Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

True, but I can still run my program that I compiled back in 1999.

First of all, the complainers do not speak for me, yet they seem to be speaking for everyone, that everyone has this problem because of 24-hour notice of the release of iOS14.

Anyone that has a work flow, even a personal workflow having nothing to do with actual earning of income, that updates as soon as an update is available, is an asshole to themselves, and a compulsive one at that. If there are no security patches, bug fixes or features that I desperately need, I don't update. I'm still running iPadOS13.4 and I may never update.

The problem here is not Apple's. Apple can do as it wants, and is under no obligation to make things convenient for the egotistical developers. From my perspective, (and fallacy argument from authority here, but fwiw, I studied computer science, flunky career in systems administration, and I am perfectly aware I rarely did any computer science, but am also aware programming is not computer science, either... CS is just math, and that is all... I personally just liked the problem solving necessities that sysadmining provided me, along with a decent living... I enjoyed solving those puzzles), developing for iOS sounds easy as snot. Developing a killer app is more difficult in that it must be innovative, clever, beautiful, and useful. But 99% of the apps on AppStore, and including 90% of the games, are duplicates of stuff that has been around forever. Where is the innovation?

And I have very little sympathy for developers because most of them made my life a living hell for 20 years. It is that precious few that did the opposite that I love, nay, that I worship. What are the chances anyone in this group of developer blamers and complainers, borderline narcissist egoists, are among them? Slim to none.

Apple gave you excellent tools. You have your own source code. Get something done! It doesn't matter how long it takes. But with the tools Apple provides, seems to me it is loading the tools, loading the source, grooming the source for the update, clicking a few radio buttons, compiling, and publishing. Shut up and get something done, or bail and go develop for another platform. Jeesh. Make install not war.

I watched the whole video of Jobs, and I enjoyed it and took something away from it. I also don't think that it applies to this conversation.

From Jobs's perspective here, App Store developers are also customers. So while he is talking about starting at the customers' perspective, rather than the engineers, I believe he's only talking about Apple engineers. 3rd party software devs that are building the Apple ecosystem are:

1. Paying for the privelege of being an Apple Developer

2. Paying Apple a portion of their own earnings.

3. Opting to develop for Apple, rather than other platforms

So if we are Apple developers, we are customers, and according to Jobs's philosophy laid out here, it's Apple's job to deliver value to us (as well as the actual end users).

But that's exactly what Apple wants. They want you to invest your time in their ecosystem because that prevents you from spending time in other ecosystems. Every thing they do that makes it more work for you to make an iOS or MacOS app is time you won't be spending making things for other platforms including the web.

plus, they get the added bonus that they can demand you pay 30% of various transitions that they couldn't demand if you just left it a website that happened to be PWA

Their incentives are entirely aligned not to support the latest web standards and not allow any other browsers on iOS to add them

I'm not endorsing the stupid stuff that Apple has been doing in the article, but for your case, I don't see what they should have done differently.

Maintaining backwards compatibility for every app is a big technical requirement, and Apple chooses to spend their efforts elsewhere. Microsoft takes the opposite route because they have many enterprise customers who have to keep using an internal CRM that was last updated in 1994 and all the developers have died.

If you want your OS to support abandoned apps, then you should definitely choose Microsoft. But most people have other priorities.

Similarly, keeping devices on old OS versions has a cost too. They could be insecure, opening users to the risk of compromise of their personal data. Newer apps will not work. Having a significant proportion of devices that have not bothered to upgrade stops developers from using the newest OS features (for an extreme version of this phenomena, remember ie6).

Apple prioritizes getting users and apps on the latest OS releases over perpetual support of abandonware. The proportion of users who need to support abandoned software is probably tiny compared to those who can benefit from OS updates. It's a conscious choice, and other vendors choose differently.