Appocalypse Now - How iOS11 Will Kill Some Of Your Favourite iPhone Apps

Ronan Price, writing for Independent: The app-ocalypse is coming and almost no one knows it. Apologies for the dreadful pun but, in about six to eight weeks' time, hundreds of thousands of older apps for iPhone and iPad will cease to work when Apple updates its iOS software to version 11. Businesses and consumers who rely on these elderly apps and update to iOS11 without knowing the consequences face a rude awakening. Their difficulty ranges from mere inconvenience that a useful app no longer functions to the complete loss of valuable data buried in a piece of obsolete software. Apple began signalling two years ago that it was signing the death warrant for older apps when it moved iOS to 64-bit software - essentially a more secure, faster and technologically advanced version that replaced the previous 32-bit code. First, Apple encouraged developers to rewrite their apps to 64-bit status but continued to allow 32-bit apps to function. Then it began to warn developers and customers that future iOS updates would experience compatibility issues. You may have seen -- and ignored -- the messages when launching apps in the last year telling you "App X needs up to be updated, the developer needs to update it to improve its compatibility." Finally, just this June, Apple confirmed that iOS11 would put the kibosh on 32-bit forever when it's released into the wild in late September. The announcement came and went with little fanfare from the public's perspective.