I wrote this in January but waited to see if I'd resolve it somehow. Since it looks like I'll miss the deadline, better to share it and move on.

This is what Apple's kiss of death looks like:

Hello Rosano,

We've sent you a new message about your app, sonogrid, app Apple ID: 1409129549.

For details, visit the App Review page in App Store Connect.

Best regards,
App Review

Swift, bureaucratic, saying nothing.

According to their policies, it's been over three years since the last time I updated my apps, and there aren't "enough" downloads for them to keep it on the store, so Apple will remove all of them unless I update within ninety days.

To update means:

1. apply half a decade of iOS and App Store "innovations" just to exist or remain compliant, but
2. even then there's no guarantee it would be approved, and
3. even if it does, it only buys me three years

Naive to think I could just pay their $99 USD annual membership fee to keep projects up there.

It doesn't matter if you spent seven to ten years working on something in the Apple platform and it's meaningful to your niche: either you keep up with policies (stay updated, scale with them) or you'll get taken out in a fashion maximally automated to communicate how cheap and replaceable you are to the ecosystem.

I might look into alternative app stores like AltStore, but it's sort of like starting from scratch while my primary motivation was to let people who already paid have easy access on their other devices. I'm also kind of tired and lazy to deal with this genre of problems to be honest: with orders of magnitude less effort, I could ship something on the web today and make progress that the rest of the world and I can keep forever.

Maybe I'll find a way through it another day, but this definitely confirms most of my hesitations about the App Store in the first place and makes me glad the web exists: I can just do things there.

So once again, I'll say "get them while you can"; they'll be gone around April 27, 2026.