Why is Apple obsessed with updates on the App Store?
Over recent days, Apple has started sending emails to developers with apps on the App Store that had not been updated some time to inform them they would be removed if they didn’t revise them within 30 days.
This move prompted complaints from many developers, who insisted their apps worked perfectly well and did not need any kind of update; pointing out furthermore, there were console games from the 2000s still for sale. Apple then then clarified that it was referring to “obsolete” apps, which it defined as not having been updated in the last three years, or not having been downloaded or downloaded very few times over the last year, and this time giving developers 90 days rather than just 30 to update them.
Do apps really need to be constantly updated? I’ve written about software maintenance for academic publications, and I find the changes we have been experiencing for some time very interesting: the update rate of many of the apps I use seems to me to be completely insane and leads me, in many cases, to spend more time updating certain apps than using them. Maintenance is a fundamental part of software development, and given the speed hardware, operating systems and design trends evolve, it may make some sense, but to the point of retiring apps that are not regularly updated?
