To the peoplee that are schocked that apple is doing this, because preserevation, functional games, history... yeah, sorry, but apple is still a capitalistic company? They will virtue signal interest in art as long as its in their financial interest, but old games that dont get updates just are not of interest, since there is no revenue.
If the develeoper cant affort the upkeep (hardware, software, work time...) then that means the game is not selling much anymore, and apple has no incentive eto keep it. And checking every app before removing it... well, takes time, human work, and costs apple probably more then an app that does not get updates brings in, so no reason for them.
Its kinda like expecting the bucher to be intereesteed in animal wellfare. He will convey to you that his animals are having a happy life...but they still get slaugthered in the end, and he will never stop that, since it goes against his core financial incentive.
Comparison with other platforms:
no platform keeps stuff forever. Nintendo? well, 3DS store is closing. Wii is closed. sony with Vita? same.
Microsoft? people mention that all software of years gone can work on current windows.
Eh...kinda. Not all, not always without problems. And especially: you wont find any of those old products on their store.
The way windows works is worlds different to how Android or IOS work, with som ebenefits, and detrements.
Security is a huge weakness of windows compared to the 2, and when windows kinda tries to work against that (Windows 11, TPM 2...) people are up in arms.
Windows also tends to ship most of what you need in the executable, which leads to a lot od redundant data, but helps against dependencies. Linux? No chance. there is a chance that some software you are using even breaks between minor versions, and moving some tools between distributions can be its own problem, trying to have a really old version oft software run in current linux, while it lacks all their dependencies? good luck, definitely no "install and run" solution in many cases.
Just updating the apps? as mentiones in the beginning, it brings cost with it (if its not a current project, there is a high chance that the whole build setup is currently not there, and while configuring that you can get to massive problems with nevere engine versions (if you cant find the old on, or some licenses have expired), the new upload maybe has other requirements/restrictions that need to get checked/worked on, maybe you really need new hardware ...
Its in many cases not feasable from a developer perspective.
And also from a consumer perspective: having an ever growing app store full of dead apps floating around that do nothing, dont work, etc, can be distracting, anoying, and overall reduce the quality. Heck, at the beginning with the switch i regularly looked into the eshop, what has released, and found some interesting stuff. now i dont, because there is to much low quality crap or straight dishonest advertised products in there.
With all that said, now to my more productive thoughts:
I dont think apple will allow sideloading.
- BUT, i could see them giving you online compiling resources (certain amount of compute power free with a developer acount, for more you have to pay premium, so that if you only need it for short compilation of 1 or 2 projects you dont need to buy the latest hardware...but not so exploitable that people dont buy hardware anymore.
Kinda like amazon web services
- have a longer timeframe, not updated 2 years ago is still a rather recent ios version, so there should not be much of a problem
- emulation wrapper. Having a massively cut down version of IOS running in a container on an ios device. Shure, not the most effizient, but if the developer does not need much interoperability with hardware specific features, modern security features, access to your data etc, then i could see it being okay as a solution for say older games.
Since its stitll IOS and ARM, it should be feasable, as long as you dont have a bunch of those old apps running, and the initial development would definitely be a problem, and maybe im to naive here, but since that one scales (instead of having a check app by app), and still requires the developer to at least check a checkbox in a form if he does not have the means to update the app, so that they can sort out stuff that truly is abandoned.
Lastly, im pretty shure there will be (if there isnt already) a lively emulator scene tor emulating specific ios versions for old software that was removed from the platform or does not work anymore.
PS: no, im not on "Apples side", but they are what they are, a huge publicly traded operation that mas the major goal to create profit, and everything here makes sense from that perspective. It sucks from an art and availability perespective. But lets not do as if apple is the only of those companies that is lacking in that regard as a mega coorp, no chance that the 3DS or Vita or Wii store where that much of a cost factor, especially thinking how small the software that was downloaded was compared to current games, and how low the bandwidth would need to be since not that many people are actively using those stores.
