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As long as you keep a backup of your old app bundles on your computer (for instance using Time Machine) I don't think it's a problem to load old apps. The exception being if some of those apps require online services that are no longer available.

Keeping and installing old copies of app bundles doesn't seem like a very viable option for non-technical users.

Using outdated and unsupported versions of software doesn't seem like a very viable option for non-technical users.

I don't like your comment. You use the same words to directly counter the parent, but these words don't match the case. What do you mean by "viable option" here? Some "options" for non-technical users are in this thread's first comment.

Maybe not, but it is exactly how software has worked since approximately the dawn of time, and it is exactly what the grandparent comment was proposing should be allowed.

Of course the non technical user is not generally the one complaining.

> Some people will argue that software developers should be able to require that their customers always have the latest versions of their product. I personally believe that decision should be in the hands of the user.

Did somebody say Internet Explorer 6?

Now, being serious, I agree that the customers should be the ones to decide, BUT they must be conscious of the implications (lack of support, security issues, bugs that got fixed in a recent version, etc.).

Well that was in a time when Apps were self-contained software, before they started talking to the Internet and require a wide array of specific webservices to be online and functional. As developer you don't want to keep old services running forever, because you want to evolve the app and eventually change something that breaks older versions.

It should be your choice but most people aren't knowledgeable enough to manage versions themselves. You would certainly give up any rights for support in doing so as well.

> When software was distributed physically, the consumer always had the freedom to use any version of an application they liked. Want to run a lightweight version of Word because you don't need all the latest features, or maybe you just hate the new UI? No problem. Did you like some video game better before they "improved" it? Just get the old disk out and play it.

In theory, the cloud could do this, too - if done right.

This is actually an advantage of cloud distribution. What if you want to run an older version of Word but haven't bought it yet? It can be a pain to find an old copy to buy. Whereas Apple has all the old versions on their servers and can deliver the exact one that will run on your system.

Provided Apple (or whatever other provider) actually distributes the old versions. Somehow, that never seems to be the case.

What do you mean? The whole purpose of this new feature is that Apple is giving users older versions when they need them...

Which is novel enough to be a news article.

That's why we're discussing the news.

Whereas Apple has all the old versions on their servers and can deliver the exact one that will run on your system.

"The one that will run on your system" is not necessarily "the one you want", though. It's still not in your hands.

What if your backend APIs have changed and you never expected to support that older version? I can see a lot of the older apps not working at all in that case.

How is this scenerio different from one where the user installed your app a year ago, and hasn't upgraded to the newest version?

You'd need to handle it in either case.

It's different because prior to this change, you could make an educated decision about whether to support an older version of your API based on usage of your app. When the legacy version reached some threshold percentage of your user base you could be fairly confident that you were inconveniencing a small and dwindling fraction of users and drop support.

With this change you can no longer be confident that app usage for legacy versions will always decrease. If your app suddenly becomes very popular (as most app developers are aiming for), you might have a substantial contingent of users who are on an old OS downloading an outdated version that you no longer support.

This was my immediate fear. We're geared up to take offline versions 1.0-1.3 of our API, which are used by less than 2% of users (and we gave them a nice banner urging them to update with a future cut-off date). This announcement has me worried, mostly from the customer support standpoint.