Submitted 3 weeks ago by kennedy@lemmy.dbzer0.com to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/b3bc09d2-8217-4c1c-9c87-29e5b804468d.webp
why do i need to update the app so i can see changes. Whats the point of a change log then? I have auto updates off cause it a hassle to revert back to an earlier version if I dont like the changes. I know for a fact the ig update is for their new stupid map feature and AI shit. I will not update unless it stops working completely. Is it so hard to say what specific bug was fixed and what exactly do you mean by performance.
This sort of shit ought to be banned.
We made our interface SUCK! Can you change it back? NO!
FUCK YOU
We improved our tracking algorithms to more accurately monitor your every move.
We found an unpatched microphone exploit that let’s us listen in on all of your conversations.
I would rather no change log than the LLM generated fall thing… that was a waste of time to read.
just trust us bro, no spyware in here, bro.
I 100% agree that proper changelog should be provided, but to defend devs a litte, the play store changelog character limit makes it almost useless for anything but very small changes.
Though doing funny haha in the changelog is so dumb, they should be like “this changelog field can’t handle the changes, please see the changelog inside the app”
Could the Play Store changelog contain a link to the official changelog then?
please see the changelog inside the app
Is the hope that, after updating and checking the changelog and deciding that updating is NOT for you because of some idiotic breaking-change, you just hop in the time machine and prevent yourself from updating ?
The hope is that its at least better than nothing and at least available at all.
It’s especially better than the cringe attempts at being funny or cute.
I mean, realistically it’s not possible to keep using an older version anyway. After a month or two it might stop working due to backend changes, unless it’s truly an offline app like a calculator, then maybe it will only break after a longer period.
So your choice is update or uninstall.
The obvious answer is there’s no human at the helm recording changes, it’s just the next build. You’ll take it and you’ll like it.
Or that the person writing the changelog is in marketing and knows that end users will be seeing this as communication directly from the company. Marketing people tend to foam at the mouth when they see a chance to “connect with their users”.
Your hypothesis is confirmed by “Because nothing says Fall like financial progress.”
Right, like I said, no human at the helm
The meal planning app that I use got bought out by Samsung and they did this. Put a load of ads in and then advertised a “+” version that got rid of ads. The ads were just advertising the “+” feature. 12 months later they said they were going to remove the ads for everyone.
Modern mobile app development almost always releases features gradually behind feature flags, so changelogging things is not necessarily practical to do.
Why not? Put “added feature XY, staged rollout in the coming X days” in the changelog.
Certainly better to know that there is a new feature and you might get it now or some time later, than some nonsense like “nothing says fall like financial progress”
Well, you might be inclined to not roll the feature out at all, depending on the results you see from the rollout/an A/B-test. Also, having it written out with a date in the changelog binds you to that date, unless you want the embarrassment of not shipping on a promised time. Maintaining a changelog for very large app development organizations is also a pretty damn hard task, trying to coordinate whatever all teams are releasing in a particular build.
I agree that getting cute with the changelog messages is a bit stale. Might as well not add anything at that point.
You expect them to admit:
Implemented more aggressive collection of personal data to sell to advertisers.
Advertisers of medical and beauty supplements are now offered to your teenage daughter if she deleted her picture minutes after not receieving likes.
Users who advocate for neonazi and genocidal idologies now get suggested to each other to better promote and organize which returns higher profit of targetted advertisements as their usage time and activities increase together.
As part of our new monitoring and speech policy, users are now allowed to use the word retard, removed, tranny, and n-word with hard R without their posts getting flagged or reviewed which allows for better targetted advertisements and higher revenue for the Zuck.
Data collection now includes geophraphical tracking of your friends and intrests of people you follow giving higher revenue for shareholders.
Implemented analysis of background data collection of users usage and screen time, which gives higher profits per click to our targetted adveretisers.
Censorship of words is the dumbest thing to me. People simply change the word. Keep playing R-worded whack-a-mole lmao.
lmao…! Yes Lemmy censored my comment but I hope I dont get banned for it. I was mocking facebook content policy changes which the Zuck implemented to lick Trump’s removed which was part of $25Million settlement to avoid repercussions for banning his account back when Biden was in Office.
OMG, thank you! Until now I thought I was the only person to be fucking annoyed by this shit.
We are here. Dozens of us!
changelogs should be legally mandated on app stores
“performance improvements and bug fixes”
… which is also almost verbatim what it says at the bottom of the “good” example…
… in a addition to a link where they explain their “improvements and bug fixes” in greater detail without character limits. So yes it is a “good” example.
The app must be so fast that it has transcended to a higher plane of existence if it gets faster every update.
Isn’t Chime a predatory lending app?
i dont know if they do lending but the banking side of it is convenient enough. I use it to send/recieve money to my parents cash app is too complicated for them, i dont use it as my bank account.
For apps with generic update messages that also have source control and changelogs available: check to see how often the updates are just a manifest version bump and nothing more. Way greater than zero.
Most version revs for apps are just to reset review count and bury negative reviews with “review of an older version”.
It’s all gamification of walled gardens. Walled gardens that need to die.
Is that an iOS thing? On Android versions don’t reset reviews, and there is no “review of older version” message.
I can understand a banking app such as a home wanting to obfuscate whatever bugs or potential exploits they’ve come across and patched - to prevent users on older versions from being targeted; but the rest of those examples are utterly bullshit.
I put forward Duolingo as another egregious example of this bullshit:
“We’re updating the segmentation logic of our A/B test infrastructure to downgrade its respect for the CloudFlare score when deciding whether or not to mark a session as coming from a bot. This was skewing the data on several of our start screen UI experiments, particularly within APAC data.”
Sometimes, you really don’t want to hear it ;D
Actually, I do. But more importantly, I should have the option
Maybe this didn’t come across from my example but my point was that a lot of changes are internal, highly technical, housekeeping, etc and unintelligible without proprietary knowledge of the entire codebase and a full code diff. It’s not going to be the benefit you think it is, and it is not reasonable to expect a full diff with every release - unless you want to go use open source software for everything.
If you want to add your desire to the list of pie-in-the-sky things that would be ideal to have in life, fine, but it’s not practical or useful in reality. Even the publishers who appear to be doing what you want are not telling you everything. There is always an undercurrent of technical housekeeping. And sometimes that’s ALL there is.
Patch notes:
Ahow many updates receives an app, is now considered a “good” metric somehow now. So now if dependabot pushes a PR, it’s a new release on the app stores (of course without testing)
The algorithms on the app stores now consider the app “active” and push the app “up” in ranking
There was a certain billionaire bragging about his app getting 3 vibe-coded updates a day while the competition “only” got 3 a week
So, they can’t write a real change log. What can they write? “Dependabot updated leftpad from 1.1.3.2 to 1.1.3.3” “untested: updated Gradle from 8.14.2 to 8.14.3” “200mb update to change a comma in the Hungarian translation”
This happens when the developers are incompetent. The app should probably be avoided as the people making it have no clue what they are doing.
Even Google does the same with almost every app like Maps, Files, Chrome.
Who the hell uses Google Files for anything but a bad file picker?
That’s an example I gave. I use Solid Explorer.
I created a folder using Simple Gallery but it couldn’t see it. I created a couple more with the same issue. Google Files saw them just fine. Simple Gallery does see them now. I’m guessing that the issue had something to do with the Android 16 upgrade though I didn’t update the app and there wasn’t a follow-up update to the upgrade.
People who use defaults, what do you mean?
Google does a lot of A/B testing, so listing new changes may be pointless as the new features may be available only to select few.
Also developers have no incentive to document changes. It’s a hassle to compile a list of changes since last release, and people don’t read the Changelog for every release, especially with auto updates on.
I’d be great if they could at least use an LLM to compile the Changelog
You dont need an llm, and it doesn’t need to be a developer. Devs are more than capable of writing down words that a human can understand, and if the project is big there will be a manager who has the context to provide a short summary.
However all of that requires company effort.
chime: a PM asked an AI to write this after the only dev that knew how to do this quit
Discord: The PM was frustrated with the devs not summarizing this release crap that no one cares about anyway and hid it behind a link ah that’s so much cleaner now.
Instagram: fuck you
Youtube also does this. Basically it says "To see list of changes, look in the app guide" or something like that; no morons, I want to know what you changed BEFORE updating.
I think a lot of times they don’t want you to know what’s been updated. For instance, pointing out all the bugs you’re fixing might make your app look like it’s always full of bugs. Or the security fix might draw attention to issues that exist for currently outdated apps.
Not saying it’s a good reason, but maybe that’s their thought process.
It least Instagram straight up doesn't give a changelog, rather than letting you read dumb exposition that tells you nothing. (Thats still crap tho)
That sucks
I just want the changelog…
I am sure you can automate that in your ci cd thingy
That Chime one is the sloppest AI slop I’ve seen today.
“Bugfixes and performance improvements”
I see that one all the from big companies because it sounds nice and tells you nothing.
One of those updates a few years included embedding adware. So, thanks for that… jackhole
“We are hard at work making discord work better for you”
While being completely locked away inside proprietary app.
ilinamorato@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Hey, Chime? You can work on your creative writing when the changelog is done.
whosepoopisonmybuttocks@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Also, it seems to have been written by an arrogant 19 year old. Everyone knows what a cornucopia is.
Jivebunny@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Almost sounds like ai slop changelog lol
moakley@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I find it deeply offensive that an app could suggest I may not know the word “cornucopia.” I wouldn’t give a shit if it was the only app I could use to pay my bills; if it at any point suggested that I didn’t know a word as common as “cornucopia,” I would delete it immediately, leave a 0 star review, and post the offense to a community like this.
And just to be clear, the bar for how uncommon a word would have to be in order for it not be offensive is way higher than cornu-fucking-copia.
“Terpsichorean.” That’s a word I wouldn’t be offended if they thought I didn’t know it. Or maybe “legerdemain.” I know both of those words, but I wouldn’t be offended if an app assumed I didn’t.
JargonWagon@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
That was the most upsetting of all of the examples. How condescening (GoOgLe iT). What an ass.