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Or remove functions, or change the UI needlessly and for the worse. I honestly don't know how people can update their apps without having a backup to go back to

Or remove functions, or change the UI needlessly and for the worse. I honestly don't know how people can update their apps without having a backup to go back to. I probably would not do it if I didn't have one of my backups around. The different app stores should offer the user a way of going back to a previous version (if you already had it installed) but it seems that none of them do so...

schrodinger 11y ago
As an app developer, I understand the frustration but you've got to see the other side too. There's a huge cost to maintaining legacy server side API end points. I think the sibling commenter makes a great point about the difference between standalone apps and apps that are a client to a web service. It's also very frustrating when I see a crash keep happening in my error logs that I know is fixed in a later update :(
newscracker 11y ago
Apple's "app thinning" feature implementation in iOS 9 makes it all the more difficult to "save a version of an app" because iTunes no longer syncs apps into the computer, like it used to before. Any app downloaded on to the device directly from the app store is a device specific thinned version. If you replace the device with a new one, you would have to just get all the latest versions of the apps from the app store. The only inconvenient solution, in my knowledge, is to always purchase and download apps and even update apps from iTunes on a computer. This would make iTunes download a "universal" (for lack of a better term) app file that would run on all compatible devices. Then sync the apps from iTunes to the devices. You lose the advantage of app thinning and use more storage (like in iOS 8 and previous versions), but you would have access to the specific version that you have used and want to keep using. I emphasized the word "implementation" above because it was not necessary for Apple to disable iTunes from syncing apps on to a computer with the thinned apps. Technically, there are many ways to store device specific copies of an app with the same name on the computer, which for some reason Apple has not even considered. [Apple never allowed downgrading of apps without resorting to iTunes, but that's a different and larger topic] Overall, the push to use the latest version of any app is really frustrating and will result in more backlash as people realize how much freedom they're losing.

schrodinger 11y ago

As an app developer, I understand the frustration but you've got to see the other side too. There's a huge cost to maintaining legacy server side API end points. I think the sibling commenter makes a great point about the difference between standalone apps and apps that are a client to a web service. It's also very frustrating when I see a crash keep happening in my error logs that I know is fixed in a later update :(

newscracker 11y ago

Apple's "app thinning" feature implementation in iOS 9 makes it all the more difficult to "save a version of an app" because iTunes no longer syncs apps into the computer, like it used to before. Any app downloaded on to the device directly from the app store is a device specific thinned version. If you replace the device with a new one, you would have to just get all the latest versions of the apps from the app store. The only inconvenient solution, in my knowledge, is to always purchase and download apps and even update apps from iTunes on a computer. This would make iTunes download a "universal" (for lack of a better term) app file that would run on all compatible devices. Then sync the apps from iTunes to the devices. You lose the advantage of app thinning and use more storage (like in iOS 8 and previous versions), but you would have access to the specific version that you have used and want to keep using. I emphasized the word "implementation" above because it was not necessary for Apple to disable iTunes from syncing apps on to a computer with the thinned apps. Technically, there are many ways to store device specific copies of an app with the same name on the computer, which for some reason Apple has not even considered. [Apple never allowed downgrading of apps without resorting to iTunes, but that's a different and larger topic] Overall, the push to use the latest version of any app is really frustrating and will result in more backlash as people realize how much freedom they're losing.