[amatecha]

I have a huge folder of iOS apps, but.. unfortunately in I think iOS 9 or so, Apple made it so backing up your iPhone stopped backing up the applications, and I believe made it impossible to install applications from your hard drive backups (that may have happened in a later iOS version - I forget). Meaning... iOS apps are now simply unrecoverable once they aren't on App Store anymore. Good thing I have a couple old iPhones which actually allow installing these old backed up applications. Even then, the entire ecosystem is completely reliant on internet authentication to even install the OS, so if your phone needs to be restored -- good luck. Very sad times, indeed.

Yeah the personal effect of this for me is, I can't show people the song I had in Tap Tap Revenge anymore. I do have an old iPhone that still has it installed, but it's not like I carry that around with me. The app is no longer on App Store and I thus could never install it on my newer iPhone, nor restore my backed up copy to it (and even if I could restore it, it wouldn't run anyways because of the breaking of backwards compatibility in recent iOS updates). Overall, a whole ton of user-hostile product choices in the iOS ecosystem, sadly. Not the Apple I grew up with, where I could modify anything to my heart's content (ResEdit, anyone?)...