Can you firm this up a bit? If money talks, why would Apple want to keep crappy apps in the App Store? These apps aren't going to make much at all in the short run for Apple, and in the long run will turn off users. Do you think Apple isn't going to do something about these? Or is it more that they haven't been proactive enough? Something else?
How is it an alternate explanation? If you hire only one janitor it takes longer to clean the premises. Its not really an explanation when you're sitting on piles of cash.
Assuming hiring and training janitors is instant, and buying them up on a massive scale does nothing to the cost of each janitor, and there is no pressure to accept apps quickly, sure, but that's not the scale world Apple lives in.
I think that's a false equivalence. The devil is in the details with large projects like this.
There will be absolutely no change to the cost of each janitor because the scale is not massive at all. Apple is most certainly not hiring thousands of full time employees for app reviews. In 2009 they had 40 employees spending 6 minutes (at most) on each app.
There is supposed to be a review process that Apple started on Septemnber 7th which was supposed to clean up the store removing outdated and unsupported apps. Haven't seen any results from this yet. Downloaded apps yesterday that haven't been recompiled for 64-bit and show the popup on startup.
FYI - I have had a bunch of apps on the App Store from way back in 2012 that I never updated because I lost interest, or the apps just aren't relevant any more.
Been receiving a steady stream of notification emails from Apple about them, and some have already been taken off the store as a result of my inaction. Not all at the same time mind you - about a week or so between apps.
They are serious about the cleanup, but I expect it will take time to go through the millions of apps on the store.
Interesting. I have an app that most likely needs updating, but I just haven't got round to it. It does provide me with some pocket money so I wouldn't like it to be removed. Did you get some warnings from Apple before they were withdrawn? If so, how much notice time did you get?
I think all up I got the first email from them about a month before they removed it. They explained why they were going to remove the app(s) and the reasons why they did not conform.
For most of them, it was because I had never updated the screen sizes or anything to suit the newer iOS devices, plus used old SDK calls or Ad plugins etc.
Then I got another email about two weeks before. At the same time, the app were flagged on my iTunes Account, and I received 2 notifications (2 weeks before, and on the day of removal) via the iTunes Connect app that I have on my phone.
There was also an email a few months back explaining that they would be conducting this clean up in Sep/Oct.
All up, I believe it was plenty of warning. I just couldn't be bothered to make the changes as the apps were pretty much dead anyway, and there were too many competitive ones that were far better, so I let them kill them off.
