> But it makes no sense to force devs to expend the effort to recompile and update an App just for the sake of staying on a store if everything is already working perfectly as intended with no security issues.
Sure, but realistically how does Apple tell perfectly fine apps apart from apps that are abandoned and do have security issues?
Hand-auditing every app doesn't seem realistic. I doubt a good automated solution is either.
They could just take developers' word for it, but Apple has a responsibility to protect end users. If you tell a developer, "your answer to our next question determines whether we remove your app", then you can't count on them to answer honestly because you gave them an enormous incentive to lie.
> Sure, but realistically how does Apple tell perfectly fine apps apart from apps that are abandoned and do have security issues?
Not to mention, the more apps with an inch-thick layer of dust there are on the App Store, the more they become trapped in the same kind of backwards compatibility mire that Microsoft is now stuck in. They could just hide apps that don’t run on newer versions of iOS I suppose, but with the extremely high system upgrade rate of iOS users that’s practically the same as removing them from the store.
I don't know, how does Apple tell perfectly fine new apps, that don't even have a track record of satisfied users (with telemetry that Apple has), from new apps that don't work?
Compilers and other development tools link framework code, libraries, and runtimes into binaries. Security issues get discovered, development tools get updated, binaries don't, binaries lack security fixes.
Old binaries are also built against old versions of the SDK and as a result get left behind when the OS adds or changes interactions, and if new device sizes are introduced they have to run in a blurry scaled compatability mode.
Sure, but realistically how does Apple tell perfectly fine apps apart from apps that are abandoned and do have security issues?
Hand-auditing every app doesn't seem realistic. I doubt a good automated solution is either.
They could just take developers' word for it, but Apple has a responsibility to protect end users. If you tell a developer, "your answer to our next question determines whether we remove your app", then you can't count on them to answer honestly because you gave them an enormous incentive to lie.