How Apple broke apps on old phones

Blindsided by Bitcode. Another Apple bug tale, this one almost un-testable, and a bit of a lesson on privacy.

Apple in December 2021 broke apps on phones running iOS earlier than the current version 15. This affected developers all around the world, including Touchgram. Anyone releasing an app update from early December onwards was likely to be vulnerable.

The bug was sneaky and impossible to pick up until an app was built for the app store. Here’s our story, a bit more of what it’s like to be a developer wrestling with this inflicted chaos.

Anyone running an older OS, got a copy of the app with a chunk bitten out of one side.

The privacy thing.

Touchgram is an intensely private product. Most of the user experience is embedded within Apple Messages as an iMessage App Extension. This means that we don’t know who’s sending a message; who it’s going to; or any other details. Touchgram code is called by iOS when you start editing the message, manages interaction and then, when you’re done, bundles up the message and hands it back to Messages to send. We live in a box.

As a related part of our obsession with privacy, there are no external crash reporting or logging libraries…