Apple sneakily thwarts own attempt to serve users

The head­line is mis­lead­ing, inas­much as it is dif­fi­cult to believe that this was either acci­den­tal or an attempt to serve users. «Sneak­i­ly» is sort of mis­lead­ing too. «Bril­liant­ly decep­tive» fits bet­ter. Makes for a real­ly awk­ward head­line, though.

One of the con­tentious aspects of Apple’s App Store (both the iOS and OS X fla­vors) is the lack of sup­port for appli­ca­tion upgrade paths. This has some short-term cus­tomer ben­e­fits; for exam­ple, app upgrades are usu­al­ly free. When a devel­op­er thinks it is time to get paid for a new ver­sion said devel­op­er must cre­ate a whole new app, which cus­tomers have to buy all over again. There­fore peo­ple who pur­chased WhizBan­gApp ver­sion 5.7 and want to con­tin­ue to have sup­port­ed soft­ware, must buy WhizBan­gApp 2 ver­sion 1.0.

Apple does­n’t offi­cial­ly have a way to offer dis­counts for peo­ple with ear­li­er ver­sions upgrad­ing to a new­er one, either. But there are clever devel­op­ers like the devel­op­ers of Goodread­er who have fig­ured out that they can offer an App Bun­dle with the old ver­sion and the new one, where peo­ple who have already pur­chased one part of the bun­dle pay a low­er price to com­plete the bundle.

«Lega­cy» iOS devices (almost any­thing old­er than about two years¹) have his­tor­i­cal­ly been strand­ed, not only by Apple but also by app devel­op­ers who update exist­ing apps, tar­get­ing ver­sions of iOS which make them poten­tial­ly incom­pat­i­ble with — and there­fore unavail­able to — peo­ple run­ning old­er ver­sions of iOS.

Note the word poten­tial­ly above. The way that Apple’s appli­ca­tion devel­op­er tools work, in order to make an appli­ca­tion for the App Store, you must cre­ate tar­gets in your project for each ver­sion of the OS. As APIs change, main­tain­ing these sep­a­rate tar­gets becomes bur­den­some, espe­cial­ly for small­er devel­op­ers. The API hooks that an appli­ca­tion actu­al­ly uses may not have changed between revi­sions, but the devel­op­er must treat each revi­sion sep­a­rate­ly. Devel­op­ers want­i­ng to use new fea­tures of iOS often have to choose between lega­cy sup­port and new fea­tures unless they want to put a con­sid­er­able amount of time in to pre­serv­ing lega­cy support.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, the only way to install old­er ver­sions of an iOS app which might be com­pat­i­ble with one’s old­er device required jail­break­ing the device, some­thing most users won’t do.²

A new hope

Back in Sep­tem­ber of 2013 Apple-friend­ly blogs every­where demon­strat­ed the depths of their Stock­holm syn­drome by heap­ing praise on Apple for some­thing that they should have done from the begin­ning: allow­ing the instal­la­tion of the lat­est sup­port­ed ver­sion of an app if the newest ver­sion can­not be installed on the iOS ver­sion of a par­tic­u­lar device. Apple snuck this fea­ture out with­out much men­tion, but once it was known this fact made the rounds.

The empire strikes back (at us)

Though many peo­ple were pleased at the new­found abil­i­ty to redown­load their apps, oth­ers were dis­ap­point­ed to find that when they tried to install an old­er app, instead of the new «Down­load an old­er ver­sion of this app?» mes­sage, were still greet­ed with, «You must update to iOS 7.0 (or what­ev­er ver­sion) in order to down­load and use this appli­ca­tion.» Many users, ini­tial­ly cel­e­brat­ing at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to, for exam­ple, watch stream­ing Net­flix movies on their first-gen­er­a­tion iPad, found that Apple still would not allow them.

Though I have a third-gen­er­a­tion iPad for my per­son­al use, I also have a first-gen­er­a­tion iPad³ which I keep for test­ing. I use it infre­quent­ly, but thanks to a project where I have to sup­port the old­er devices I start­ed to poke around on the first-gen iPad.

A friend (we’ll call him Sam because that is his name) has a first-gen­er­a­tion iPad as well, but unlike mine, his is the tablet that he actu­al­ly uses⁴. It was giv­en to him when a mutu­al friend bought her iPad Mini, and since he has found him­self frus­trat­ed by the lim­it­ed selec­tion of apps avail­able. See­ing first­hand that he was unable to install apps, I assumed that what I had heard about Apple per­mit­ting lega­cy ver­sions to be installed was sim­ply wish­ful think­ing and/or mis­heard rumor. We’ve talked sev­er­al times about jail­break­ing the device, or find­ing some way to fool it into installing some old ver­sion of some apps that he could­n’t get.

Return of the (i)Jedi

Hav­ing retrieved the first-gen iPad from the (fig­u­ra­tive) moth­balls, I tried my hand at find­ing appli­ca­tions that I could install. At first my efforts were stymied; indeed the appli­ca­tions that are avail­able for iOS 5 or below are few and far between.

Some­times with Apple what seems like it ought to work does­n’t. This is often done in the name of sim­plic­i­ty. Sim­i­lar­ly in the name of sim­plic­i­ty, some­times Apple makes things work even while they tell you that it won’t.

From the first-gen­er­a­tion iPad, all the descrip­tions of apps on the App Store sound depress­ing: requires iOS ver­sion 6, or 7, or 8. There is no men­tion that one might pro­cure an ear­li­er ver­sion. And as Sam found out, attempt­ing to install those apps result­ed in a dis­ap­point­ing message.

That is, of course, until I tried it. On my iPad, at least on some apps, I was pre­sent­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to down­load the lat­est ver­sion that would be com­pat­i­ble with my device. Soon enough, I had a num­ber of those appli­ca­tions my friend can­not install: PCalc, Byword, Drop­box, Spi­derOak, Note­file, Telegram, 2Do, iSSH, own­Cloud… all of which are unavail­able on iOS 5.

Think­ing that some­thing had recent­ly changed to make the promised lega­cy ver­sion avail­abil­i­ty hap­pen, I asked Sam to give it anoth­er try. Again he was frus­trat­ed to find that he could not install those apps on his first-gen iPad which I had just installed on my own first-gen iPad.

The dif­fer­ence: when I tried to install those apps, the store knew that I had already bought them. I’ve been using iOS for years. Most of the apps I’d have any inter­est in (and I few that I don’t) I’ve already bought.

It turns out that Apple will let you down­load the newest com­pat­i­ble ver­sion of an app so long as you’ve already bought it. It will not allow you to buy an app so that you can down­load an ear­li­er version.

In true intu­itive Apple form, they’ll let you have it so long as you don’t want to pay them for it.⁵

The log­ic is fair­ly obvi­ous: Apple does have some respon­si­bil­i­ty not to yank the rug out from under the feet of the peo­ple who have already paid for soft­ware. But the faster the hard­ware becomes obso­lete, the faster they sell more units. This scheme is essen­tial­ly a way to dis­cour­age peo­ple from get­ting sec­ond­hand iOS devices. A first-gen iPad with the soft­ware avail­able for it is basi­cal­ly no more than a web brows­er that you can hold in your hand. But a first-gen iPad for which you can get the apps that made it use­ful, that could have a lot of life left in it. Every device more than two years old that still lets peo­ple do the things they want is a brand-new device that Apple won’t sell. Or at least, that’s the thinking.

Then it occurred to me: some of the apps I’d installed over the past cou­ple of days are apps that I installed after I had my third-gen iPad. So here is the ques­tion of the day: can I install an app on a com­pat­i­ble device, then install the old­er ver­sion on the old­er device? Turns out the answer is yes.

To test, I had to find an app that had been around for a while and which I had nev­er installed. Well, I nev­er had a Net­flix account until I got a gift card for Net­flix for my birth­day at the end of the year. It’s one of the apps Sam was hop­ing to be able to run on his iPad and it’s one I’ve nev­er installed.

First, I had to make sure that despite hav­ing down­loaded lega­cy ver­sions of oth­er apps that Apple would pre­vent me from installing Net­flix. A quick trip to the App Store con­firmed: my attempt to install the Net­flix app result­ed in a mes­sage telling me I had to upgrade to iOS 7 in order to install it.

So I went to my new­er iPad, installed the Net­flix app, went back to the first-gen iPad and tapped on the «get» but­ton. This time, the App Store asked me if I’d like to down­load the most recent com­pat­i­ble ver­sion. And you know what? this 2010 iPad, pur­chased less than two weeks after they first went on sale, still streams high-def­i­n­i­tion video excep­tion­al­ly well. Bet­ter than my third-gen iPad which, due to hav­ing to con­trol four times as many pix­els and cram ten times as much oper­at­ing sys­tem over­head into four times as much mem­o­ry, can’t play an already-down­loaded video unless I put it in air­plane mode. If the iPad tries to do as much net­work activ­i­ty as receiv­ing an instant mes­sage at the same time video is play­ing, it will crash and spend over ten min­utes rebooting.

Lega­cy ver­sions of apps for old­er ver­sions of iOS does not require a jail­break or DMCA vio­la­tions. All that’s required is to have a friend with a new­er iOS device who likes you enough let you sign in on their device and buy the app you want. Lat­er, install the old ver­sion on your old device. I’m guess­ing that means back­ing up friend’s device, wip­ing it clean, rein­stalling with your account, and then restor­ing from your friend’s back­up. That would have to be a friend who liked you a lot, but it’s far from impos­si­ble. Alter­nate­ly there are a lot of peo­ple out there who are buy­ing new­er devices. Maybe catch one of them before they sell their old one, but after they have wiped it.

The idea of reward­ing Apple for this per­verse pol­i­cy is trou­bling. More trou­bling, how­ev­er, is the thought of let­ting them get away with enforc­ing the planned obsole­cence of their devices. I’d rather see them get a few bucks here and there than see per­fect­ly good hard­ware go to waste. Besides, there are a lot of free apps out there which this pol­i­cy pre­vents a new own­er of an old­er device from enjoying.

It’s bad enough that the march of tech­nol­o­gy makes old­er devices seem obso­lete, even when they are still capa­ble of amaz­ing and use­ful things. It’s slimy of Apple to pre­ma­ture­ly kneecap the use­ful life of their own prod­ucts in hopes of sell­ing new ones or at least pre­vent­ing the life of the old ones in the after­mar­ket. One way or anoth­er, we ought to keep these devices run­ning and make sure that peo­ple can use them with the soft­ware that is avail­able, even if that soft­ware is a ver­sion or two back.