I am not a developer, but I have a question that only a develop could accurately answer. Sometimes, I'm asked to download an entirely new version of an app, rather than being provided an update. I'm wondering what reason a developer might have to have their customers download an entirely new app and rely on them to delete the old one. Does Apple require this to be done under certain circumstances? Just curious!
new app v update
Money, at least in the case of paid apps. Customers have to buy new apps. Updates are always free. BTW, Apple doesn't require new apps to replace old apps -- that's strictly the developers decision.
It's poor monotization. There's 3 main ways that monotization works:
Bad:
1. Speding money ruins the user expirience. This is when it's more fun to not pay and is only seen in game apps. These are games where players go as far as they can to compete with paying users becuase the ones that pay lose out on all the challenge of the game.
2. Force to pay. This would go along with what you said. The user is forced to pay in order to progress or use the app. If the user likes that app and now has a whole new app they need to download and it costs money then there's no user choice and they are forced to pay in order to contiune/compete.
Good:
1. User is happy about a purchase. The user is glad that they were able to spend money on the app. They feel as though it was their choice and that they could have continued to use the app no problem without spending money but they wanted to support the game.
An update involves downloading and installing the new version, then copying over contents of /Documents, then deleting the old version. This process is routine, not optional and is performed by the OS.
Let me give a little more of an example.... A local NPR affilate, and a local CBS news affialte both recently advertised their all new ios apps. In both cases, they're totally free, and neither have in-app purchases. So I wondered why the companies that were contracted to make these apps didn't just do an update as they usually did. Maybe since it was a large UI overhaul they wanted to make it a "new" app so people knew it was significantly different?
That doesn't really make sense. The old customers wouldn't even hear about the new app unless there was some kind of pop-up notification in the old app. They wouldn't routinely search the App Store for alternative/new versions of apps they already downloaded.
Could be any number of reasons - sometimes they do it that way to distance themselves from a legacy reputation that doesn't fit their new goals, etc. Sometimes you don't have access to the old assets and/or new devs don't want to mess with the old rats's nest.
When I listen to my local NPR station, they mention on the air all the time to "download our new and improved app for iPhone." Seems like it'd be easier for everyone involved for them to have made the changes they wanted in an update, rather than hoping we take the time to search for the app again and then delete the old one.
Sometime it gets difficult for a developer to keep on updating single app that was initially developed long time ago just because new development tools keep on arriving and it gets clumsy to manage older things with new tools and time gets wasted in resolving bugs. So, rather a developer would prefer to create entirely new app using new development tools so that it can give better performance and save time.
That still doesn't mean they can't release the new app as an update. They can throw away all the old source code and have all brand new code and still release it as an update. Apple doesn't care if you do that.
The original app may have been published under a 3rd parties account, unless the developer transfers it to the NPR station then they have no access to do an update if they then use a different developer or do it in house. In this case it would have to be created as a new app.