29 ms·

Why Johnny Won't Upgrade

• mianos 6y ago
  One of the most incredible examples of this I have experienced was the update to the Android 'Pocket Casts' app. It worked great, had useful functionality and was easy to use and navigate. I had a paid version I thought was great value Then, out of the blue, they replaced it with a re-write. The new app was slow, missing most of the functionality in the previous app (not esoteric stuff, but things like play lists). The new UI was incomprehensible (even to me, a developer) and the had a massive number of serious bugs, like deleting your podcasts, missing episodes, never downloading episode and marking things you never listened to as played. Over the last year or so they have been continually fixing things so now it's almost as good as the application it replaced.
  • kl4m 6y ago
    I had to replace the default Apple Podcasts app (went with overcast). An update made it completely unusable for me, particularly when I had one hand available to hold the phone and press buttons.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
  Everyone is entitled to an opinion and has the right to share it. Even in the case it may be unpopular amongst certain groups. As an end user, I do not like automatic updates (which may or may not be "upgrades"). I try to avoid software that relies on this approach wherever I can. I consciously choose software that is not in constant flux, unless something is broken. There is not a single software author that I trust enough that I just want to blindly allow them to install new software at their leisure without any input from me. To allow such practice is not my preference. I prefer to evaluate software before I install it. "Automatic upgrades" assumes there is not to be any evaluation by the user. Every update is assumed to be "all good". Of course, that may perfectly suit some users. However, other users have every right to be more discerning in their choices. No software author can naively guess exactly what it is I personally need or want from a piece of software. (The growing trend of using "telemetry" in place of actual user feedback is another topic worthy of discussion.) The trend of automatic updates seems to encourage a form of software development where the software can be released "unfinished", in a soon-to-be broken condition (to later be fixed, or not) or in a state of flux where the number of knobs and dials can increase, the UI can change, etc. At worst, the quality of the software may change fundamentally over time, not always for the better. Essentially the user never gets to see the final product before deciding whether to use it. She is signing up for a work-in-progress. This is an honest opinion from a bona fide computer user and I fully respect and appreciate differing persepectives, including the "mainstream" ones. Thank you to the HN forum for letting me share my thoughts on this matter.
  • cortesoft 6y ago
    > I prefer to evaluate software before I install it. How do you do this?
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • gsich 6y ago
      VM?
• apricot 6y ago
  TL;DR: "More often than not automatic updates are not done with the interest of the user in mind." Exhibit A being the fact that automatic updates often silently re-enable privacy violating settings. When a company is caught doing this, it's always an unfortunate mistake. But strangely I've never seen this error go the other way, towards more privacy for the user.
• pmiller2 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm regretting upgrading Google Maps on iOS recently. For some reason now, whenever I bump the phone, the map view changes. I need my map view to show me going left when I turn left and right when I go right in order to make sense of things, but it will usually end up in a static "north = top of screen" orientation, no matter what I do. It's turned a good piece of software into something almost unusable. Edit: Well, what do you know, I just upgraded again (because it can't get a whole lot worse), and it's back to expected behavior.
  • zingermc 6y ago
    I think you can click the compass to switch between these modes.
    • pmiller2 6y ago
      I know that. The problem was it would switch when the phone switched orientations.
• thinkloop 6y ago
  How do you solve the problem of having a thousand versions to support
  • toast0 6y ago
    A) commit to a timeline of support for the new branch whenever you make a change requiring branching (your existing branch should already have a commited timeline) B) don't mess everything up all the time so you have to support a lot of branches Look at the OS support plans for guidelines.
  • jacquesm 6y ago
    Don't.
• dugite-code 6y ago
  This is actually why I've moved the bulk of my ancillary programs over to FOSS alternatives because the majority do Semantic Versioning. I know when a major upgrade is happening and I know when a minor patch is happening. I still have proprietary software that is core to my work but I and my boss have gone out of our way to avoid "cloud" software and continuous release software.
• viraptor 6y ago
  I like the main idea here, but the points listed are a bit extreme. Specifically this one: > should never update a user interface without allowing the previous one to be used as the default Are you ready to pay for the ongoing support of all legacy interfaces, including the ones you're not using and which are possibly not used by anyone in the world (no telemetry)? Are you ready for all the bugs and security issues this will cause? Same goes for support of old file formats.
  • cgrealy 6y ago
    Completely agree about interfaces. File formats should be supported though. At the very least, I should be able to import a file from the old version and have it converted.
    • dt3ft 6y ago
      If you pay for your software through a subscription, of course, no problem. You paid for software once? Well, tough luck. Your older versions will no longer be supported because we can't afford developers because you stopped giving us money. There is no way anyone is going to be supporting old formats while providing free updates. This makes no business sense.
      • cgrealy 6y ago
        That very much depends on the license. Many licenses include future updates. I am far more likely to pay for software that supports file formats in the future.
        • dt3ft 6y ago
          > Many licenses include future updates. May be so, but likely not in the long run. Developers don't quite want to work for free, and providing free updates is a bad business model if licensing model is "one time fee". They may say "free updates" to lure you in, but updates are only provided for your version. As soon as a new major version comes out, your current version will stop receiving updates. You will have to upgrade to the latest version at some point, and this upgrade is definitely not going to be free. You get what you pay for.
• ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
  > should be incremental and security or bug fixes only > should never update a user interface without allowing the previous one to be used as the default > should always be backwards compatible with previous plug-ins or other third party add ons Even as a longtime user of Firefox, who lost access to a number of XUL addons once-upon-a-time, I have to disagree. Some software upgrades cannot be "incremental or bug-fixes only." Sometimes you get handed a pile of hot garbage, and your best chance is to just refactor it. Certainly, you're not aiming to remove features or break workflows, but there exists a world in which some percentage N of users who are affected negatively by a change are not worth the effort of maintaining something. I think this viewpoint ignores that often as software gets more use and grows, our understanding of the problem-space and relevant abstraction grows as well. Black & white statements about what is or isn't allowed by developers in their products regarding updates completely ignores this aspect of development. Granted, if you can choose when to upgrade and to what version to upgrade this is less of an issue. Modern app stores do not function for the user in this respect. As for the interface being updated: it happens. Sometimes it is worse, but then many times people only complain about things being "worse" because of assimilation bias. There's some fantastic reading about not necessarily catering to power users: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c011/4ca106ff22cf53aaed57d95adcb7ef306378.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c011/4ca106ff22cf53aaed57d9.... I don't think I would 100% agree with that full article, but a lot of the central premises hold up. As for killing compatibility with plug-ins or third party add-ons, I am upset by this as anyone but sometimes it needs to happen. Sometimes a breaking bug is abused by a third party for bad reasons as much as they can be for good reasons (e.g. banning add-ons that use exploits to mine bitcoin or data from users, even if the add-on was offering up a useful feature as well). Now, relating to Firefox's recent Android update that breaks a lot of things, and even their behaviour for deprecating XUL in the past (I'm not referring to how long they gave people to upgrade, which was fair, but rather that some XUL features were never duplicated in webextensions thereby rendering some extensions impossible to reproduce), I would argue that yeah, maybe there is some sense of truth or some imperative that we need heed in the article. However, I think most of this would be mitigated by being able to pin versions, ask for a specific version from a specific date, or rollback. So maybe it's a wash.
• smallstepforman 6y ago
  Upgrades when shutting down prevent me from catching the train on time. Upgrades on startup prevent me from checking the train schedule. Insanity. Thats why I run an OS that I control.
  • dt3ft 6y ago
    Works for an OS that is not connected to the internet. You're probably doing this: 1. disable automatic updates 2. hope that no vulnerability is discovered for a month 3. apply all available patches 4. goto 2
• fogetti 6y ago
  I wish this problem would be more 'forefront' in legislation, because TBH this is already at the point of being ridiculous, completely out of touch and also FINANCIALLY DAMAGING to the customers and/or users.
• awinter-py 6y ago
  I mean agreeing that software should reveal and config-gate telemetry feels like a prereq to these points
• Aerroon 6y ago
  I wholeheartedly agree with the article. Software companies have created a culture, where (some) users deliberately do not want to update their software. For the last few major Windows updates I've had to reconfigure my sound setup, because the update breaks it by changing default sound devices and what feeds into what. Recently, a Chrome update (silently) broke an add-on that allowed me to easily switch audio devices for a tab. There are tons of other problems like that that I've run into. I dread every software update for software that I use frequently.
  • hkmurakami 6y ago
    Updated Instagram on a whim. Instantly regretted having Reels shoved in my face with no way to remove it.
    • _s 6y ago
      WhatsApp and enabling calls a few years ago, that one irked me the most.
      • snovv_crash 6y ago
        With lots of overseas friends and family, being able to do calls has been a lifesaver several times.
    • gfxgirl 6y ago
      I agree with the upgrade hate on this page but ... There are lots exceptions. Instagram is a hosted image service not an app. There is an app, that app is just a front end for the service. Being a service it's no different than any other service. You go into a restaurant, you like the ambiance. You go back and they've remodeled and you no longer like it. You go to the bakery and enjoy the friendly person behind the counter. They quit and you don't like their replacement. etc...
      • hkmurakami 6y ago
        The distinction (imo) is that had I stayed on the old version I could have enjoyed the previous friendly person behind the counter whom I really liked for a few more months, and now I have no way of going back to that person :(
• jpadkins 6y ago
  Software version control by users is going the way of ham radio and people who repair their own cars. Not completely extinct, but such a small set of technically capable people that in practice it doesn't matter. Real users don't know and don't care about software versions. They want computing experiences that "just work". They don't care or know about where the software runs, if there is telemetry, what the underlying format of the data is, etc. The article starts off with nice goals around automatic updates being user centric. But the list of requirements becomes absurd and only important to 1% of tech savvy users (formats, reverts, plugins, commercial messages, other software, telemetry, and multiple versions of UI are great if your users are software developers or IT, otherwise they are a waste of time & effort).
  • a_imho 6y ago
    Disagree that people don't care. Maybe not all the time, but sooner or later everybody experiences a bad update (bad timing, crashing app, consuming a mobile plan costing $$$). Agree that most are powerless to fight it but the worst offenders are working hard to keep the status quo.
    • jpadkins 6y ago
      I didn't say people don't care. Issues like crashing app is exactly what people care about and where you should focus your time (or the data plan example). My point was people don't know or care about underlying data formats, so don't worry about that unless it affects the real user workflow.
  • badsectoracula 6y ago
    > Real users don't know and don't care about software versions. I read the same stuff about performance (e.g. when Electron is brought up) or using native UIs or even using native apps in the first place. But i wonder, is it really that "real users" do not care about these or that they are not in a position to understand their impact and communicate their dislike? After all, my aunt for example constantly complains about how her laptop is slow, but she certainly cannot tell me what she means with that - is it the browser she's using, is it some software she's using, is it her internet connection making stuff in Facebook come slower, is the computer thrashing the disk (though with 8GB of RAM and an SSD that shouldn't be noticeable... yet somehow it is), etc. I can barely understand myself when she explains it to me over the phone, how can some developer who doesn't even really care about understanding my aunt is going to get any feedback about her experience and what she'd value? (and honestly IMO all of these sound like excuses for developers putting their own experience above their users')
• sn41 6y ago
  Amen to the article. High Sierra was the high point of my romance with Apple. Dictation used to work decently until that point, just as a small example. Catalina has pretty much ruined a lot of my favorite features. I had to update the OS because Office updates no longer worked.
  • xenonite 6y ago
    Oh macOS... I am still on El Capitan where PDFs are rendered with subpixels. Yes, I can see the difference even on retina displays.
• AnonHP 6y ago
  This is an area where iOS sucks. Having faced some undesirable consequences in the past from greedy and/or downright malicious developers, I don’t have automatic updates turned on for apps. But what makes things worse is that iOS doesn’t provide a way for a user to downgrade an app to a previous version. Since syncing app binaries to computers was also long removed (from iOS 9), the only special version of iTunes (12.6) to support the management of app sync not being updated, and Apple Configurator being messy for long, even users with a computer are left with no way to deal with these problems. What Apple should do for iOS (and also Mac App Store), which I doubt it won’t until there’s an alternative store, is allow users to downgrade apps at least one or two versions right from the App Store. Put it in a place that’s not an “accidentally downgrade and shoot yourself in the foot”. Make a backup of the app data before any upgrade to facilitate a smoother downgrade.
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Downgrading as a well-managed process is not a popular concept on any platform. Even fairly open ones will generally require you to fully remove the version you have, find an older download file, and install it. And unless you have backups, good luck downgrading your data files back to the older schema. I imagine a well-managed downgrading system would discourage malicious use of auto updates, developers would need to woo users into continuing to move forward.
    • Legogris 6y ago
      Both apt/apt-get (Debian, Ubuntu) and pacman (Arch Linux) will save all previously installed packages unless you manually clear your package caches.
  • Legogris 6y ago
    I don't want to defend Apple or iOS here, but Android (talking OS upgrades, not apps) is even worse, by far. Depends on the manufacturer and I imagine Google is one of the less horrible ones, but pretty much every update for Samsung Galaxy: * Changes the UI in some way I don't like * Re-enables intrusive, annoying and concerning background services and their permissions and notifications that are painful and time-consuming to disable * Occasionally adds new ones of the above to the pile * Contains important security fixes that all users should receive as soon as possible * Doesn't provide detailed information on what the update actually includes ("The security of your device has been updated" is the ONLY information for the past four updates despite other obvious changes being co-bundled.) It's a mess.
• orev 6y ago
  I had been using a great app that’s been around since before the iPhone came out (PocketMoney on Palm). They rewrote it for IOS, and it was able to import the database from the Palm version. Really great. Then sadly the author died, and it languished for a while until it was sold to someone else. The new owner seemed to try to keep it going, but then finally gave up last year and crammed an absolutely awful “update” that was actually a totally different software via the automatic update process. Everyone’s financial data got locked up in this new version that is almost useless. ~20 years of financial tracking just gone. To make it worse, they did it in December, just before people would need to pull reports for tax season. I like to swing by it on the App Store every once in a while just to drop a one star rating. That’s about the only recourse you have.
  • hansvm 6y ago
    Navionics had a variety of bathymetric charts in the app store that underwent a similar fate when they were bought by Garmin. It didn't matter that I'd paid $20-$30 (forget the exact value) for a lifetime license on a piece of software; they felt the need to shove a crippling update onto the version I'd paid for before releasing a new product line. On the bright side, in the years since I bought their app a free, better competitor was released, but I still don't think that absolves them of their responsibility.
    • flowcont 6y ago
      Off-topic, but what is the Navionics free, better competitor? Thanks.
      • hansvm 6y ago
        Polaris Navigation GPS. It was hyperbolic of me to say that they're "better" in every way, but they cover all my personal marine use cases and several others, so I was excited when I found their app.
  • causality0 6y ago
    Not even that is risk-free. I was doxxed by a developer after Google's idiotic real-name policy put me in his crosshairs for my one-star review.
• effingwewt 6y ago
  Ugh the worst is when a game/app changes from paid to freemium. It's happened to me several times and always long after the initial purchase so I was left with no recourse.
• gwbas1c 6y ago
  > should never update a user interface without allowing the previous one to be used as the default Careful: Many UI changes are just branding refreshes. (How frequently do Coke cans change?) But, moving around the buttons because someone felt like it is just dumb. > should never change the format of data already stored on the system Careful: Internal databases change schemas. It's impossible to keep a database schema through upgrades when new functionality requires an updated schema. This particular request really depends on what the application is doing. For example, if an upgrade decided to automatically convert .doc files to .docx, that's a problem. But applications that maintain internal state need to be able to fix bugs or make general improvements to that internal state. > must allow a revert to the previous situation Software doesn't know the future; it can't handle schemas that didn't exist when written. More specifically, if an upgrade alters an application's internal state to match what's needed for a new version, there's no easy way to go back to the old internal state.
• rurp 6y ago
  Man this article really echos my thoughts, which is surprising because I almost always feel like an outsider in Techland for hating updates that change perfectly good tools. "But it's new!" is my most hated justification for changing software. If a tool works I almost always want it left alone. I don't care about the new layout or some new features. I'm using the software because it already suits my needs and I don't want to waste time and mental energy figuring out some changes that are useless to me. I wish far more companies followed the approach laid out here. I think it would be far more respectful of users in almost all cases.
• prawn 6y ago
  My App Store updates badge is triple-digits. I resist updates as long as possible because they are almost always riskier than the rewards they bring. They introduce ads, or cloud features I never wanted, they force subscriptions, they add tracking. At one point, I used my ancient text editor for 10+ years without updating it. I've used Sublime Text 2 for many years with no interest in updating it (though I'm sure it's better, it just does everything I need already). I used a version of non-monthly-payment Adobe Creative Suite for around 10 years without upgrading - I was still using the same file formats and didn't need anything new. Almost every time I've updated an app, I've been burnt. Cruft I don't need, ads I don't want, phoning home on start up - ugh.
  • OkGoDoIt 6y ago
    Same here, I’ve had automatic updates disabled for years and I turned off the notification badge for the App Store. Unfortunately some apps phone home and determine they are not the latest version and then refuse to let you use them until you upgrade. Mostly banking apps, which I guess maybe I can excuse, but also Facebook messenger. Once FB messenger pops up with that notification that I need to “upgrade in order to access my chats again“, I usually go a week or two of just quitting it before I finally give in and upgrade and then things are subtlety worse, or shuffled around, or just inexplicably different. But I have friends who message me on there so I eventually have to give in and capitulate. My lack of control is utterly frustrating...
    • donpott 6y ago
      WhatsApp too. My version of it "expired" yesterday and wouldn't work until I updated it.
• makecheck 6y ago
  It’s interesting he mentioned media such as ROMs because I often wish I could force the system to pretend that certain things really are in ROM: “I don’t want you to touch them, even if you otherwise would”. Of course, ridiculous bundling of software features makes any partitioning difficult. A recent macOS update is a good example of ridiculous bundling: half the release notes (and the first notes listed) for this “OS update” were for “Apple News+”, and the other actual OS update notes — that looked infinitely more important — were left to scroll out of view. To hell with Apple News+!! Features of an application (that I do not even subscribe to) should never have become part of the OS, much less updated through first-class bundling with fixes to the OS itself!
• donio 6y ago
  Emacs is the only major piece of software that I look forward to upgrading. With everything else it's a worry about what functionality will I lose this time.
• causality0 6y ago
  I keep a large folder full of installers. More often than not software gets worse over time. New methods of monetization creep in. Features that were in the free version move to the paid version. Licensing problems result in function crippling. The damned marketers and their unending push for change for only the sake of change so they have something different to show people. Developers seeing they have a sizable userbase for their simple app and deciding to mutilate it by tacking on "social features".
• stubish 6y ago
  Taring everything with the same brush. There was a time, not so long ago, when it was impossible to install Windows over the Internet because so many other machines were compromised and your machine would, with certainty, also end up compromised before it had gotten as far as applying the latest service pack. Then we got automatic updates, and we all breathed a sigh of relief because things got better. We had empirical evidence that other people do not keep their systems secure. And now apparently all automatic updates are bad, because people think I should trust them to be competent and proactive, when I know for a fact that other people are not competent and proactive. Or because people think it is the vendors problem, yet don't want vendors to push the necessary fixes. Yes, some vendors suck. But the solution isn't to demand they stop making fixes. And the solution isn't to demand they stop pushing fixes, since we know in most cases the fixes won't be voluntarily applied until it's too late. I say it is a requirement for a competent vendor to push the best version of their software. The problem I see is a disagreement between consumers and vendors on what that best version should be. And not all vendors are like that.
  • mattnewton 6y ago
    It’s funny you mention Microsoft, because I have a windows machine to play games on. It regularly updates itself and re-enables telemetry I had disabled, shows spammy news in the start menu and ads for Microsoft products in my toolbar, and reinstalls skype every time I try to get rid of it.
    • rhn_mk1 6y ago
      Keeping Windows behind a whitelist firewall seems to be a good idea.
      • boring_twenties 6y ago
        Even better, in the Recycle Bin.
    • naavis 6y ago
      I wonder if there are some differences between Windows 10 versions (like Home, Professional etc) there. I have never had that happen. I have Windows 10 Pro.
• FraKtus 6y ago
  One example is Parallels Desktop, they constantly mail me to upgrade but there is no information what system version they run on. So I downloaded the installer and just launched it. The installer did delete my previous version without asking any question and I was just left with the option to buy the upgrade... I had to restore a backup to find back my working version. Not sure sure if there are as many extreme examples: an installer that deletes the previous version, remove a valid perpetual license, without asking!
• quickthrower2 6y ago
  I remember the oxymoron: "Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory". Ah, the luxury of not needing UV light to erase your ROM!
• ximm 6y ago
  Sounds like the author wants to use debian
• Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  There are ways and means, but it's down to app developers; they should not push major updates over the auto update channel, instead just push a "v2" with an upgrade path from the previous version(s). In theory. But that's one app model. Does Apple still allow for models like that? The model currently used by a number of apps - webapps, Electron apps, browsers, operating systems - is that of the "evergreen" model, where they continuously update. But this is where Firefox is dropping a bollock; they do BIG updates, rebrand it with things like Quantum, and push MAJOR UI updates. Contrast this with Chrome which, from a user (i.e. my) perspective has only done incremental updates. UI changes have been small and subtle. This page [1] has a number of screenshots from the old version of Chrome. I have a dark theme going on now but it's not changed that much at all. Chrome has never been a brand, hardly a product, as opposed to Firefox which is still stuck in the 90's / 2000's where they only get interest if they do a new version. That was the old model for Windows, Office, Adobe products, etc for a long time as well - they HAD to make a new "big" version to keep sales going. But customers did not HAVE to update, so they would often stick with older versions - things that worked - and e.g. Adobe HAD to come up with new features to convince people to upgrade. But it's all gone to subscription services now, which come with "evergreen" updates. One more anecdote I'd like to do: I've been using 1password for years now, because for me it worked best as a crossplatform password manager (Windows, Mac & iOS, synchronization via Dropbox). They switched to a subscription model a while ago, but the versions I have were all paid for in single purchases. On Windows I'm still on 1password 4 while on Mac it's 1password 7, and thankfully the two are still fully compatible when it comes to their data. I'm sure this won't last, but as long as I don't HAVE to update (and as long as their encryption is solid), it'll be fine to just keep the version I have now - That is one company / product that cannot afford to be flippant about their customer data, data format. I've got hundreds of accounts in there, if I were to lose it it would be... pretty bad. At the very least I should write down my gmail password and double check my recovery codes because everything is linked to that one account. Anyway I ramble / digress. Stuff. [1] https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/photos-10-years-of-google-chrome/2/ https://www.techrepublic.com/pictures/photos-10-years-of-goo...
• ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  My wife is a photographer; an excellent one. She has thousands of digital images that have been manipulated by a certain unique, proprietary software package. There are no modern equivalent applications, and the original one stopped being updated almost a decade ago. Miraculously, it still works, but she is terrified at every upgrade prompt. There aren’t really any acceptable substitutions for the original app. She could run it on her images, to “bake” them into TIFFs, but that would be a “once you are a pickle; you’ll never be a cucumber again” thing. The format is a reversible one that relies on a specific application to render it in a scripted, linear fashion. So this is yet another issue of modern software. Format and rendering obsolescence. It can’t really be fixed. The original app was discontinued, because it was too expensive to maintain, and the customer base was too small to reward maintenance. The driving technology was patented and proprietary. This is not unique to photography. I think pretty much every art or industry has this problem. As long as she maintains her operating system at a certain level, the application will continue to work, but the day is coming (probably quite soon), where it can’t work. She has already refused to upgrade to the current version of the OS, and it is only a matter of time before she can’t get a computer that will run the older version; not to mention the security issues inherent in running out-of-date systems. It’s a huge problem. Open-source is helpful in some cases, but not all (it wouldn’t help here, because no one would bother to pick up the app; even if the proprietary parts were published, unless a skilled software engineer was also a photographer and expert at that software, and would be willing to do the heavy lifting required to publish and distribute the software). It’s also not a new issue. I am glad to see a lot of open-source and standard formats, but they don’t solve every problem. Open standards tend to suffer from the “all things to all men” problem, where the needs of the few are subsumed by the needs of the many. They are also often quite painful to implement. Anyone that has written a general-purpose TIFF reader will know exactly what I mean.
  • monadic2 6y ago
    VMs might work. It's hard (impossible?) for most versions of osx.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
• rocqua 6y ago
  Notably, the list of SHOULDs at the end only applies to _automatic updates_. For voluntary updates, many of these things are acceptable. Moreover, a user should accept that at some point a certain version of software will lose support and, unless you take the voluntary update, will stop getting security updates and bug-fixes. This contract cuts both ways. That is important to realize.
• enriquto 6y ago
  There are many different reasons for not upgrading a program. Mine is a bit ridiculous. I never upgrade the Firefox browser, as a matter of principle. The reason is that last time I did, Firefox would refuse to open new tabs unless it was restarted. I did not want to restart it, since i'm running a few windows in private mode, using different 2FA logins, and that would entail to fill-in a lot of passwords and type a lot of numbers received from several SMS. That was very annoying, and I vowed to never upgrade Firefox again. Does anybody know a workaround for this stupid problem of mine?
  • wolf550e 6y ago
    Did you try separate profiles?
    • enriquto 6y ago
      Yes, I use separate profiles. The problem is that tabs opened in a private mode are not recovered when restarting. Of course, that's the whole point of private mode, but it's very annoying to re-login all these sessions via SMS messages just for a random firefox upgrade.
  • d_k_f 6y ago
    You could use containers to "emulate" private mode for these windows by completely isolating them from your regular browsing data. They should survive a restart and keep you logged in afterwards. As long as you only use the container to access one site, no data should be leaked to other sites.
• jiggawatts 6y ago
  Don't forget: "Never slow down the user interface". I have a 4K Sony television that was their flagship model when it was new, but a couple of years ago they "updated" it with a new version of its OS that looks identical but is incredibly sluggish. Not technically broken, but frustrating to use. Moving around between menu items is a good 2-3 seconds, up to 10 in some cases. There is literally nothing I can do about this. The display panel is perfectly fine. The tuner works. The streaming works. It's not broken. It's out of warrant, so I can't evne return it. But it feels like I've been downgraded from "flagship" to "off-brand budget TV" without any physical component ever changing. I didn't consent to this. I didn't expect the automatic upgrade to nearly, but not quite, break my TV.
  • rightbyte 6y ago
    Can you downgrade the firmware? I feel like I am at the whim of anti social behavior and conspiracies at some anonymous office with auto updates enabled. The Scrum Agile morning standups at Toaster Corp. could just as well be in my kitchen pushing user hostile features for "business reasons" or enforcing ideologically pure ways to use their toaster.
    • xg15 6y ago
      Latest-generation devices contain hardware fuses purposely designed to make prevent downgrading. I think that tells you all you need to know about the position the industry has towards downgrades and whether updates are in the interest of the user or not.
      • rightbyte 6y ago
        Didn't know that. That is just sick.
        • xg15 6y ago
          Clarification: some latest-generation devices contain hardware fuses. I was specifically thinking about the Switch. However I think there is absolutely a general trend in the industry to see downgrades as a risk that must be protected against.
• n1vz3r 6y ago
  > So, software vendors, automatic updates: > should always keep the user centric\ > should be incremental and security or bug fixes only > should never update a user interface without allowing the previous one to be used as the default > should never be used to install telemetry or spyware or to re-enable it if it was previously switched off > ... That's exactly how it's done in conservative Linux distributions like Debian or Centos. By installing Debian stable, you receive 7 years of security updates only, and nothing changes without your permission. And quality of being user-centric is common to the entire FOSS ecosystem.
• fauigerzigerk 6y ago
  That's fine as far as wish lists go. But depending on the kind of software we're talking about, meeting those demands could become expensive and confusing pretty quickly. What about users running different versions of the software on different devices while expecting everything sync correctly? What about communicating with versions run by other users? What about the server side of the app? How many different client versions are you going to support for how long, and what does that mean for database schemas, etc? Over time, there will be an enormous combinatorial explosion of possible system states and state transitions that will inevitably cause bugs and confusing situations for users. You'd have to architect everything for forward and backward compatibility - protocols, schemas and all the rest of it. How do you deal with all the complexity without quickly accumulating unmanagable technical debt? I agree that there are a lot of gratuitous and sloppy automatic upgrades that ignore user interests. I also agree that there are types of software where letting users keep old versions is not a problem at all. But I don't think this debate is complete without also talking about the issues that remain after accounting for bad faith, incompetence, greed and negligence.
• xg15 6y ago
  > They are abused to the point where many users - me included - would rather forego all updates (let alone automatic ones) simply because we apparently can not trust the party on the other side of this transaction to have our, the users, interests at heart. I would say this is putting it lightly. We're at a point where the ability to produce updates for a popular software is an asset that is traded on markets. A popular life-cycle for apps or browser extensions is basically: - Some person makes an app or extension that is genuinely useful and available for free (often with the best intentions). - At some point the developer cannot maintain the software anymore: They have lost interest or don't have enough time available, etc. - Some company offers to buy the software and take over maintenance duties. - As soon as the company owns the keys, they will push an update that includes ads/trackers/malware/etc into the formerly useful app, instantly compromising the machines iof the app's whole userbase. - After some time, the community might notice and gradually the app will be communicated as harmful. The community mourns the loss of a useful program and users will move on until the cycle repeats... > So, software vendors, automatic updates: - should always keep the user centric [... should do this, should not do that...] This list is well-intentioned but I feel ultimately fruitless. Yes, updates should be centered around the interests of the users, but as the articel itself states, companies don't have the interests of their users in mind when pushing updates. So I don't see a lot of incentive to follow that list, honestly.
• aib 6y ago
  I do software development in bursts (think productive weekdays + long weekends) and do all my updates in the downtimes. One day Snap decided to update Slack right before an important meeting. To a, yes, broken version. Another angle to this is that had Slack not been a proprietary platform, I would've taken time to find or help develop a sane client that is -e-a-s-y- possible to fix.
• ancarda 6y ago
  If I open the Play Store on my Android, I see 28 updates pending. Why haven't I hit Update All? Well, lets see what the release notes say (i.e. why should I update): New features added and bug fixes. Information not provided by developer. Bug fixes and enhancements. Information not provided by developer. (Description makes it clear it will break something for me). We're always making changes and improvements :) Information not provided by developer. (App adds some bullshit AR stuff I don't want or need). I did update Firefox and Telegram though.
  • coopierez 6y ago
    This is my issue. How hard is it to add some patch notes? The people who don't care won't read them anyway. It's helpful for the company as well to document their changes, so hopefully someone is doing it internally regardless.
  • pitay 6y ago
    An interesting contrast is that some early access games have very detailed feature and bug fix notes for their releases. As an example here are the release notes for the build versions of 7 Days to Die (Alpha 19). https://7daystodie.com/a19-official-release-notes https://7daystodie.com/a19-official-release-notes They change notes are very detailed, and voluminous. If you had an issue with a previous build, you can, just by looking at the release notes, see if your issue has been fixed.
  • ancarda 6y ago
    Update: I wish I didn't update Firefox as now I can't open about:config I hate software so much...
• throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  It took me 3 days to initally install visual studio first time. The next install only took a day. These days it's down to a couple of hours (I know what not to do). Visual studio tells me there's an upgrade available. Am I going to risk it? Am I hell, I've got work to do. It's supposed to be a business tool not a toy, why doesnt' MS treat it as one?
• dredmorbius 6y ago
  This essay almost perfectly describes Debian's commitment and policy toward its users, specified through the Debian Social Contract, "We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities (https://www.debian.org/social_contract https://www.debian.org/social_contract), in the structures defined by the Debian Constitution (https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution), following the practices defined in the Debian Policy Manual (https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/), via the mechanisms of Debian's packaging infrastructure and package management system. This is much misunderstood (and misunderestimated). It's not perfect or automatic. But it's worked remarkably well for over a quarter century. Ian, you made a damned good thing and you are missed.
• habosa 6y ago
  This is all so true. Updates are a crutch for the software developer (us). If you want to ship on a certain date you can punt your feature/bug backlog to v2. As a user if you download a Day 0 release of something you pretty much don't expect it to work well anymore. Oh and it's impossible to own software these days. Everything is a subscription. I miss the days when video games came with all the levels in the box and when I could buy software for a one-time fee and then master the version I downloaded. I used Photoshop CS3 for years and years, I wasn't interested in what the new version could do I had barely scratched the surface. As someone who ships updates to software weekly I am definitely part of the problem though...
• aethertron 6y ago
  That list of commandments for software updates is pretty good. But we'll be disappointed if we rely on each software vendor to voluntarily conform to them. Some of these could be enforced at the operating system level, I think. And I don't mean a centralised App Store with policy enforcement. I mean OS architecture. > must allow a revert to the previous situation So each app on my system would have the base 1.0 version code, plus any number of patches. I could choose to run it with zero or any number of patches up to the current version. And I'd be able to stop subscribing to patches from the vendor if they are taking the software in a nonpreferred direction, and switch to someone else who's forked it. The UI for this would be standardised in the OS, not controlled by the particular app developer.
• dcminter 6y ago
  I'm still angry about a Windows 10 "upgrade" that overrode my late father's repeated declines. It rendered his previously working and familiar PC completely unusable and with his failing health he couldn't face getting to know a new OS and reinstalling it. It prevented him from having the tools to book a last holiday in the sun, and in my view Microsoft stole that from him.
• grumple 6y ago
  Updating Mac OSX invariably breaks things for my workflow. If I’m lucky, I just have to reinstall Xcode and agree to terms (annoying). If I’m unlucky, an app stops working, or there’s a critical security vulnerability (like free admin access for anyone as in ~2018), or worse, mysterious video/audio failures like I’ve had since the most recent update (some compatibility with my setup of hub to usb switcher was broken). So the lesson is, never upgrade unless you need to.
• neonihil 6y ago
  I could not agree more!
• neonihil 6y ago
  I went as far a building my own router out of an ARM box and denying all traffic going to known update servers. I’m now adding auto-detection of update-looking DNS lookups and denying those too. Ironically, I’m keeping the router’s software up to date though. Security is important. But it’s linux, I can always roll back.
  • jacquesm 6y ago
    That's a product.
• jiehong 6y ago
  NixOS just provides that: you don't need to upgrade, but even if you do, you can go back to any previous versions that are guaranteed to work. Imagine a phone with updates like that…
• johnminter 6y ago
  Manufacturers need to distinguish between critical updates that fix a significant error in the results or fix a security hole that could make the users system vulnerable. By contrast, feature updates should be labeled as such. This makes it easier for the user to make an informed choice to install the update.
  • jacquesm 6y ago
    Manufacturers seem to be hip to this which is why they bundle critical security updates with UI changes and other trash that you don't need. If not for that nobody would upgrade... it's totally backwards.
• sdfjkl 6y ago
  You forgot: "Should be as small as technically possible". Xcode is the fat, bloated bastard I'm looking at, but there's plenty more. And on mobile, where bandwidth is often metered it's even worse.
• paultopia 6y ago
  Thank you! So often, I've credulously consented to an 'upgrade' only to find that the new software refuses to work without malware-level access to my system (looking at you, Palo Alto Networks globalprotect[1]) or turns around and demands that all kinds of other software be updated for no reason (looking at you, homebrew), or just randomly perturb the user interface, seemingly only for the purpose of forcing users to pay for training to learn how to use the new one (looking at you, Microsoft and adobe), or being a bug-ridden half-baked mess (looking at you, Apple). DEVS, STOP IT. This happens with hardware too. My building upgraded its (collectively paid for) cable internet from 100mbps to 250mbps. The cable company showed up and replaced the perfectly functional old modem/router with a "new" one theoretically capable of faster speeds, except that it runs blazingly hot and drops the wifi connection constantly; I suspect because 5mhz is actually overheating. I actually regret accepting free extra speed, and will probably end up ponying up 400 bucks for an eero mesh setup to fix the free upgrade that screwed over my whole network. [1] this VPN software is malware. It demands the right to snoop on every system folder it can get its hands on and all kinds of admin details, for the privilege of... accessing university libraries. https://twitter.com/paulgowder/status/1296932684707631109?s=21 https://twitter.com/paulgowder/status/1296932684707631109?s=...
• bfrog 6y ago
  Yeah I mean, nothing like the automated android updates that make the phone invevitably slower, less usable, and break previously ingrained interaction flows. See the gmail app for endless pointless tweaking. It solved email perfectly fine, now it includes meets and some asanine button panel on the bottom taking up a massive amount of space. My phone hasn't changed, but android has, and thus my phone is almost uselessly slow at this point compared to when I bought it a mere two years ago. Remember the feature phone that worked the same the day you bought it years later? What a blissfully simple device.
  • d10r 6y ago
    Disabling automatic updates is always one of the first things I do on a new Android phone. I would happily enable it selectively for a few Apps of my choice (e.g. the browser), but unfortunately the Play store doesn't allow that - unlike F-Droid. So I occasionally do update Apps I want to be up to date manually instead. Also reduces unpleasant surprises like randomly being logged out or randomly becoming incompatible with backend servers (seen e.g. with Mattermost).
• omaranto 6y ago
  Perfect timing. Chrome OS just had an update that makes bold fonts look very fuzzy. As far as I can tell that update contains no other changes, just severely fuzzy bold fonts.
  • omaranto 6y ago
    And a second update made the fonts crisp again. Madness!
• mcv 6y ago
  I have a happy story about an automatic software update that completely broke the software. Happy, because it was easy to switch back to a previous version. It's about a game, Europe Universalis 4, which, 7 years after its release, still regularly gets major feature updates, sometimes dramatically changing how the game works. Years ago, one such update that added a lot of tactical depth to the game, ended up hogging so many resources on my aging PC that the game ground to a halt and became unplayable. Fortunately, Steam allows you to easily revert back to a previous version of the game. Also useful when an update breaks save-game compatibility when you're in the middle of a game. Sadly, a lot of software does not have that option. It should be standard, or our OS should enable us to easily revert back to a previous state of an installation.
• scott_meyer 6y ago
  Upgrade aversion is the natural consequence of the automatic upgrade subscription business model. If developers don't have to sell the next version and the customer can't easily leave, ...
• EricE 6y ago
  Even more fun than software updates is when digital services go back and retroactively edit TVs, Movies, books, etc. Never thought I would go back to purchasing physical media but here we are.
• the_hoser 6y ago
  All but the last requirement are completely reasonable, but software vendors are more afraid of being left behind or exploited than screwing up their user's workflow. They're not usually updating to keep their current users. They're updating to gain new users. And if it's free software? Forget it. You're not the customer. The last one is unreasonable because it's impossible to know what third parties are going to do. If they use the plugin API in an undocumented way, then they're the ones being irresponsible.
• oramit 6y ago
  Automatic updates have been an enormous boon to security and when done correctly are really helpful. I don't look back with fondness on the wild west of Windows XP where out of the box merely connecting to the internet guaranteed a virus infection and service pack updates were an enormous pain. What I think has been lost in the past decade or so is the distinction between Major and Minor releases. I'm all for regular minor updates whose only goal is security and stability improvements. When a Major update comes around I know that i'm in for things being changed, possible breakage, etc, but at least I know ahead of time and have the ability to opt out. But with the rise of always connected software, software as a service, what have you, there are no "versions" to settle on. I needed to do some art work recently so just got back into the Adobe world and there is no Photoshop CS3 or Photoshop CS6 you can buy and use. Instead, you can only buy a subscription to "Photoshop" - which is always the most recent version. This story is playing out everywhere with software houses abandoning Major versions you can buy and going for subscriptions. They don't ever want to have you able to buy a version you like and stick with it because there is no recurring revenue in it.
• javier10e6 6y ago
  Hey MS I am scheduling an upgrade for some of your cloud services sometimes next week. Expect some slow down in your data centers throughput across several regions in the US and whatever happens, dont reboot the servers. How that feels eh?
• kanox 6y ago
  The whole point of software is that it "soft" and thus easy to change. Upgrades are whole point and not optional. The logical conclusion is that any and all software should follow and evergreen/rolling release model in order to take maximum advantage of the flexibility built into the medium. Commercial software should all be subscription-based. Even software which is packaged as fixed releases has to support routing updates in order to deal with security issue. The problem of "excessive involuntary updates" is much smaller than the problem of devices which are not kept up to date by their manufacturers. Cheap mobile phones are among the worst offenders.
• WesolyKubeczek 6y ago
  How do you pronounce the word "disablable"?
• aj7 6y ago
  Early versions of Excel perfectly scaled the axes of scatter plots, even going so far as to use round numbers on the gridlines. The same versions had an auto-record macro language that was easy to learn and implement. Both have been lost for two decades now, replaced by the complicated garbage we have now.
  • Narishma 6y ago
    They're not lost, you can still run them.
• samtuke 6y ago
  Open Source and Open Standards have always been the solutions to these problems, and remain so. Necessary rather than sufficient requirements though, I suppose.
• known 6y ago
  Why Johnny won't learn new technologies ? "Anyone who stops learning is old, whether twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing you can do is keep your mind young." --Mark Twain
• dusted 6y ago
  "then the internet came around and things changed overnight" except it came around while software was still distributed on floppies and it took a decade or more before online distribution was the norm. That said, I agree with the article! I'd much rather not have updates, unless they bring fixes to bugs that I actually experience, which happens somewhere between seldom and never.
• spicybright 6y ago
  I think in an ideal world, updates would be either optional major updates (UI changes, workflow changes, etc.) and minor updates (bug fixes, tweaks, etc.). Then a company can maintain those multiple major versions until they phase out support. CD software had this down pretty great. You could actually rely on a program not being pulled out from under you with an update.
  • chrisseaton 6y ago
    > Then a company can maintain those multiple major versions That sounds completely unrealistic and inefficient for everyone involved.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • stan_rogers 6y ago
      No, that sounds inefficient for one of the parties - the provider. The provider isn't using the software to get work done, and doesn't incur training costs, etc. The provider's pet efficiencies cost the users real money (in the "a million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking real money" sense).
      • chrisseaton 6y ago
        I can’t imagine any software update so drastic as to require ‘training costs’. Most reasonable people can figure out where a menu item has moved to.
        • gsich 6y ago
          Maybe if you use that program daily.
        • dayjobpork 6y ago
          Have you ever used any complex software, especially aimed at specific skills / occupations? It's like they throw darts at balloons to randomly select which UI elements are being moved each release. I've used Word every day for years and I still struggle to remember where uncommon functions are in the ribbon. Going from an older Photoshop to the most recent, finding the correct icon means I have to stop and figure out what it is now, slowing me down. I flat out cannot figure out the new Photoshop start up interface and immediately reenable the old one. Every person at work who upgraded to Office that changed the Save UI to the online shit absolutely flipped their shit. Software companies are forever forcing unwanted changes on users who use the software all the time, and it absolutely and costs time and money to retrain staff to be able to keep doing the work they were already trained to do. No user or company wants existing functionality changed
• wvenable 6y ago
  Some automatic updates should really just be different products. The most obvious one at the moment is Android Firefox is getting a big automatic update that, for a lot of people, will be a very big downgrade and an unfriendly UI change. But Mozilla doesn't want to maintain security patches for X different products. And that's true of most vendors. This model of computing where all users are always on the latest version makes security patching and bug fixing a lot more straight forward. If you use a web application, this is the model you've always had.
  • userbinator 6y ago
    But Mozilla doesn't want to maintain security patches for X different products. Are they really different products (versions), or are they just branches off a common tree and share so much code in common that it would be close to trivial to apply the fix to them all? My experience with security-related patches is that they're almost all extremely localised --- a missing check, an off-by-one, etc. It seems like far less effort to do that than a massive rewrite of the UI, in any case...
    • throwawaynothx 6y ago
      The issue with this is that lets say in patch 1.0.5 someone used that missing check to get another feature working. Now if you apply the security fix to 1.0.5 the other feature breaks.
    • mook 6y ago
      Fennec (the old Firefox for Android) was, as far as I'm aware, a different codebase compared to Fenix (the new one). As in, Fennec was hosted on hg.mozilla.org using the same source tree as desktop Firefox, and Fenix is hosted on GitHub, if I understand things correctly.
      • dblohm7 6y ago
        Fenix embeds Gecko via GeckoView, which resides in mozilla-central.
  • 6y ago
• chrisseaton 6y ago
  > should never update a user interface without allowing the previous one to be used as the default I don’t understand why people are so precious about their UI and workflow. They obviously managed to learn and adapt to the current UI. Why can’t they adapt to a new one? If you’re super sensitive to something as trivial as a change to a menu location maybe that’s a sign you should be automating whatever your workflow is.
  • egypturnash 6y ago
    I don't understand why programmers are so precious about their choice of text editor. They obviously managed to learn and adapt to their current choice. Why can't they adapt to a new one?
    • chrisseaton 6y ago
      Well I guess you’re trying to mock me but I also agree with this.
      • egypturnash 6y ago
        I was attempting to reframe your question to apply to a rough guess of who you are, and what tools you spend most of your life using, based on the fact that you are (a) commenting on HN, and (b) display no sympathy with the plight of a user who's had the UI they stopped having to think about ages ago suddenly change out from under them. Probably with deadlines looming that have no room for "everything takes twice as long for a while while we get used to the new setup and the fact that one key we regularly hit as part of the process now deletes half our work". Is that mocking you?
    • smabie 6y ago
      I mean, a lot of programmers have spent their entire lives either using Emacs or vi keybindings. It's pretty unreasonable to ask them to change. Mentally switching to an entire different set of editing commands is incredibly difficult and time consuming. I've been using Emacs for over 15 years and I don't know any other keybindings. If I had to switch to vim, it might take me years to get comfortable.
• cs702 6y ago
  As a user of software, I couldn't agree more with the OP that automatic updates: > should always keep the user centric > should be incremental and security or bug fixes only > should never update a user interface without allowing the previous one to be used as the default > should never be used to install telemetry or spyware or to re-enable it if it was previously switched off > should never be used to install other software packages without the users explicit consent and knowledge > should never change the format of data already stored on the system > should never cause a system to become unusable or unstable > must allow a revert to the previous situation > must be disablable, in an easy and consistent manner for instance on mobile devices > should never cause the system to become inaccessible or restarted without user consent > should always be signed by the vendor to ensure that the update mechanism does not become a malware vector > should never cause commercial messages or other fluff to be included > should never cause configuration details to be lost > should always be backwards compatible with previous plug-ins or other third party add ons I agree: Software vendors "should" and "must" do all these things when updating software on my computer without my permission. But often they will NOT, because their economic incentives are frequently stacked AGAINST it. For them, it's often cheaper or more profitable in the short run not to do any of these things.
  • tomc1985 6y ago
    That will never happen as long as shareholders are the only people that companies are legally beholden to That will never happen as long as software continues to be regarded as a "cost center" That will never happen as long as developers insist that their happiness is more immportant than that of their users That will never happen as long as evangelists keep pushing this doctrine that more updates, more features, more whatever, is better
    • spaetzleesser 6y ago
      "shareholders are the only people that companies are legally beholden to" I don't think that's actual true. As far as I know the only legal obligation a company has is to conduct lawful business.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• kl4m 6y ago
  > should never be used to install telemetry or spyware or to re-enable it if it was previously switched off I lost track of the number of times a friendly Windows 10 (and 7) update has re-enabled telemetry. Either that or there is yet another, completely different post-update Wizard for advertisement, telemetry, default applications, and other privacy stuff (There sure is a lot of effort put in moving settings around each update!) As usual in Microsoft wizards, you have to check/uncheck the exact opposite of all the defaults for a good experience.
  • gruez 6y ago
    >I lost track of the number of times a friendly Windows 10 (and 7) update has re-enabled telemetry. Either that or there is yet another, completely different post-update Wizard for advertisement, telemetry, default applications, and other privacy stuff (There sure is a lot of effort put in moving settings around each update!) ...and that's why I'm using LTSC, because it's limited to security updates and supported for 10 years, rather than regular windows which gets "feature" updates every 6 months. For office, the equivalent would be perpetual (2016 or 2019) instead of 365.
    • the_pwner224 6y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18156955 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18156955 Works great and rock solid, even with new hardware released after LTSC. Missing the Windows Store but if you search the web there's a github repo which has an installable version.
    • bilegeek 6y ago
      I've read[1] that it's possible to legally obtain LTSC without volume licensing by purchasing a few other Microsoft thingies. Is such a method how you did this, or did you unfurl your sails? Btw (rant incoming), this isn't a spiel against piracy. If Microsoft complains that people pirate LTSC without providing an easy legal way to obtain it, they can cry me a river. I just switched over to Linux from Win7 early this year; between spying on you, stability and data loss issues from firing their QA department, the auto-installation of Candy Crush, and the intentional difficulty in getting LTSC which doesn't have these problems, they lost me from ever switching to Windows 10. Which is an absolute shame, because if it weren't for those dealbreakers, it would actually be a good OS, and I would be using it on my desktop. Maybe someday I'll spin up a QEMU gaming VM, but if they ever make LTSC impossible to obtain, I'll just try to forget Windows 10 exists entirely. [1]https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-instructions-for-purchasing-a-windows-10-ltsc-license https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2167558-explicit-inst...
• Multicomp 6y ago
  TL;DR: I agree with the article and add some rants of my own. Users will go to extremes to take back control of their magic rocks. Source: I finally bought my next-ten-year upgrade PC (old PC was sandy-bridge mobile era), and I installed, not the OS that I've known since the day my father explained to me that this is called a computer and that is called a start button and oh look this is clippit, ignore him, but the fussy, free OS that computer supernerds use called Linux, specifically KDE-flavored Fedora. I don't have a Windows VM (it'll be W7 SP1 RTM), since my old main machine now sits to the side 'in case I need it' which so far I've been able to escape (ok I used Windows for balena etcher since it was already installed there) _needing_ to use Windows. Why all this pain and trouble and new system? Because I read way too much Hacker News? Probably? But mostly because Windows 95, 98 SE, 2000, XP, Vista (it meant well, even if terrible), 7, all had one thing in common - they reported to the user. Read the Windows UX Experience guidelines book (I have bought a hard copy), they cover the same things listed in the article, no surprises, if you change stuff, users better be able to wave away your changes until they are ready to change. Windows 10 does not report to the user. It reports ON the user to Microsoft. And updates when it wants to. And unsets settings in hopes you're too stupid to notice. What are you Windows, Luigi from the Cars movie? "You don't know what you want, _I_ know what you want...white-wall tires!" (which is not what we want) This is not just me being a burnt out anti-Microsoftie either. I still defend Office 2010, Windows 7-era products, I love the idea of the courier device, and I'm so enamored with that better era of user-owned-devices, I will probably buy a MS Surface Neo (so I too am imperfect / complicit in enabling Microsoft's bad behavior). I don't use SaaS that I don't pay for, and if I do pay for it, I have local copies. That's why I avoid the likes of Roam/Notion/whatever-newest-notetaking-app-of-the-week-on-HN like the plague. I put data in, one day it's all gone. Nope. Users may be seen as / actually be ignorant, unwashed masses who don't know the difference between forward slash and backslash, or Firefox and IE, but eventually, even they learn that updates = pain, annoyance for no benefit _to them_, only to benefit the management and product owners of the software shop. When they turn off / block updates, they've spoken, and I agree with them, that the way you / we are doing updates today is wrong and needs to be changed.
• cgrealy 6y ago
  Look, I get that you want your article to have a respectable looking length, but please don’t make me wade through 3 paragraphs pointlessly recapping the history of software distribution from circuit boards. The internet. We get it. We’re on the damn internet and anyone reading an article about upgrading software knows what the internet is.
• Animats 6y ago
  Don't get uppity, user scum. You'll upgrade when we tell you to. And we'll take away a feature whenever we want. So there.
• joe_the_user 6y ago
  Funny this post should come now. I've been dealing with a weird upgrade problem. I noticed a problem with various software on my Android phone about a month ago - some software had stopped because it couldn't upgrade and I wasn't able to download anything from the Play Store. It seemed the phone was waiting for wifi to do anything. The only problem was Wifi would come never 'cause of Covid. Moreover, changing Play Store options failed to solved things and box in Android meant to change this had simply vanished ... several upgrade ago (hah, ha). Oh, and looked far and wide on the net for solutions. That would only be the sad story of one more phone crufted to death ... except I did solve the problem. Accidentally. Yesterday. Trying to upload stuff by Google Drive, I found a wifi-only option disabled it ... magically, the Play Store worked now and everything I had order appeared. Apps worked again. Etc. I'm not sure if I can think of a moral to this story but I'm glad of a context to share it in.
  • asicsp 6y ago
    I have this issue. I don't use whatsapp much, but I wasn't able to update it, so I removed it rather than leaving my few friends wondering why I'm not replying to messages. I just checked drive to try your workaround - and it says old version, needs update, which of course I cannot do. Oh well. One of these days I will take the plunge and see if a factory reset will work.
    • joe_the_user 6y ago
      Yeah, the crazy thing is that this issue isn't one issue but bunch issues and gets worse over time. Once something restricts downloads, you wind-up in a weird position where things stop working 'cause you can't update them and you can't download any fixes for the same reason. Removing auto-update in the Play Store is another step that apparently helps. My guess is that Settings and Google Drive are each accessing a key in something akin to the registry in Android. The problem is there seems no guide to this registry-equivalent thing. Otherwise a program to fix these configuration problems could be side-loaded.
    • 29083011397778 6y ago
      There's a site (hosted by FB) that allows downloading the latest version of Whatsapp directly [1]. Should allow you to bypass the Play Store immediately :) [1] https://www.whatsapp.com/android/ https://www.whatsapp.com/android/