Ask HN: Do you care about release notes on app updates? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you care about release notes on app updates?

37 pointswseqyrku21 comments

I do and now many many apps simply use "Bug fixes and performance improvements" which just feels lazy and stupid, even more so if they try to frame it in a ten line paragraph. At least to me, that's not enough reason to update every single time.

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I absolutely do care about release notes. The worst offenders are tech giants and major vendors, who typically don't provide such details or publish something completely uninformative such as "bug fixes and performance improvements".

The biggest irony is that Google added this right into the Play Store so you can see changes every time an app is updated, then their own apps are filled with the "bug fixes and performance improvements" platitude just like you said.

Google definitely doesn't lead by example.

Yes, they often contain gems like:

Exchange services might remain in a disabled state after you install this security update. This condition does not indicate that the update is not installed correctly.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/description-of-the...

I do. Especially in my daily driver. In a game or utility app? Not so much. In a big app with millions of users I do find it shameful when notes are left out. Like, come on, at least have a link to the data. That data exists somewhere.

A game is pretty much the only place I care to see them personally. Good to see how the meta changed.

I especially dislike messages such as "we improved the tubes and more videos of cats" or "we improved performance and explored the edge of the universe" that you see on apps such as Youtube. Sometimes when I open the app, the UI is completely different. Is that what they refer to "tube improvements"? F*ck them..

Unless it’s banking or something similar I don’t install updates for apps if the change log is ‘bug fixes and performance improvements’ or a variation, or if it’s the same every week. If it’s too much of an effort for them to write a changelog, it’s probably not worth the effort and risk to install their updates.

I care about release notes for things I'm engaged with. I will read most lines of the RetroArch or ScummVM or glibc notes, I might even research further by playing with a feature or looking at the commits.

For other stuff, no. I don't pursue them and instantly dismiss them when they pop up. That software can just keep working and I'll find an alternative if it breaks.

Ideally you should be providing a changelog as detailed as https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Version_History or https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Category:Version

My boss is not good at that and most of the changelog ends up being the generic message you highlight.

When I developed mobile apps I would inform people what changed in updates so they could see if it fixed their problem or if the new feature was going to be useful to them. I maintained a pretty good rating by responding to tech support requests and identifying problems to their resolution in an update.

I don't work on mobile apps any more. The gold rush is over for me. But selling shovels is the next big thing.

I do.

But I don't care about having a full list of changes. I rather want the top changes and features explained in a lot of detail.

I think the [VSCode] release notes are a great example.

[VSCode] https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_70

Yeah I use Org-mode for my notes and Orgzly on mobile. The developers have explicitly stated that their goal isn't feature parity but with every update I get a new feature that I can use without fear that I won't be able to manage it in the mobile app.

I do care, very much. I try to read the release notes for every app I update on my phone and on my PC. I don't always have the time or the willpower, but I'll always try to do it.

As an app developer myself, I maintain a very thorough release notes document, including a TLDR section in the beginning with the major features and major bug fixes, and a detailed list below, and an updated, curated list of all known bugs.

I pride myself on doing that, even if nobody ever reads it. It's mostly for my own benefit. If someone comes to me asking "in what version was this bug fixed" I immediately open the release notes in a text editor and find it, without having to sift through our issue tracker and start hunting for keywords and issue status and duplicate bugs.

Me and another guy on my team occasionally dis Google, Facebook and other "tech giants" for their unprofessional release notes. "Bug fixes" indeed. We always wander - those people working on the Google app, on the Facebook app, on Google photos, on Youtube, Google Maps, Google Drive, Gmail - don't they have any professional pride at all?

Yeah I get it, I'm the product and they're just free apps intended to lure us into viewing more ads. But those apps aren't really shitty. They are genuinely useful for me and for a lot of other human beings. But those are human beings who presumably work on them. Software engineers. Do they really take no pride in their job at all? A minimum amount of pride? Writing "we fixed some bugs" in the release notes shows a disrespect not just for your users, but for your own job. For yourself as a professional developer. For your team. For the effort you put into your job, however minimal that effort is.

I do care. I think it is pure laziness when I am updating swaths of apps on the IPhone and most messages just say "making your experience better" or some variation of that.

It's enough reason to update, but I prefer more info. If I have been avoiding a feature because of bugs, I want to know that I can use it again.

I use that information in two different cases.

To check if an update is worth it.

To try to understand if I find a bug in a new version.

I even have internal changelogs for my own projects.

Id imagine almost all normal users have auto-update on and so they never even go to the App Store or see the patch notes.

Lol that's pretty much my current update nofication on my samsung android phone.

Always bug fixes and performance improvements.

updates are the worst. just do it right the first time, like winrar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinRAR#History

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