Living Museum of Learning
The Seven Apps Begin to Breathe Again
Years ago, seven of our apps suddenly became dead.
We don't know exactly when it happened.
They had been working perfectly, and then Apple's change to its nearby-network policy broke an important part of their existing functionality.
The apps themselves had not really died.
Their users simply could no longer use what we had built for them.
And we didn't even realize what had happened.
For years, they remained on the App Store like little fossils from an earlier time.
About three months ago, we finally noticed.
We investigated the old apps and discovered something almost ridiculously simple:
two changes to plist entries were enough to restore their existing functions.
The apps didn't need to be rebuilt from scratch.
Their original ideas were still there.
Their old code was still capable of doing what we had intended.
We had simply been locked out by a change in the world around them.
So we rescued all seven.
Then, instead of stopping at “they work again,” we began strengthening and polishing them.
We tested.
We fixed things.
We improved things.
And gradually, the old apps started feeling like real living creations again.
One particularly funny piece of evidence came from Cindy.
She got so absorbed in Golden 24 that she couldn't put it down.
Her verdict was wonderfully simple:
“I got smarter.”
That may be the best review any of our apps have ever received.
Then something else began happening.
The downloads started moving.
For a long time, the 365-day App Store graph had shown a nearly horizontal blue line at zero.
Then, sometime around May, little spikes began appearing.
Near the right edge of the graph, the spikes were reaching as high as six downloads in a day.
Six!
For an ordinary app, nothing special.
For an app that had effectively been dead for years, it suddenly looked like a heartbeat.
We checked Apple's 90-day comparison.
The seven rescued apps had accumulated 68 units in the latest 90 days, compared with 14 in the previous 90 days.
And the movement was spread across the family:
Golden Xiangqi: 25, up from 5
Golden Army: 15, up from 0
Golden Horn: 11, up from 1
Golden 24: 7, up from 6
Golden Chess: 5, up from 1
Golden Four: 4, up from 1
Golden Five: 1, up from 0
We don't know why the downloads are increasing.
Maybe people are discovering the apps through the Living Museum.
Maybe App Store discovery has changed.
Maybe the rescued apps are simply finding their way back into the world.
It is too early to claim anything.
So this exhibit is not a celebration of success.
It is a record of an observation.
An old creation can sometimes be much less dead than it appears.
The seven apps had been sitting quietly for years because something outside them had changed.
We eventually found the missing two plist entries.
Then we gave them attention again.
And now, for the first time in years, we can see tiny signs of movement.
We don't know where this goes.
But we know this:
They are alive again.
And perhaps the most interesting thing is that we noticed the heartbeat only because we were finally looking.