I feel like my phone apps update constantly. In general, that’s a good thing, I assume. I figure they’re fixing bugs or whatever. However, I don’t run into issues very often, nowhere near the rate of updates, and nothing seems to change after the update.
Compare that to Steam games which update really infrequently and the changes are usually much more obvious.
It’s a number of reasons. One I don’t see already mentioned is that Apple and Google require apps to target the latest versions of their OSs and libraries. For example Google released a new version of the Google Play Billing Services library. All apps were required to update to the newest version by mid August (you could request a two month extension). So to the end user it seems like nothing has changed. But under the hood the app is now using the latest apis. This could also apply to non-Google/Apple apis. Maybe a change of the developers own api was necessary.
Gotta have an excuse to issue a new ToS and opt you back into everything you toggled off.
Most apps will be built using libraries to provide functionality.
For example a Lemmy client might use a small database to store cached data on the device so it doesn’t have to redownload data as you navigate back and forth. Rather than writing their own code to create and maintain the database that functionality is available as a library they can import into their app and use immediately.
There might be dozens or even hundreds of libraries in any given app, this is great in that the app developer can focus on their app specific features and not worry so much about the low level features but these libraries also have their own release schedule and may only support security fixes on their current version.
This can result in a situation where you could have weekly or monthly updates just to include library updates even if you haven’t added any features directly to the app itself.
The standard answer is “security”…and that may be true in some cases.
But a lot of it is just job justification. Some beleaguered coder somewhere has to do a thing because their manager has to do a thing because their director has to do a thing and so on. Box checking exercises.
Also the app is probably built on a mountain of dependencies all of which have updates and security patches and bullshit. Delaying those updates for too long makes finally making a real update a nightmare, so you occasionally release updates just to keep up.
Gotta harvest even more of your data
While I can’t speak to specific apps alot of times it’s house cleaning stuff.
Maybe some bug that affects a certain number of users is found and fixed. And the update resolves that bit, since you weren’t affect, you don’t notice it.
Other times it’s to include fixes in libraries they’re using. So, for example, a JSON parsing library may have a security fix and they updated their app to use that newer version.
Another could be some behind the scenes api/library updates. Maybe a service they’re using for content (such as interacting with Lemmy) or maps or advertisements is being updated and they need to point their app to the new service address or change how they interact with it.
And of course there could be feature updates but those, usually, would be things you’d notice. Although, in some cases, it may be packaged with the application but waiting for some criteria (a backend service to be ready) or may even be part of A/B testing where some users get one change while others don’t so the developer can see which features are preferred using real data.
I see a lot of the other reasons mentioned, but one I don’t: on android you are required to release updates at least every year-ish or they will completely delete your developer account and app.
Source: got that message recently for an app I made and haven’t had a reason to update.
What a crock.
I get the reasoning, but there’s gotta be a better way to manage stale apps.
I have a number of apps that aren’t on Play and work fine, I just save the apk or back it up with Swift or Neo Backup.
Its pretty crazy. I was very taken aback by the email. Dev accounts aren’t even free.
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Spelling mistake in commented notes.
Oh god. These app updates are so huge, I wonder if anything about this is diff/delta.
Maybe I’m old but having 20 apps wanting 200MB+ updates and all of them having the filler text gets to me.
I would set that automatic app update off, apps are to known to sometimes update to newer enshittied versions like Fantastical did.
Yeah, try using Android 3 Honeycomb. Go on. Give it a try.
It’s not that nothing changes. It’s that changes are small. Humans react violently to big changes. If you change everything about an app all at once, people will hate the app, and leave.
If you make all those same changes, but spread them out over 2 years? They adjust. It’s like giving someone a pill to swallow. You don’t give them a pill the size of a watermellon, and expect them to swallow it. Instead you break it up into pieces and slowly feed them the whole pill over time.
What’s better is on an iPhone or iPad you can set the apps to auto update and it will not auto update. It’s normal for me to check and have 15 apps that have updates that have been sitting there for a month.
Same with Apple Watch. They have this feature that tracks sleep but guess what? You won’t get software updates if you do that because it only updates at night.
Having a regular schedule of updates helps get individual big fixes or features out faster. You may not notice a difference because you may not experience the bugs that are being fixed. There may be slight changes to features that you don’t use enough to notice. There could even be features that are disabled until they’re remotely enabled. Mobile apps often run A/B tests for changes to see how those changes affect user behavior, so you might be in the “no change” test cohort when you don’t see changes, those changes may never activate on your installation if the test doesn’t pan out.
I recently convinced my team to adopt this practice so I’ve been brushing up on it. When done right it can mean a more stable app and quicker response to issues since it relies heavily on monitoring app performance, bug reports, and user reviews. Communication to users is hard since you don’t want to have every update be “fixed bugs” but it’s also unnecessary to say “fixed an issue where a batch upload job didn’t handle individual errors by retrying” for each change that may not actually impact you as a user but which impacts the business that builds the app.
I disabled updates (though it looks like some Google apps update anyway) and majority continues to work. Few apps occasionally start a protest and tell me that I need to update before they resume their work.
It doesn’t answer your question, but indeed points that mostly there is nothing important.
