1/29/2024 0 Comments Farrago for ios instal freeiOS APIs, as well as Android APIs, have been atrocious from the beginning and every release deprecates some of that terrible, badly-designed old behavior. If I can run twenty year old Windows applications on Windows 11 but I can't run a calculator that hasn't been updated for two years, the problem is clearly not with the concept or with development. Basic system APIs were standardized almost thirty years ago and to this very day you can take a Windows 3 Hello World program, compile it, and run it. Microsoft has gone above and beyond to keep applications working properly but in many instances where the APIs were used properly, user mode applications are nearly impossible to make incompatible. It proves that mobile APIs are terrible designed and each new version comes with its own terrible design. I think the point this article proves is actually not that apps have a limited lifetime or that breakage should be expected. Only Apple can do that, and it’s that power that people are upset by. You will not see a premium on a Windows 3.1 machine with Doom preinstalled, or a DVD player that comes with a copy of Lord of the Rings in it. It is only possible because of Apples monopoly on app distribution for the iPhone. Remember the reports of phones with Flappy Bird selling for a premium of hundreds and hundreds of dollars? For a digital good that has no nominal cost, that shouldn’t be possible. And importantly, I can still install old software on an old Mac. Same as the argument about the Mac - sure, new macs don’t run PPC software. That is the power that Apple has right now - to remove old apps from existence even for devices and operating systems that support them completely. The analogy to VHS is not a bad one, but when VHS players (and DVDs, and BluRays) stopped being current, all the old players and tapes didn’t stop working. But to do that you must have preinstalled the old app, and that device can never be broken or reset, lest you lose the app. Yes, you can keep an old device around to use old apps or play old games. This is not about backwards compatibility and tech debt, this is about distribution. I think what this argument misses is the complete monopoly Apple has over distribution.
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