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Appocalypse Now - How iOS11 Will Kill Some Of Your Favourite iPhone Apps (independent.ie)
Ronan Price, writing for Independent: The app-ocalypse is coming and almost no one knows it. Apologies for the dreadful pun but, in about six to eight weeks' time, hundreds of thousands of older apps for iPhone and iPad will cease to work when Apple updates its iOS software to version 11. Businesses and consumers who rely on these elderly apps and update to iOS11 without knowing the consequences face a rude awakening. Their difficulty ranges from mere inconvenience that a useful app no longer functions to the complete loss of valuable data buried in a piece of obsolete software. Apple began signalling two years ago that it was signing the death warrant for older apps when it moved iOS to 64-bit software - essentially a more secure, faster and technologically advanced version that replaced the previous 32-bit code. First, Apple encouraged developers to rewrite their apps to 64-bit status but continued to allow 32-bit apps to function. Then it began to warn developers and customers that future iOS updates would experience compatibility issues. You may have seen -- and ignored -- the messages when launching apps in the last year telling you "App X needs up to be updated, the developer needs to update it to improve its compatibility." Finally, just this June, Apple confirmed that iOS11 would put the kibosh on 32-bit forever when it's released into the wild in late September. The announcement came and went with little fanfare from the public's perspective.
You don't have to rewrite shit.
You just have to update the SDK and compile. Done. It's not even fucking hard to do. These old apps are not supported or developed by anyone, that is to say they're unsupported by their developers. Get over it.
so what, iphone 5 and before (32 bit) is 5+ years old. past time the world moved away from 32 bit for general purpose OS powered devices, which includes smart phones
DEATH TO APPS!
yeah what is wrong with people not replacing perfectly functional devices every couple of years for marginal improvements? they totally deserve to have their purchased apps bricked. this is what happens when you don't follow the Benevolent Corp upgrade cycle. serves them right, the damn fools!
Also, one would hope the upgrade process scans for 32-bit-only apps and informs the user "X App" will not function after this OS upgrade. Are you sure you want to proceed?
Undoubtedly, some idiots will still press "Yes" and proceed to bitch afterwards, but that's people for you.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Seriously, given the summary clearly Apple did everything they would reasonably be expected to do to 'warn' developers & consumers. I'm no Apple fan but what would anyone suggest they do otherwise? And there's an option I presume to not accept the upgrade & not run in to the issue. Potentially the complete lack of 'public fanfare' actually means 'no one cares' & this isn't going to actually affect anyone whether its their 'favorite' LoL Cat video app or whatever.
Sensationalizing this via using terms like 'kill' is well 'over kill' :-)
Precisely! I had an iPod Touch that wouldn't upgrade beyond iOS 4.3. Every app in it was fine. Only problem: if I went to the app store, there was no app there that would still run on this device.
I never saw any of these warnings.
Then you haven't been paying attention.
It sucks that Apple make the late minute decision to just screw us and their users over like this.
By last minute do you mean since October 2014 when Apple said that after Feb 2015, all apps must support 64 bit. Also when Apple rejected 32 bit apps submitted after June 2015. And in Sept 2016 when Apple started removing apps that were not 64 bit. Now Apple never said for sure that iOS 11 would be 64 bit only but to say "it's a last minute decision" is disingenuous.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I am a paid Apple dev as well and guess what...they have been announcing this shit for years. Hell I knew about it before I even switched to iOS/macOS. You are either trolling or not paying attention, becase you have not been able to upload 32bit apps to the appstore for 2 years.
P.S. Captcha: delirium
Shame on you Apple, you and your planned obsolescence.
So that's why the sleeves on my Apple costume are always too short?
Well, to be completely accurate Apple bugs the hell out of you until you upgrade. I have an old iPhone that I use to run a small radio station, and thanks to wifi sync I go months without ever looking at it in the equipment closet. But once there's a new version of the OS, that alert will pop up every chance it gets, whether I want to upgrade right now or not. And the upgrade choices on the alert are usually "Upgrade Now" or "Upgrade Tonight"
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
And, with iOS 4.3, you only have about 50 known remotely exploitable vulnerabilities, so it's probably completely safe to use, as long as the WiFi is disabled.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Apple supports its devices far longer than anyone else does. It seems silly to complain about Appleâ(TM)s upgrade cycle when many Android devices donâ(TM)t get more than 1-2 major OS releases.
Apple has better first-party support, but once they stop shipping security updates then the device is a brick. Actually, it's worse: it's a network-enabled device with known remotely exploitable vulnerabilities that can be used as an entry point for attacking the rest of your network.
My mobile phone is a Moto G. It's a cheap piece of crap that I bought 3 years ago when Motorola was owned by Google and was expecting to get long-term support. Google sold Motorola shortly after. It got major updates for about a year and then security patches (often months after the vulnerability was publicly disclosed) for about another year. That sounds a lot worse than the Apple option, but there's a big difference: I can go over to LineageOS and get a version of Android that's based on the latest version.
The same is true with an old Mac: once it stops getting macOS updates, I can always install FreeBSD or something else on it. With an iOS device, the bootloader is locked and remains locked even when all it's doing is locking you to a known-insecure OS.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
And, with iOS 4.3, you only have about 50 known remotely exploitable vulnerabilities, so it's probably completely safe to use, as long as the WiFi is disabled.
...Making this another excellent example of why essential updates for security should be provided separately from updates that change (or break or remove) functionality.
This is not the first time Apple has played this game: iOS7 had a similar kind of effect on users and the app ecosystem about four years ago, for example. Dumping responsibility for "keeping up" on developers who wrote working apps and users who already paid for them is hardly reasonable. Nor is artificially limiting the life of expensive devices through software hacks.
I suspect the time is fast approaching when we will need laws to protect the buyers of "platform" software that is essential to the functioning of a device. Too many vendors are now abusing their control over the related software and/or copyright and related laws to force in changes that are not in their customers' interests after the sale.
In many contexts we mandate certain minimum standards for purchased products and require by law that the vendor makes good any defects for a reasonable period afterwards. Despite frequent and sometimes serious bugs in software, developers have mostly had an easy ride on that one in the past, partly because a culture evolved that you released security updates free of charge to customers later. If the developers in the age of always-online, "evergreen" software are no longer going to do that without attaching strings, perhaps they no longer deserve so much special treatment under the law when their products don't work properly either.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It's funny how Apple's model assumes that small developers will support their $5 apps indefinitely, but not that a huge business will provide essential security updates for their $500 devices and operating systems (without breaking anything else) for the same period.
I mean funny-weird not funny-amusing, obviously.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I bought an ASUS gamer laptop I.e expensive, the driver updates is zero, the trackpad bug hasn't been fixed and the sound drivers are not compatible with windows 10
I am sure the Android owners have it worst, I understand it's the version is frozen at whatever it is when you buy.
Two wrongs don't make a right, and IOS is better than the others.
What are end users supposed to do about it?
The same thing they have to do whenever applications don't work on Windows, Android, or whatever OS after an update: Either don't upgrade to the latest version and keep the application or update the OS and wait for the developer to release a new version. If the developer never releases a new version, sorry.
What they should do is go "hey user, there's an iOS upgrade but we won't upgrade your iOS until you remove these offending apps: x, y, z. Would you like us to do it for you? yes/no". Should be simple and completely under customer control. Apparently this is a very novel way of thinking.
Have you used software within the last 30 years? Every major update of Windows suffers from this problem. Some major updates of Linux suffer the same problem. Every OS has the chance of wrecking applications so they no longer work including MacOS and iOS. However in cases not involving iOS, there are almost never any warnings about application incompatibility. And the fact of the matter is that iOS users aren't "force updated" like you imply. Users can choose not to update or auto-update.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
See that date? June 2016! How many normal people do know that the 4S was OK on June 12, 2016 but is as good as dead from June 13, 2016? I expect to be scorned for picking a wrong date. What slimy bullshit.
iPhone 4s: Released October 14, 2011. Originally OS: iOS 5.0. Max OS: 9.3.5. First discontinued: Sept 2014. So you're complaining that you assumed on June 12, 2016 that a phone that had already been announced as discontinued almost 2 years prior would get iOS10. Note that Apple never said it would support iOS 10. And your entire world was destroyed one day later when Apple officially said it would not.
iPhone 5S? they'll likely find some lame excuse to deprecate it.
You mean besides the lame excuse that the model almost 4 years old now and was discontinued Sept 2016?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
It's funny how Apple's model assumes that small developers will support their $5 apps indefinitely, but not that a huge business will provide essential security updates for their $500 devices and operating systems (without breaking anything else) for the same period.
And what do you mean by essential security updates? iOS support generally lasts years after the device is no longer sold. I can't say the same for Android where you have to figure out which phone, carrier, version, subversion, etc. to figure out if you can get an update 6 months after you bought it.
Also so do you expect ever single Windows application that worked on XP to work on 7. How about on 8, 8.1, or 10? Every single Windows version breaks some application applications but do you hold MS accountable for the same standard? What about Linux? While minor versions don't normally break older applications, major revisions can especially with kernel changes.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Unless you're doing things that benefit from having a 64 bit word size
One benefit is immunity to return-oriented programming (ROP) and other exploits of vulnerabilities caused by inadvertent programming defects. Address space layout randomization (ASLR), a common mitigation against ROP, is more effective with 64-bit pointers than with 32-bit pointers.