We have heard of Apple killing support for 32-bit apps lately. This became clearer after the launch of iOS 10.3 where Apple put out clear warnings through pop-up messages hinting that older apps will not work with future versions of iOS. Now there’s more news on this front and it even includes speculation about future Apple processors not including 32-bit support altogether.
9to5mac reports that Apple will be making a drastic change this fall. A prominent developer Steven Troughton-Smith put out tweets explaining that this Apple will cease to support these older apps. While hundreds of 32-bit apps continue to work right now (with the warning pop-up) these may no longer work or show up on the App Store after iOS 11 come out in September this year.
Smith puts it out clearly that developers either need to upgrade of they will be chucked out of the iOS ecosystem once users upgrade to iOS 11.
Additionally, Smith also speculated that A-Series chips from Apple in the future may not even include support for 32-bit instructions. With these missing at the hardware level in upcoming iPhones, there is literally no future for these 32-bit apps.
Indeed, the move comes as no surprise as Apple has been warning users about coaxing their app developers to upgrade their apps. The move comes as Apple seems on a warpath to remove older, problematic and abandoned apps (ones that haven’t been updated for years) from its App Store in a bid to maintain higher app quality standards over quantity. Since the announcement in September, Apple has managed to purge about 50,000 such apps from the App Store. iOS 11,l with its new standards, is expected to reveal a better kill rate for abandoned apps.
If you are unsure about which apps on your iOS device are 32-bit, you can simply head to Settings> General> About> Applications. If you are able to open the ‘applications’ page, then you do have one or more 32-bit apps running on your device and they’ll be listed there. If not, you will simply not be able to open the Applications section, which means that you have nothing to worry about.
If you do find some 32-bit apps that you can’t live without, you’d better hope that the app’s developer will listen to your piteous pleas for an update. If not, tough luck.
Publish date: April 10, 2017 1:50 pm| Modified date: April 10, 2017 1:50 pm