iOS 14.5 breaks older apps in an unnecessary way

I had an app in the App Store from 2011 until 2017. Some people are still using this app and it worked perfectly fine. Of course, they have lots of data in the app.

With iOS 14.5, the app refuses to start with the message "the developer must update the app" (not sure what the original wording is in English, loosely translated from German).

The reason seems to be that my old app requested the device ID. With iOS 14.5, this isn't acceptable anymore as far as I can tell.

People lost data they gathered over 10 years by this API design decision that breaks backwards compatibility.

Why does iOS 14.5 force developers to update old apps (which isn't possible in my case) instead of modifying the old API such that it simply returns a random device ID in order to maintain compatibility?

Replies

I have the same problem. I have an app in my library with all my friends' birthdays, but now I can't open it because the app hasn't been updated in years and is no longer in the App Store. Is it possible to extract data from these applications?