I think either of us misunderstood, I understood that the wife wanted the update to don’t trigger any changes to their existing tools, you said that it should be trivial to move stuff around, implying that some change would be needed, that is according to what i got, the point OP was complaining about? I agree with you anyway, at least mostly, should be trivial or not, I wonder how many people have a look at changelogs before updating and then go to blogs to complain, I dont use osx as a linux user, when i see something of interest in update packages i go to check the changelogs to make sure its smooth and almost never anything happen, so I don’t have much to complain
You're reading him too literally, and in the process create a strawman. It's obvious he updates his software; Business software must be updated to match changing legal requirements, besides a nonsubscription business has nothing to sell without updates.
He's saying that Windows per se did not require extra work for compatibility after he got it done since forever, while Mac needs adjustments and rewrites every once in a while, and the last time was too much for him. I guess he'd rather spend the time doing features.
He's complaining about PCs, but I've noticed similar issues with Mac apps. They don't have a system tray to go nuts in, but half of the mac apps I run check for updates at launch and bug me right when I'm trying to opens something. Some are smart enough to go ahead and do the update and tell me afterward, but they're in the minority.
This feels to me somewhat like the Vista shutdown menu. The programmers writing the individual apps aren't asking themselves "what if there were six apps like ours all asking to update constantly?" Come to think of it, this tends to be a pretty major theme in software development: ignoring user experience when other people's code is involved. Opportunity for improvement!
I'm not interested in updates because they never seem to do anything useful, they just move everything around and make thing harder to use without adding anything useful.
I think the point is that if the last 6 OS changes didnt do anything substantial then why would one bother to read the change log? Maybe you do the first few times but after 5 meaningless, to you, updates why continue? And if the updates are not doing anything helpful for you, at least as far as you can tell, why are they happening?
I understand there are plenty of things that one doesnt seem immediate value from as an end user that are important but update fatigue is real and just read the change-log doesn't really fix that.
Users want to get bugfixes and the latest and greatest without being bothered by updates and upgrades and popups and progress bars. Even with automated processes, app update fatigue is a problem.
If your use pattern already involves reloading/redeploying the app at start, that fatigue goes away.
What users do not want is losing features they care about, or see breaking changes in their workflow.
That too. There's a lot of software on my Mac that I intentionally don't update for a while because I want other people to test the waters first, since there have been cases of hijacked updates in the past. There's value in doing a slow rollout when the update isn't urgent.
It's this really something "general users" want? Outside of tech enthusiasts, people have allergic reaction to upgrades. Not changing software is great for them. They're already clicking "update later" / "try tomorrow" on windows/macos. Even developers in established companies are worried about upgrades. There's lots of documentation to update, standard processes and scripts may stop working. (How many docs and scripts have been invalidated recently by awscli 2.0 dropping "ecr get-login"? That's likely weeks of global productivity lost.)
Even if I'm in a tech enthusiast group, I moved away from rolling distros to fedora - still getting fairly fresh things, but don't have to deal with lots of unnecessary updates installing every day. On work laptop I'm a major update of the system behind and every time I actually go for it, it means a few hours to a day of making the environment work again.
Not sure why you were downvoted. You made a valid point.
Slightly offtopic but since people are dicussing updates. Updates are an important part of the sotfware lifecycle. It's no big deal that sometimes the updater might need to be updated.
I personally get a bit angry when of all people, software engineers get annoyed about updates. You should know better that the update to software would push better algorithms, reducing CPU and memory usage while it might also have security fixes making software more secure.
Nobody (not even Apple) makes perfect software. There is no such thing as bug free code. Updates fix bugs.
I understand it is a bit psychological too, since people complain more about free updates than paid ones.
Engineers should promote updates amongst friends and family and not deride updates in public.
Right, because pushing major updates to hundreds of millions of users, each using different hardware, with different OS versions, different level of customization on that OS and different software installed is SUCH a trivial thing to do. No room for small (repairable) errors that might affect a handful of people under certain circumstances.
Too often, those updates break already working tools. I don't need my essential app insisting that I wait 10 minutes to upgrade when I'm 1 minute away from giving a presentation using it.
The point being made by the OP and the comments here is that shouldn't be necessary. When every update includes new obnoxious shit that you don't want and have to figure out how to revert, it's no longer an improvement. Fighting the software you use is a horrible position to be in.
I'm very passionate about this idea for open source software, especially things like ruby gems or npm packages that I might use as a dependency, but for some reason I can't muster the indignation to care about this for apps. Maybe it's because I care primarily that the app works and the latest version is stable. I'm generally not going in and considering upgrades to apps strategically, and even if I did I have no ability to see the previous changelogs let alone install those versions. If for some reason I want to avoid an upgrade now I'm living on borrowed time and need to start thinking about a replacement or carefully curate my backups so as not to lose access. Sure in a perfect world it would be nice to have perfect changelogs, but it's so far down the list of things I want out my apps that I place zero value on it.
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.
This seems like a reasonable and thorough response. They revised and cut unnecessary bits and added clarification where possible within a reasonable time frame for these matters. Good job.
I really don't get the wailing and gnashing of teeth against even the principle of adding update checking and error reporting features. Real, regular people will get tangible benefits from these features. Their scope is so limited and implementation (now) drawn down to such a sharp point I can't really sympathize with a hard-line counterposition that these features must be defacto evil.
I'm not sure if I agree or not to be honest. I think there's good things (like you said, make sure the user knows they are doing it), but I have never convinced myself it is absolutely superior.
EDIT: One example of why it may not be good. If there is friction to updating, it means less folks will update (or you have to now take special care to make it as easy to update as if the switch was not there).
But like I said, I'm not convinced one way or another. I think there's cases when it is true, but I lean to that being the exception, not the rule.
> The "forced" you so easily dismiss is entirely the point.
I think it's you that missed my point.
> people choose when (and if) they upgrade, for a variety of complex reasons
If they're running Gentoo, or maybe a small group of other distros, sure. Otherwise, people (on all operating systems) don't really do a lot of choosing at all. If updates are available, they generally run them. The only picking and choosing I've ever seen from the vast majority of people (including technical folks) is if they don't have the bandwidth/time to update a particularly large piece of software at the moment. Of course, they'll update it later when they are able.
> The problem of inspecting the code itself is a separate issue entirely, though at least in the area of Free Software that inspection is possible
Yes, it's possible, but it isn't done in practice, which is why I said it. That's the reason I said it's 'basically the same thing'. Whether you receive updates automatically or choose when to download them, you are still accepting what the distribution method gives you. There are FAR too many software packages out there for the average person to work out the logistics of reading accounts from early adopters of every single point release.
> Now you're simply resorting to either insults (and/or wilful ignorance).
It's not an insult. It's a factual statement. You claimed in your comment that a multi-billion dollar corporation who has a vested interest in keeping the good will of their customers (some of whom are corporate, some government, but the vast majority are consumers who look to them for help) would willfully send compromised software through forced updates in the future. If that isn't a conspiracy theory, I'd love to know what is.
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