[adamwk]

I’m confused, that is how it works. If a developer increases their target version to say iOS 18, a user running iOS 16 would be able to download the last app version that supported it, even after factory resets. If the third party developer dropped support for APIs or whatever to break that version, it’d be broken regardless to whether or not you had the app downloaded already.

[ryandrake]

I'm pretty sure what I've seen is: If you backup and restore your apps, the version you previously had gets copied back over. But, if you wipe and try to re-download, only the versions that the developer has up on the AppStore are available to you, and if none of them support your OS, you're hosed. This is definitely true if you set up the device with a new account.