Here’s something users don’t care about. Your next version. You’re a fucking text editor. You do not get to update, ever. Not “remind me later,” not “skip this version,” never. How fucking dare you throw an update prompt or a release notes screen when I’m trying to use a tool to do a job. It’s unconscionable arrogance to think a change to an already-complete piece of software is worth an interruption like that.
If I want it to behave differently than it does, I’ll go looking, and the answer is “you gotta upgrade” then I will. But not a moment before.
“Hey we came up with some new ways to try and solve the kinds of problems this tool is designed to solve” isn’t worth a note? “Hey the version you’re using now won’t work with the new version of the OS you’re using but we fixed that”? “Hey, we fixed a pile of long-standing bugs”? You don’t wanna know about any of those?
It's not great when a modal update notification pops up some X milliseconds after opening a productivity tool, after the required network request has completed. By that time you might be half way through typing something, or just about to click something in the interface.
This is the main issue. It's not that the information is unwelcome, it's that the delivery of said information interrupts workflow. Notepad++ has been particularly annoying me lately with this one. They removed the option to disable auto update a while back, need to see if it has returned.
There should be a site that catalogs anti-patterns and nuisances in applications so we can publicly see the outcry over stupid stuff.
Yep, which makes it even more annoying when package manager-sourced apps still bug you about updating. For example Chromium on my arch install today popped up a dialog saying ‘there is an update but this Chromium install can’t update itself’. Yes thank you Google, that is intentional!
If I want it to behave differently than it does, I’ll go looking, and the answer is “you gotta upgrade” then I will. But not a moment before.
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