App Discontinuation

I have created apps for a long time now, before Apple and Google even made cell phones.  The original idea was to create great apps that saved people time in their daily lives, and to just keep making the apps better.  You quickly learn however, that the quickly changing, and evolving nature of the technology, make it nearly impossible at times to simply maintain an app. 

Let us look at Apple's iOS operating system as an example.  As a consumer, you know obviously, that it has visually changed dramatically over the years.  But did you realize that the complete underlying structure has changed.  Apple began by using an old language called Objective-C that actually had roots in Steve Jobs company that created the Next computer in 1988.  If you have ever coded in this language you will notice the commands start with an NS prefix that stands for Next Step.  Apple created their own language in 2014 they called Swift. 

This is only one example, but many changes get made every iteration of iOS that force developers to update and sometimes rewrite entire sections of code from scratch.  At some point it is simply easier, or essential, to discontinue the old version of the app, and create a new version from scratch.  For us, this is what happened when we began rewriting our apps in Swift.  We discontinued the old Objectice-C versions of the apps and started from scratch.  This was a huge undertaking for a small company but it was also our chance to make the apps much better than they could ever be using the ancient Objective-C language. 

The discontinued apps below are just a list of the Apple apps, however there are many Android, Windows, and Blackberry apps as well.  The majority of these apps are over a decade old, and originated during the birth of the app store.  Most discontinued apps are pulled from the app store and cannot be obtained anymore.  There are a few exceptions of apps that we have left on the store for people using older phones, since the new apps won't work on their phones.