Deprecating app in favour of universal version

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Created May ’16

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Until now we had two apps in the app store, one or iPhone, the other for iPad. Now we released an universal app for both platforms.

Instead of having two identical apps in the App Store, which I imagine is not Apples intention, we were looking for elegant ways to discontinue one of both apps and still take the users (a significant number of users) over to the new, universal app.

The new universal app is named 'CONRAD' and has the AppStore ID 451963779 and is already available on the AppStore.

So what we did was we developed an update for the discontinued app in order to guide the user to the new universal app.

The new App, of course is super limited in its functionality, as it simply explains the situation and offers a link to the AppStore in order to install the new universal version of the app.

I submitted a support request to Apple to learn, what the recommended approach for such a scenario is, as it is not hard to figure out, that it will be difficult to get this "stub" app into the AppStore, but the first response was to send out a push notification, which I can not do, as the old version the app can not send push notifications and in the next reply I was told that there is no recommended approach for that scenario (Huh?! Am I really the first one combining to device specific apps into one universal app??) and that I should search the developer forums, which I hereby obidiently do :-)

Especially we would have liked to find a way that the users, who have our old app, which now gets discontinued, would be guided to the universal app, but users, who would search for a 'Conrad' app, would ONLY find our new universal app. We didn't find a solution. So we now write it into the App Store description text, so that users do not install this app version.

...and then it was rejected by the AppStore review exactly because of too few functionality (2.12)

As I understand 2.12 protects the iOS users from Apps with no value. That is appreciated, but in this case I do see a value for the user, which is to be guided to the new version of the app and not download a deprecated version from the AppStore, which is not anmore actively developed and will soon fail to work, when the fallback backend gets turned off.

What other options do I have?

Updating both apps idependantly and having two identical apps with different bundle IDs in the AppStore obviously is not a good option for all affected parties... :-(

Thanks for reading

Alex da Franca

iOS Development - Conrad Electronic SE

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Answer 1

bob133 OP

May ’16

I would recommend continuing to update both apps together for at least the next few months, but in the discontinued one include some sort of nag reminder to switch to the other one. As an additional incentive, you might want to mention that you're no longer providing support for the discontinued variant.

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Answer 2

PBK OP

May ’16

You can update the old app so that it functions just as it always has but it flashes a UIAlertController that will take the user to the new app. You could present that UIAlertController each time the user opens the old app. It might say "Enjoying this version of XYZ? Well there is a new improved version under the name ABC! Tap 'Check-it-out' to consider downloading ABC now."

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Answer 3

alex_at OP

May ’16

Thanks for the suggestion.

While I can not update the old app, as I do not have the complete source code, I can update the old App with the new App (replace) and put into that "special version" as single difference this "nag reminder".

That is my "plan B", the downside is, that new users will still find the "deprecated App" in the AppStore and it looks as new as the new universal app. I'll make in the description text cristal clear, that the deprecated version is deprecated.

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