It's disturbing enough that many gadgets these days only stay usable as long as their cloud backend stays working.

But many more gadgets, while not cloud dependent, depend on an app. Think about any number of remote-controlled toys where the remote control is a phone app. Think, for example, about very expensive bicycle derailer systems that can only be configured via app.

Already I've found very neat objects whose app has long faded from the app stores, but for Android at least, you can usually find a .apk and even ancient ones often still load and run. A recent example was that for an ancient parrot ar.drone that I got at a garage sale.

Since these gadgets and their apps precede this attestation thing, newer Android devices will no longer be able to run them. Then what? Keep an old Android device around and hope that it stays working as long as your expensive gadget?