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Comment by ianlevesque | Hacker News Reader

A lot of the comments here are focusing on indie developers, but honestly the worst offenders are huge companies that aren't focused on software, like HVAC, IoT, automotive. They'll hire out a subcontractor once to throw an app over the fence and let it rot. There's no market pressure up front when you are buying a washing machine to evaluate the support model for the companion apps, so this isn't a problem that solves itself. Apple has now forced these companies to maintain their stuff, and the market will be better off for it.

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And then you have the other side, where the company doesn't upgrade the app (either cost savings or the company went under) and now you have an expensive brick because the app is suddenly gone from the store.

Oh, but they’ll allow you to keep already installed apps, so the only thing you need to do when you get a new phone is figure out which of your 100 apps have been unpublished in the meantime.

And then, I dunno, decide you are not going to upgrade because you don’t want devices in your house to be expensive bricks.

You can actually reinstall unlisted apps on a new phone They're available in the past purchase section. Not to defend Apple (especially since it's so hidden that very few users find it) but at least there's that.

Not necessarily. I bought a very expensive cat toy robot that had a companion app. The company that made it didn’t just hide the app, they delisted it entirely. When I upgraded to a new phone, the download links were dead. It started me down a journey of coding my own replacement and reverse engineering the device’s firmware and BLE protocols which was a fun and rewarding experience. But, the fact that this was even necessary really stunk.

No kidding. I still kick myself for a few things I bought with these types of apps (they become unusable). Ugh, you really need to buy from major vendors. Ie, a dash cam with a partial app from 6 years ago never update, lots of bugs. IoT is horrible as well. HVAC I got luckyish so far by going with Samsung (app works OK in my view).

I somehow can't believe Apple cares that much about either group, regardless of who in some manufactured statistical methodology you feel is the "worst offender." This has more to do with control than anything else, because I am unable to imagine a better fitting explanation. May be the "why" isn't really what you were addressing with your comment, but if it was, this can't be a "why."

> Apple has now forced these companies to maintain their stuff

No it hasn't. They can rebuild without improving anything.

If they do Apple can just reject the update. For better or worse this also amounts to a re-review every couple years.

How is that Apple's problem, you should read the reviews about the company's products and see what people are saying about the apps.

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