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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
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.
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.
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.
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.