After installing an IOS update, I discovered that Apple took the liberty of changing my settings to allow apps to update automatically. Not only did this cause a couple of apps to become useless to me because of changes I don’t like, it’s shown me something else:
I have downloaded 23 apps on my iPad. Today, three days after I stopped the device from automatically updating apps, 14 of them supposedly need to be updated again.
This is getting out of hand. I realize that users don’t see behind the interface and there are security measures and other bits of programming that might need to be tweaked every so often. But three days / 14 updates to two-dozen apps? I don’t buy it.
I can only guess the makers’ primary concern is to keep us thinking about their apps and keep us using them as frequently as possible. It cannot possibly be that critical security concerns keep arising every couple of days, necessitating emergency updates, can it?
Going a step further and getting more cynical, I suspect the makers mandate minor changes frequently to keep their apps in our awareness AND this is what accounts for all the unnecessary, incredibly annoying pointless changes to user interfaces. Recently the basic phone app on iPhones was messed with, resulting in some of the typical buttons (speaker, mute etc) changing places on the screen. Why? What’s the point? It just makes me need to hunt for mute when I’m trying to use the bathroom during a phone call.
That said, I’m not a computer professional and I’ve been wrong before. So somebody please tell me why all these apps have to be updated after just a few days. There was an earlier, short thread on this same topic that didn’t seem to reach a firm consensus.
“Need” is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder that counts is Apple when it comes to their OS and their proprietary applications. The end goal is more money. All the other apps are 3rd party apps and, again, the end goal is more money.
Maybe I’m naive, but I choose to think that the apps are being improved to make my experience better. For example, I complained to Amazon Prime about their video player no longer having closed captions as my default. It used to work beautifully, then there was a change. The person I was chatting with about it sent me a message that the problem had been fixed! And it had. It updated automatically and was a better experience for me. A few weeks later the customer service woman emailed me again about another improvement. I was impressed with that as well; a sound boost for dialogue which I now use all the time.
Software development has mostly moved to a model of continuous integration, continuous delivery (CI/CD). There are various reasons for this, but the end result is that you as the app user are going to get frequent updates whether they’re necessary or not.
I don’t think there’s any motivation other than this is considered the current best practice for developers in most cases.
But the regular updates don’t cost extra money, so that doesn’t really make sense.
Isn’t there usually a version history you can look up on the apps? You can check there to see what has been updated. Typically, it’s fixed bugs, security features, updated content (some apps have seasonal themes, for instance), that sort of stuff. For me, it’s always been worth keeping up-to-date on my apps.
Except when you look, the description is, “Various bug fixes & enhancements”. Geez, that’s really helpful towards telling me what has changed & then you scroll down to the comments are all one start ranting about how they added another layer of ads, or you can’t bypass the ads anymore. No, this update was a way for the developer to make more $. You want to do that with a new product, fine, but please don’t break what I already have.
The only way that would get us to think about the app, is if you don’t have auto updates on, you go into the update screen, and really pay attention to what apps are being updated. I have auto-updates on and I’m not notified whenever something is updated.
Or if you noticed they monkeyed with an app and made it worse, which is what made me check my settings after the IOS update.
The fact that Apple changed the default setting to auto update apps, and that app makers are apparently so gung-ho about frequent updates means they seem to think it’s important. I just have my doubts that this is for our benefit, and I find it bothersome that it’s becoming the norm.
But I’m talking about your idea that “apps get updated so you think about them.” If you aren’t using the app regularly, an update won’t get you to use it if you have auto-updates on it.
As I said in the OP, I can only guess and that’s why I’m asking. I seriously doubt updates this frequent are really necessary, so my thinking takes me to the makers’ incentives. They apparently want it this way and I’d like to know why.
This is the answer. The push to devices is just the end of a CI/CD pipeline that runs continuously. The pushes are on a schedule, not timed for the release of any particular feature, beneficial or malicious.
That line is basically, "this is our scheduled release, so we are releasing. There are almost certainly some changes that the dev team would like to get out into the world, but “updated to new version of logging library” or “refactored Gary’s spaghetti logic” is probably not interesting to the end user.
Faster time to market
Reduced risk
Shorter review time
Better code quality
Smoother path to production
Faster bug fixes
Efficient infrastructure
Measurable progress
Tighter feedback loops
Collaboration and communication
Maximized creativity
The thing is, this isn’t limited to apps in the app store, like I said, this is pretty much all software now. Every web site you use is slightly different from the day prior, or even potentially the hour prior, because they’re all getting their updates in near-real-time from their development teams through the CI/CD pipeline. It’s just with apps you notice it a bit more.
The one that drives me crazy is McDonalds. I don’t go often, but when I do, i always think “wow, i will use the app! Apps for drive throughs are such a good idea!” And then I pull it up and it needs to update to be used at all. Since I’m likely in the parking lot of the grocery store or something (because who leaves their house to go to McDonald’s?), its too much of a PITA.
Like, what the fuck? My bank app doesnt have to be on the lateat version, but apparently McDonalds does.
Web site updates are usually for content changes, which is different.
I’d dispute the better code quality item on that list. Back when I was in college and you submitted card decks for programming assignments, you carefully checked everything. When you could just type cc on the command line, syntax errors could get fixed in a second so desk checking no longer happened. But if you shipped something out the door, you had to be careful because it is expensive to fix. Now no one cares, since if you ship something buggy but without fatal bugs you can patch it up in a day or two.
Hardware designers don’t get to send updates, and they check things a lot more carefully. (And processors are a lot more complex than your typical app.)
Faster bug fixes, sure, but more bug fixes also.
It makes sense to me that the app would have to download the current menu, specials, etc. But I’d think it could do so without updating the app itself.
Sometimes it’s better. Sometimes it’s worse. Sometimes it breaks the whole thing altogether. My feeling is that if an app does absolutely everything I need it to do, then I’m not interested in the risk of any of the negatives, and I greatly resent developers forcing “new, improved” versions on me without my asking. For that reason, I disable automatic updates everywhere possible. Where the developer-user relationship is such that you can’t prevent unsolicited updates, my preference is to not use the app (or the OS) at all.
The below example of Microsoft intrusion ruining a weather broadcast is not precisely about updates, but illustrates a closely related problem.
The people responsible for this aren’t remotely aware of your existence and don’t care about your needs at all.
Most likely there was an update to a low-level library that is very popular among app makers. Since software builds are fully automated, build pipelines around the world noticed the new version of the library, rebuilt the app and auto-tested it, and spit it out on the app store.
If that library updates 5 times a week, the automation will spam out 5 updates a week, with no consideration whatsoever for your annoyance or aggravation. You bought the phone, it is your master now, your needs are irrelevant.
