This really, really sucks for people who paid good money for 32bit apps. Or even expensive external hardware items that require ancient apps to be useful. Even if the apps are removed from the app store (and Apple has gone on a rampage removing old apps), existing customers always could keep the apps installed until now. If apps stop working and disappear, they will lose a whole lot of the trust that people had in the app store. I'm also curious about how this will affect the usually impressive rate of upgrades to the latest iOS version among active app-purchasing users.
The fact that those apps are still 32-bit means they're unmaintained. The fact that they're unmaintained means that they're likely to break at some arbitrary OS update anyway. Even common apps like Tweetbot, by reputable developers, will break on a new major version, so your app that hasn't been updated in years is probably going to die off soon anyway.
The only way to make sure to keep those apps open is to keep from updating iOS, and if you do that this doesn't affect you anyway.
There's no reason apps should break on arbitrary OS updates as long as they are well-behaved and stick to documented UIKit APIs and so on. I have apps from 2009 that work perfectly well for the task they need to do. The companies have long since folded and closed down their app store account. Others have similar apps, perhaps controlling $1000+ worth of DVR equipment. I think (and hope) Apple may be underestimating the effect of a vocal minority still requiring these apps, and the chilling effect this may have on paid apps or even free apps for the made-for-iphone hardware program in the app store in general.
And a lot of games hardly even use UIKit, relying only on OpenGL ES and some input handling logic: these are the kinds of apps I would expect to essentially never break (and would usually assume a platform bug if they did break).
I run iOS public betas and many games break during the beta period of new iOS versions. Even highly-rated apps like Rayman Run has been completely broken for weeks for me; like the audio breaks out, the touch input is not accepted in some menus, etc. At some point I couldn't event start the game. Then, an update arrives and everything is fine.
Removing them from store doesn't mean you can't still download them. Apple has always been good about making sure you can still download stuff you've bought.
If it's a fear, don't upgrade beyond iOS 10. But Apple HAS to start removing all those crappy old apps that developers aren't maintaining, zombie apps are near useless and are misleading to customers.
What apps would that be?
Also, it will have zero effect on iOS upgrades, unless the number of "users with expensive external hardware items that require ancient apps" is in double percentage digits. In reality I guess they don't even reach thousdanth of the percent.
