Its no secret that there is a large amount of software on the iOS App Store that has been abandoned. Even some well-regarded titles, like GoodReader, have lain fallow for a while in a half-functional state after some Apple update or other made it unstable. Games are generally the first to break on newer OSes, but will churn along fine on older hardware and software combinations. Recently, however, users are discovering that when a company retracts a piece of software from sale for whatever the reason, it is utterly removed from both the store and users' purchase histories -- making it impossible to re-download and re-acquire if not backed up on a computer. This is a very, very bad thing.
The problem started some time ago. Recently, it was noted that AAA-title port
Bioshock, released only a year ago, was
missing from the App Store after the update to iOS 8.4 broke the title. Fury erupted, as it will on the Internet, after 2K said the title was dead. The angry pitchfork mob dissipated after the company recanted, and said that there would be an update. Following the title fix, the company claimed the title would return soon.
A little time has passed, and more titles have been found to be utterly gone. Disney's port of the LucasArts PC title
Monkey Island 2 hasn't worked in a long time, but can't be downloaded now, even if you own an older device that it would run fine on. Capcom title
Ghost Trick has been pulled by Capcom, and is now gone as well. Capcom promises a return, but until the company makes it available again, purchasers can't download it at all. There are
more that are now gone, from big-name studios.
A spokesperson for Apple confirmed to enthusiast site
PocketGamer that "if [developers] remove their apps from the store, they cannot be re-downloaded until the app has been resubmitted to the App Store."
MacNN received a similar confirmation overnight, with a remark adding that the withdrawal policy may not have been fully promulgated to developers -- or users, for that matter.
The fix is simple. Developers need only have their apps available in one territory to allow them to be re-downloaded by users, regardless of functionality on modern devices. However, we believe that the utter eradication of buggy titles under modern operating systems from the App Store is overly authoritarian, and completely unnecessary. Users can protect themselves by backing up their purchases diligently, but the whole point of Apple's re-download policy is that buyers always have a "cloud" backup that can be re-installed on demand -- only that turns out not to be fully true.
Software is a media like no other. While there are television shows from the beginning of history that are utterly lost (as well as classics made in the '60s and '70s with missing episodes, like
Doctor Who), there is no reason in this age of terabyte drives, cloud storage, and online software distribution houses that
anything digital has to go missing or "out of print," other than petulance and overly strict regulations imposed by the hosting company.
As it stands, should a publisher choose to not re-release a title on the App Store, future users who wish to utilize the title and didn't bother to back it up will have to resort to piracy and jailbreaks -- and there is no good reason for this. As part of
MacNN's conversation with our Apple contact about the matter, we were told that the reason for the withdrawal is to "minimize customer dissatisfaction with old, outdated software that may get purchased accidentally."
Apple devices generally last longer than competitor's devices. Old Mac hardware is often resold, and reused for a very long time after Cupertino has relegated it to the Obsolete and Vintage list. It appears that iOS devices are following the same trend.
For perspective, the original iPad was released in April 2010. The Core i5 and i7 processors hit the 15-inch MacBook Pro in the same month. This isn't strictly an "apples to apples" comparison, though, given the march of mobile technology and the open-ness of OS X versus the iOS. However, the original iPad "feels" much older than the 2010 MacBook Pro, despite being of the same rough generation.
While the number of original iPads sold pales in comparison to even the follow-on release, there are still a significant number of the older tablets that are stuck on iOS 5 forever. If all of the old software is purged from the App Store because the developer has retracted it, the result is abusive to the owner, regardless of how many hands have seen the iPad since it was first purchased from Apple.
Apple's intentional move to prevent downloads of software not currently for sale makes no sense for the consumer. Apple can now block low-end devices from running an app that developers say won't run on the slower devices -- but this is a recent addition, and workarounds like requiring a camera were used by developers before to prevent installs. Apple adds to Xcode all the time -- why can't a new field for "acceptable OS version" be added, not just on the low end, but on the high end as well? If
Bioshock only runs up to iOS 8.4, allow the developer to tag it as only compatible with iOS 6 through 8.4, and warn customers attempting to purchase it on incompatible devices, or block it from installing if need be?
This may change. Our Apple contact has said that they are "willing to work with developers" on the matter, but this is clearly not a statement that they were walking back the change. While we weren't able to pin down a date for the policy's original implementation, it doesn't appear to be all that recent -- it was only just widely noticed within the last few weeks.
As consumers, we like to think that Apple has our best interests at heart. They do, most of the time, because it is the business model of Apple to portray itself as such. Eliminating software from the iOS App Store because the developer pulled it for incompatibilities with newer devices or the current version of iOS doesn't help anybody but the newest customers, and is a very self-interested move by Apple. So far, the same behavior doesn't appear to extend to the Mac App Store -- but we're concerned that its just a matter of time until it does.
Whether this is an intentional move by Apple, or an accident, we're not sure. We think intentional, at least right now. So, the moral of the story, we suppose, is to back up everything. Don't trust Cupertino to maintain the apps that you purchased. We hope that this will change back to the way it was, and we hope that one day, we'll be allowed to download older versions of software (that doesn't violate Apple's rules) that we choose, not just what Cupertino thinks we want. We hate to sound cynical, but we're not going to hold our breath waiting for that.
-- Mike Wuerthele
Managing Editor