It’s not only the brand new iOS Files app that was accidentally leaked ahead of the opening WWDC 2017 keynote scheduled for Monday morning. Apple has also accidentally teased a major change for iOS, even though it’s one that we totally saw coming.
According to Touch Arcade, 32-bit apps were not available from the App Store for “a good 12-24 hours” over the weekend. That apps did not disappear per se, although that’s probably something that will happen in the future. They were simply undiscoverable via search. But as long as you had a direct link to an application, you could still find the app.
This isn’t the first time Apple has hinted that 32-bit apps are going to bite the dust in the near future. The company urged developers to update their apps to 64-bit, and there’s even a pop-up notification in iOS 10.3 that tells both the user and the developer that the application won’t work in future versions of iOS.
Ditching 32-bit app support and forcing developers to update their apps to 64-bit should, in the grand scheme of things, help Apple improve performance across devices in the future. It’s also believed that future A-series chips won’t not even support 32-bit apps any longer. We’ll still have to wait until fall when Apple will unveil the iPhone 8’s A11 CPU to see whether this rumor pans out.
Apple will unveil iOS 11 on Monday, at which point we’ll find out more details about app requirements as well.
