Apple Starts Pruning its Store With New Controversial App Requirements!

While there are many excellent programs to download on the Apple App Store, I think it would also be fair to say that there is also a lot of stuff there that has probably long overstayed its use, or, indeed, welcome. – With this in mind, therefore, it seems that Apple is more than a little aware of this, and, as such, has just contacted the makers of various programs currently residing in their store to inform them of a rather terse new policy.

Put simply, if the app hasn’t been updated within the last 2 years, it’s facing the risk of being removed from the platform, well, their official storefront at least, entirely!

Apple Looks to Prune App Store!

Reportedly falling under a new “app improvement system” Apple has reportedly been contacting the developers of various programs and games available on their store platform to inform them that unless some kind of update is applied in the very near future (just 30 days in some cases), they risk having their ‘product’ removed entirely.

Now, admittedly, given the amount of crap that is on the App Store, you can, from one perspective, understand why Apple wants to do this. On the other hand, though, you can also likely appreciate that many people (developers particularly) are not happy about this change!

Why Fix What Isn’t Broken?…

While there is a lot of bloat and garbage that could definitely do with being removed from the Apple App Store, the perspective of many developers is that while they haven’t updated their particular program in a fair while, it’s only because they haven’t felt the need to do it. It works, they’re happy with it, ergo why bother applying a pointless update?

The bottom line is that this could see many apps removed simply on the sole merit that its creator hasn’t decided to fiddle with it for 2 years. – There is, in addition, a lot of anger from developers that many applications, much older than their own, don’t seem to be getting affected by this. There is a theory, likely a legitimate one, that this is more of a purge on indie developers whereas ‘bigger’ companies are not being included.

In fairness though, as annoying as it might be, it would seem that the simplest solution for people getting affected by this would be to simply go back into the code (presuming they still have it), apply a stupidly basic update that could just be the alteration of the title screen art, then update it and waiting another 2 years.

Overall, I think there are legitimately two solid arguments to be made from both perspectives here. What do you think though? – Let us know in the comments!