What is Apple's policy with regards to disabling old versions of an application?

Question

My employer has a free iOS app in iTunesConnect that was originally released a couple of years ago and has received various updates over time. They now wish to stop supporting older versions of the application (1.x) and disable these older versions of the app.

My questions are:

1. Can we stop users from re-installing old versions of the app? If yes, how?
2. How do we disable/remove old versions of the app in iTunesConnect?
3. What is Apple's policy regarding disabling/removing old versions of applications?

I'm not an iOS developer and am unfamiliar with the whole Apple application development process. I have searched the web as well as the Apple developer centre and I've read through the Apple Developer Program Terms and Conditions but I haven't been able to find answers to any of my questions.

I have managed to find information about removing an application from sale but this removes the entire application, rather than just specific versions. (Deleting a free app from iTunesConnect)

David Smith's article (http://david-smith.org/blog/2012/06/20/hacking-paid-upgrades/) on Paid Upgrades mentions the ability to provide fixes for previous versions if they're not deleted from iTunesConnect. When I log into iTunesConnect, I only see the current version of the app listed so I'm assuming prior versions have been deleted already. I would, however, like to confirm that users can no longer download old versions of the app.

This article mentions users being able to download old versions of apps from iCloud (http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/09/icloud-supports-re-downloading-some-discontinued-apps/) - can we prevent this? One option would be to mark the the version as having a "legal issue" but what ramifications does this have? and if I can't see the app in iTunesConnect then how do I do it?

I found a post asking about how to force a user to upgrade the application every time a new version is released but this doesn't answer my questions either. We want the users to upgrade but we're not wanting to force it programmatically. (Can I force an iPhone user to upgrade an application?)

I've also found lots of posts asking how to revert to previous versions of an app in the app store but again, this is not what we're wanting to do. We're wanting to disable older versions of the app but leave the most recent versions alone.

Before the flame wars begin:

1. Users that are unable to update to the latest version of the app for whatever reason are able to use a mobile website in place of the app. The website has the exact same functionality.
2. Can answers please be kept on-topic rather than getting into great debates over whether one should/shouldn't maintain legacy versions.

Thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

Users can typically only ever download the latest version of an application. There are a few ways I think they can get around that but in general only the latest version is available to users via the normal means.

If, however, you absolutely must prevent the old versions from being released you can do so when submitting a new update. Right after you say "Ready for Upload" you will be asked a question about if this update was for a 'legal reason' if you click YES then you will be given the opportunity to disable old versions of the app from download.

As to Apple's policy on this...I have no idea. But I can't think of any policy that would require you to support older versions moving forward.