The New Rules of the App Store

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18 points·shawndumas··4 comments

> Update only when you need to update. Otherwise you may alienate your core customers.

This is a bad side-effect of App Store policies. Why is there no auto-update option? Users should be able to go into a settings page and check "let this application auto-update". With an opt-in system like this, users can always have up-to-date versions of programs they know and trust without being bothered to update manually.

This is the way Android does it and it makes tons of sense to me. Just as users are not expected to use File -> Save anymore with something like iOS, they shouldn't be expected to keep track of the version numbers of the Apps they've downloaded, decide on updates, etc.

I agree. Everything should've auto-update. Infact this makes more sense in iOS than Android as Apple reviews the updates also - that way users can be sure that the new update wont do anything fishy.

This would be fine if there were a way to roll-back updates.

As it stands, once you update an app you're stuck with that version and as a user this can be frustrating if the developer has made a change that you don't like (or worse breaks the app).

As a developer this would be nice as well because it would allow you to try "big changes" in an app w/o fear of alienating your customers.

From my experience, users love updates -- of course as long as you're adding meaningful features. We try to update our app every two weeks and and we get a significant increase in traffic each time (i.e. more share on twitter/fb, blog posts by fans, etc). Our customers love the fact that we listen to them and move quickly with features.

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