Apple is going to remove abandoned apps from the App Store

Apple has announced new measures to maintain high quality applications in the App Store. Apps will be reviewed to check if they follow the newer  review guidelines  introduced after the app has launched. There are continuously updated guidelines in five areas, safety, design, performance, business and legal legal. Apps that have already passed the review process will be reviewed again. Old and abandoned apps, will be cleaned up from the App Store. Apple does not want developers to release an App and sit on it, developers are expected to continuously fix bugs, add more content, provide performance enhancements and make changes to exploit the capabilities of newer models.

The App store search was good for finding Apps if you already knew the name, for say finding an HDR camera app or a puzzle game, it was better to browse by categories. However, to show up in the results when users searched for a puzzle game or a HDR camera app, some applications would include the probable search terms in the title of the apps itself. This would make the application names long and unwieldy, and add clutter to the App Store experience if the included search terms in the title had nothing to do with the apps. Apple is now tackling this problem by restricting the length of titles to 50 characters. Apps that will be affected by the change include games such as  AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (Force = Mass x Acceleration) , or  Flipped Out - The Powerpuff Girls Match 3 Puzzle / Fighting Action Game .

The process of reviewing and removing apps from the store will start on September 7, 2016. Apps that have not been updated to support the latest models, and crash on startup will be removed immediately. Apps that are affected will be contacted by Apple with suggested changes. Developers have a period of 30 days to make these changes, and submit an update. If developers cannot submit an updated version of the app within 30 days, the app will be delisted from the store. Removed apps from the store will still be associated with the developer accounts. They can be activated at a later stage after passing through the app approval process. The titles of these apps and games will not be available for other developers.