<story><title>The future of iOS is 64-bit only: Apple to stop support of 32-bit apps</title><url>http://www.macworld.com/article/3163248/ios/the-future-of-ios-is-64-bit-only-apple-to-stop-support-of-32-bit-apps.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jl6</author><text>Quite. When you accept a dependency on proprietary software, you open yourself to the risk of the vendor withdrawing support. Looks like that risk materialized for some users today.&lt;p&gt;This is an &amp;quot;I told you so&amp;quot; moment for a lot of Free software advocates.</text></item><item><author>xj9</author><text>i&amp;#x27;d just like to interject for a moment..&lt;p&gt;i wonder how long it is going to take for people to realize the importance of libre software. sure, strong copyleft can be inconvenient for developers, but that inconvenience must be borne to enable users to control their technology. otherwise we end up with the nonsense that we are discussing here: software people want&amp;#x2F;need, that they are no longer &lt;i&gt;permitted&lt;/i&gt; to use because Apple &lt;i&gt;said so&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fsf.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fsf.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>saurik</author><text>The Ars Technica article on this issue cuts to the heart of why this is so devastating: there is tons of software--software which was really interesting and I dare say &amp;quot;seminal&amp;quot; for this important era of computing; and which is &lt;i&gt;not old or outdated by any sane standard&lt;/i&gt;--that this destroys access to going forward, for essentially &lt;i&gt;no benefit&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Apple insisted that they get to curate something of critical value, but they don&amp;#x27;t comprehend the moral weight of that responsibility, and now want to just go around burning down their Apple-branded libraries. It is absolutely sickening, and is the kind of thing we probably need to solve using regulation (which, of course, is likely never going to happen, given how even companies we would have assumed were on our side often have lobbyists fighting &lt;i&gt;for&lt;/i&gt; the ability to lock down ecosystems).&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arstechnica.com&amp;#x2F;apple&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;future-ios-release-will-soon-end-support-for-unmaintained-32-bit-apps&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arstechnica.com&amp;#x2F;apple&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;future-ios-release-wil...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>saurik</author><text>FWIW, as a serious advocate of Free Software (someone who constantly travels around to developer conferences, college hackathons, and even sci-fi conventions giving talks that stress the benefits of the GPL3), this doesn&amp;#x27;t help and almost becomes a non-sequitor, as it makes it sound like a business decision related to productivity applications. I doubt anyone would say they &amp;quot;rely&amp;quot; on Trainyard, and the Trainyard developer did &amp;quot;rely&amp;quot; on iOS, but they probably liked that and for all I know they are dead now (I realize they almost certainly aren&amp;#x27;t, but like: this is the extent to which they aren&amp;#x27;t relevant).&lt;p&gt;As a free software advocate, there isn&amp;#x27;t a group of &amp;quot;some users&amp;quot; whom I get to point at and say &amp;quot;I told you so&amp;quot;: in fact, most of the people who played Trainyard and enjoyed it probably don&amp;#x27;t even care that it is going to be inaccessible. And while I sort of care myself about some specific applications, it isn&amp;#x27;t about people like me either. The devastating reality is that this purge of 32-bit software combined with the centralized control on the computers that are capable of running it is a devastating blow to society as a whole, and the people who are causing it are the people who either don&amp;#x27;t directly feel the downsides (as historical preservation is an externality, like pollution) or are actually in the minority of people who experience an &lt;i&gt;upside&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Advocating for free software is good as it can be a weapon in this fight, but in practice Apple just isn&amp;#x27;t feeling the burn: when they wanted a new compiler, they hired a ton of engineers and wrote one so they didn&amp;#x27;t have to rely on gcc anymore. There is only so much power in the lever of free software to force societal change in a way that doesn&amp;#x27;t continually lead to a handful of resistance fighters looking at the carnage of the land and thinking &amp;quot;I know what will make me feel better: I&amp;#x27;ll point at the majority of people who don&amp;#x27;t even understand this enough to notice and the handful of people who are happy this happened and yell &amp;#x27;I told you so&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;, particularly when developers like Linus Torvalds, who have critically important positions, aren&amp;#x27;t fighting for the same battle.&lt;p&gt;My claim: &lt;i&gt;we need regulation&lt;/i&gt;. In the same sense that we have regulation about pollution--to keep a handful of people who benefit from pollution enough to not care about its downsides to society (and them) from doing horrible things--we need to regulate companies like Apple to force them to provide open platforms and to have some reasonable set of responsibilities when it comes to sunsetting older hardware. The issue of closed vs. open ecosystems is &lt;i&gt;related&lt;/i&gt; to free software, but &lt;i&gt;isn&amp;#x27;t the same&lt;/i&gt;, and we need to be paying a lot more attention to the former and avoid a lot of knee jerk to the latter if we want to prevent some of the worst case scenarios.</text></comment>
<story><title>The future of iOS is 64-bit only: Apple to stop support of 32-bit apps</title><url>http://www.macworld.com/article/3163248/ios/the-future-of-ios-is-64-bit-only-apple-to-stop-support-of-32-bit-apps.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jl6</author><text>Quite. When you accept a dependency on proprietary software, you open yourself to the risk of the vendor withdrawing support. Looks like that risk materialized for some users today.&lt;p&gt;This is an &amp;quot;I told you so&amp;quot; moment for a lot of Free software advocates.</text></item><item><author>xj9</author><text>i&amp;#x27;d just like to interject for a moment..&lt;p&gt;i wonder how long it is going to take for people to realize the importance of libre software. sure, strong copyleft can be inconvenient for developers, but that inconvenience must be borne to enable users to control their technology. otherwise we end up with the nonsense that we are discussing here: software people want&amp;#x2F;need, that they are no longer &lt;i&gt;permitted&lt;/i&gt; to use because Apple &lt;i&gt;said so&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fsf.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fsf.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>saurik</author><text>The Ars Technica article on this issue cuts to the heart of why this is so devastating: there is tons of software--software which was really interesting and I dare say &amp;quot;seminal&amp;quot; for this important era of computing; and which is &lt;i&gt;not old or outdated by any sane standard&lt;/i&gt;--that this destroys access to going forward, for essentially &lt;i&gt;no benefit&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Apple insisted that they get to curate something of critical value, but they don&amp;#x27;t comprehend the moral weight of that responsibility, and now want to just go around burning down their Apple-branded libraries. It is absolutely sickening, and is the kind of thing we probably need to solve using regulation (which, of course, is likely never going to happen, given how even companies we would have assumed were on our side often have lobbyists fighting &lt;i&gt;for&lt;/i&gt; the ability to lock down ecosystems).&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arstechnica.com&amp;#x2F;apple&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;future-ios-release-will-soon-end-support-for-unmaintained-32-bit-apps&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arstechnica.com&amp;#x2F;apple&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;future-ios-release-wil...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simonh</author><text>There are many arguments for libretto software, but the support argument is the weakest. I&amp;#x27;m much more confident of getting support from someone I&amp;#x27;ve paid than someone I haven&amp;#x27;t. At least any support I&amp;#x27;m entiriedcyo will. Even a contract.&lt;p&gt;The reality of most liner software is that scads if it go out of support all the time and only users that are members of the developer elite (and happen to be skilled in the relevant platform, libraries and dev tools) have even a chance of doing anything about it.</text></comment>