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by Someone 4813 days ago
Apple rarely (did they ever?) uses a full kill switch on apps. They will stop further sales, but they will not, typically, disable features that customers already have in their hands. For example, I think the tethering in FlashArmyKnife still works for those who have it.
1 comments
georgemcbay 4813 days ago
They didn't kill-switch AppGratis, they just blacklisted it from sending APNS notification messages which is a different thing.

I'm not a huge fan of Apple and a big part of that is due to the power they have over the app store (and the fact that they were successful with this model encouraged so many others to emulate it), but given that they removed the app from the App Store, disabling APNS for it is a pretty reasonable thing to have done on top of that.

Why expend resources (all APNS go through Apple's server infrastructure) servicing an app that isn't even allowed in your store anymore?

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Someone 4813 days ago
Because, as I said, they have users using the app. They have said "we will not sell this app anymore", but they typically do not extend that to "we will no longer support existing customers for this product" (and even less so to "we will take this app away from those customers who downloaded/bought it")
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pwinn 4813 days ago
By "even less so," you mean "never," right? Because they literally never have.

Disabling a feature within an app != shutting off push messaging. The first doesn't use Apple's infrastructure. There aren't a lot of apps that have been permanently removed from the store by Apple, and I can't remember if any of them used push messaging, so I can't be sure, but it seems reasonable to infer that if an app is permanently removed, its APNS profile might be automatically removed as well.

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Someone 4813 days ago
I meant "I don't think they ever did, but I am not sure, and don't want to see replies discussing this minor point".

As to disabling push messaging: I think this is a bit of a gray area. For some apps, push messages are minor features. for others, they can be an essential part of the app. Disabling them for such apps is equivalent to removing the app from the user's device.

I haven't seen the AppGratis App, so I don't know what push messages mean for that app.

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julien_c 4813 days ago
They're pretty essential.
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