody much cares that we can't play ZX Spectrum games easily for example
Speak for yourself. The ZX Spectrum was one of the first "media" I saw and interacted with in this world, before TV, before any books and movies and music that matter to me.
And yet, I presume that most kids are not playing many (if any) of their childhood games, computer or real life, later on in life, except for the rare nostalgia-trip. And their kids will care even less.
Heck, most kids pack those and don't think twice about them when they hit puberty and get interest in the other (or, well, the same) sex.
But even so, that's an argument from personal interest (which I think is small), but I was going for an argument of cultural importance (which I think is even smaller).
If you are selling a 100 copies a month this forced refactor could be used to add additional features and revenue streams to the app. I see the annoyance with a forced move but I personally vote for better performance vs legacy app support.
Why not both, with different versions of the app exposed to users of different versions of iOS? Or are there not enough people running 5 year old hardware to make it worth anyone's while?
They already do allow both. They did not announce that they were dropping App Store support for older devices. Right now you can download older apps on devices running iOS 5 -- released in 2011.
Hmm. I guess that most app devs remove older versions of their apps when they upload newer ones. I've got an iPod Touch that I abandoned years ago because searches for apps come up exclusively with results that were incompatible with it. Apps would bug me to update, but then present me with a newly-incompatible version.
It's not the devs that remove older apps. Apple keeps older versions of the apps around when you submit a new one.
Now if by "older" iPod touch you mean the first gen one. I can also confirm that Apple does not allow you to go back that far.
Around January of this year, I reset my first gen iPad running 5.x and was able to download and use older versions of Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, the CW, Spotify, Plex, YouTube, Facebook (?) and Google Drive.
Also most of Apple's downloadable apps still work - Pages, Numbers, and Keynote (?).
Most games will not work.
Edit:
I just noticed you said that you abandoned your old iPod touch years ago because searches came up empty.
Apple didn't always allow you to download older versions easily.
What would be ideal would be the ability to charge for an update. Developers would be inclined to actually update their apps. My favorite apps have died on the vine after a few years because it's not worthwhile updating. And so I have to shift to other, inferior apps. Crazy! The alternative is in app purchases, but that really complicates things for the user.
> What would be ideal would be the ability to charge for an update.
Some developers do – they release a separate app that could have been provided as an update and just slap "2" at the end of the name – and I usually find that scummy. (Looking at you, MacPaw/Gemini.)
Apple is dropping support for 32-bit apps in iOS 11. Doing this improves performance as 32-bit libraries need not be loaded alongside 64-bit ones. Furthermore, it paves the way for Apple SoCs that do not have hardware support for 32-bit instructions, maybe saving some precious silicon real estate.
They could just not load (or even ship) the 32bit libraries unless they were needed. My guess is they don't want to develop and maintain 32bit versions of all their frameworks, especially newer features like drag&drop. (For the hardware part I don't know enough to say whether or not keeping a 32bit armv7 mode around is costly?)
Apple said that the newest version of iOS will not support any 32 bit apps. Apple did not say that:
a) you would not be allowed to submit apps that have both a 32 and 64 bit version and supported older iOS versions.
b) That they would discontinue their policy that allows users to download older compatible versions of apps (that I can confirm works back to my first gen iPad running iOS 5)
23 comments
[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 60.4 ms ] threadSure, there are apps that will probably get deleted that don't deserve to. But when you play in the walled garden, these are the consequences.
Imagine people had said that same with old DOS games?
The article makes a very valid point regarding digital preservation. The same argument is often made regarding the dangers of DRM or other proprietary data and storage formats.
Plus, if that was our actual concern, we had TONS of other stuff to help preserve first: digitize all kinds of old books, movies and music and make it available for example.
iOS apps would be at the very bottom of the cultural landscape for things that would be missed (and the nature of technology is not such that those are meant to be evergreen artifacts anyway... nobody much cares that we can't play ZX Spectrum games easily for example).
For example, whilst I enjoyed many retro games back in the day, I can't say I am too bothered about not being able to play them. But there are many people who would care, and value these things highly.
And there are certainly old apps I do care about for other reasons: perhaps they had a novel interface or solved certain problems in an elegant manner. For example, I would love to be able to easily play around with the software designed by Kai Krauze.
With art and culture, everything is subjective. One person's high art is another person's trash.
What people going to miss is subjective. What they should miss is objective.
Or rather, is a subjective decision they don't get to make for themselves.
In the end, everything, even morals, are subjective. But in the end, also, most societies agreed collectively in some prioritisation, despite what each individual (or even the majority) prefers. And unless something drastically changed in how we think about culture, old books and movies and films are more important than some abandoned 32-bit only iOS apps.
I guess it's a US thing to think it's all about the individual and its personal taste, but in other cultures at least, there is such a think as a canon, and while it's still fuzzy and subjective at the edges, it's not like spandex wearing superheroes or RPGs ever get as important as The Iliad or some philosophical work, just because the majority got in arrested development sometime in the 90s and prefer the former over the latter.
Personally I think the value of (some of) the older apps is how they are waypoints in the progression of software design, specifically for touch screen devices.
I view software as an evolving medium (the ultimate meta-medium), and as such think its worth preserving at least some of these artefacts for future study.
Perhaps this doesn't count as culture, but I think it's important.
So, it's not like I don't believe that they have some value (ZX games or early iOS apps), but that I made my stand a little more black and white to get my point across.
I don't believe most of it is culture to the sense that a book is, mostly because most of them are quite plain, derivate from numerous other apps for other platforms, and driven by basic commercial desires. And of course, a book can be a window in someones mind/thought/philosophy/etc, whereas an app is mostly a utilitarian endeavour (it's like we don't attach much cultural importance to past commercial products, e.g. old tv sets or old fridges or old typewriters -- we might like them as antiques, but that's mostly it).
That said, there are also utilitarian reasons for us wanting software to keep existing in some form (to open old documents, etc).
Speak for yourself. The ZX Spectrum was one of the first "media" I saw and interacted with in this world, before TV, before any books and movies and music that matter to me.
Heck, most kids pack those and don't think twice about them when they hit puberty and get interest in the other (or, well, the same) sex.
But even so, that's an argument from personal interest (which I think is small), but I was going for an argument of cultural importance (which I think is even smaller).
What are you talking about :) - http://jsspeccy.zxdemo.org/
Now if by "older" iPod touch you mean the first gen one. I can also confirm that Apple does not allow you to go back that far.
Around January of this year, I reset my first gen iPad running 5.x and was able to download and use older versions of Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, the CW, Spotify, Plex, YouTube, Facebook (?) and Google Drive.
Also most of Apple's downloadable apps still work - Pages, Numbers, and Keynote (?).
Most games will not work.
Edit:
I just noticed you said that you abandoned your old iPod touch years ago because searches came up empty.
Apple didn't always allow you to download older versions easily.
https://www.infoq.com/news/2013/09/previous-version-ios-apps
Some developers do – they release a separate app that could have been provided as an update and just slap "2" at the end of the name – and I usually find that scummy. (Looking at you, MacPaw/Gemini.)
Could Apple support older apps (slowly) in an iOS VM that contains an older version of iOS?
[1] https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/06/ios-11-32-bit-mac-app-store-6...
a) you would not be allowed to submit apps that have both a 32 and 64 bit version and supported older iOS versions.
b) That they would discontinue their policy that allows users to download older compatible versions of apps (that I can confirm works back to my first gen iPad running iOS 5)