While browsing through the purchase history on my iPhone tonight, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that applications no longer available for purchase in the App Store can be re-downloaded by those who bought them prior to removal. In the past, you had to keep an app on your Mac or PC indefinitely to preserve the option of adding it to your iOS device(s) in the future.
Below you’ll find an example – the original Big Picture app, featuring content found at the popular photoblog, was developed by Hippo Foundry before it was acquired by Boston.com, which operates The Big Picture. An official application was then launched to rather mixed reviews while the original disappeared from the App Store. I’m happy to report it seems Apple kept a copy up in the cloud.
