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NES hasn't been updated and upgraded 35 times after the game has been released. That's the difference.

It doesn't make sense to keep supporting APIs only a fraction of the user base needs, progress means leaving some users behind.



If apps get removed from the store as a consequence, that's going to be many more users left behind.

It's been mentioned time and time again, but it's worth mentioning again — Windows maintaining backwards compatibility is what maintained its hegemony, as compared to it, Linux and macOS look like hobby projects. For the young as well, because games still run on it, without worrying that Apple will invalidate their library due to not being in the mood to maintain 32-bits APIs.


The US Navy was paying $9M to keep Windows XP updated and patched just for them.[0]

I bet if you pay Apple similar amounts of money per year, they'll keep specific APIs available just for you.

And it's not like updating the app to a new iOS version is a massive undertaking, in most cases it's just a matter of opening the project in XCode, adjusting the OS version, compiling and publishing it again.

[0] https://money.cnn.com/2015/06/26/technology/microsoft-window...


I can't speak about iOS, but when I open Steam on macOS, I see more than 2/3 of my library unavailable since macOS Catalina, which entirely ruined macOS for gaming for me. Clearly, updating those wasn't so simple.

And also, it's unreasonable to expect all software projects to need updates, forever. My hammer doesn't need updates.


IIRC this was a switch from 64/32 bit to only 64 bit executable support.

Something that just has to be done, and not doing it has a clear cost.


If it "has to be done", then why have Windows and Linux etc. not done it?


Microsoft gets paid to support old versions.

Linux has dedicated people working for free to support the weirdest hardware and software


Because MS sells to business. They never hesitated to break compatibility to developers and non-commercial users if it won't affect business.




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