Older Android and iOS Apps Are Being Made Obsolete ⇥ techcrunch.com

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

The news that Apple is doing another cleanup of its App Store emerged this weekend, shortly after Google’s recent announcement that its Play Store will begin to block downloads for outdated apps.

Over the past few days, several iOS developers took to social media to report receiving notices from Apple that their older apps will be removed from sale within 30 days if no updates were submitted.

iOS also has a setting where the system will automatically remove infrequently used apps from your device and re-download them on demand. If these apps are removed, it means a whole bunch of rarely-used but functional apps could effectively disappear if you have not launched them for a while. That is a bummer. There are plenty of apps — utilities, single-purpose apps, and so on — I use infrequently, but when I need them I need them. I had to turn that setting off¹ because iOS kept deleting apps I sometimes use.

And for what? There does not appear to be a reason why these apps are being culled now, so it appears to be just because Apple thinks the App Store needs cleaning up and, hey, some users and developers are going to suffer. Good luck to all the indie developers being forced to create a new build of their app just because.