Apple may have inadvertently made it easier for broken and buggy apps to find their way onto iPhones earlier this week, but it’s quickly making changes in order to ensure that nothing too bad slips through. App developers will now be able to remove older versions of their apps from iTunes — that previously wasn’t an issue because users could only access the newest version, but on Tuesday, Apple began allowing older version of iOS to download older versions of apps that still supported them.
Apple letting developers prevent old app versions from being downloaded
is The Verge’s executive editor. He has covered tech, policy, and online creators for over a decade.
While it was a simple change that could make it easier for owners of older iPhones and iPads to find working apps, it may not have been the best change to spring on developers. Users could have ended up accessing versions of apps that developers would rather have seen buried in time — be it for bad designs, buggy behavior, or glitches that could have actually been problematic for the developer’s infrastructure. Apple seemingly doesn’t think there’s a huge amount of trouble to worry about though, as it still requires developers to individually disable each old app update from being downloaded.
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