How often do iOS users update? - The Pareto Distribution | Hacker News Reader

How often do iOS users update? - The Pareto Distribution

octopart.com

62 pointscornmander54 comments

Those numbers are close to my app's update rates as well. I found it surprising that it happened so quickly too, but then noticed how my wife updates her apps: she hates those little red numbers, so will update almost immediately to make them go away.

there are two types of people in this world, those who can tolerate the red badges on their apps and those who cant

My fiance absolutely never updates and also never clears her notifications. She only uses her phone when she wants to... use her phone.

And actually, I think that's the rational approach. Updating is a horrible experience. "Hey, guess what! You can't do anything while these 10 apps are updating. And guess what, the one you need is in the back of the queue. And a large game is in the front. You're not getting anything done for a while!"

Background auto-updating should be the default on all OSes.

> And guess what, the one you need is in the back of the queue. And a large game is in the front.

If you tap an app icon while they are updating it will be given priority and moved in front of the queue.

> Background auto-updating should be the default on all OSes.

And then the foreground app will have slower network speed and performance which given that a mobile device is a bad thing. If I need to quickly check mail I want that to be the only priority of the phone.

The current behaviour is just fine. Many poeple are just waiting until the device is plugged in at home/work before updating all apps.

So then only do it when on wifi and connected to a power source? I don't know, make a sane design decision but don't force your users to babysit stuff that doesn't matter to them.

This is not something users should have to think about, at all. "Update" shouldn't be in the user's vocabulary. Sure, some people are interested in that level of control, and for them there should be options to configure it.

Having not owned an iPhone, I just want to clarify: when you update an app, it does so in the foreground? That seems like an odd design decision. Would there be any reason for that to happen, as opposed to in the background (a la Android)?

Depends on what you mean by background. You can't use an iOS app while it is being updated (or in the queue to be updated), but you can do anything else. I'd call that a background update.

Gotcha. I foreground == can't use the phone while the app is updating. Seems like it uses a similar mechanism to Android app updates then.

By background I mean without notification of any kind. It's not something we should have to worry about.

The behaviour I want is that when I've opened that app with the badge the badge should go away. All apps that don't follow that behaviour are relegated to a screen far to the right.

Another easy way to avoid the red badges - just put all the utility stuff in it's own folder on the non-home screen, and use Spotlight search to navigate to it quickly when needed. That's how I use Find iPhone. Spotlight even works well with Siri as of iOS6, so I just pick up my iPad and say "Open Find iPhone" then tap to see which couch my kid has dropped my phone to.

Wow, that graph is very surprising to me. I only update apps when I update iOS (very rarely). I find it supremely annoying to update things manually. I would worry that the population being captured is not representative of the general app using population.

>> "I find it supremely annoying to update things manually"

What's annoying about it? It only takes two/three taps:

1. App Store

2. Updates tab

3. 'Update all'

A password isn't even required anymore. Personally I don't see how anyone could find that annoying but even if they did most app updates come with new features and the benefits of those far outweigh the 10 seconds of time it took to update.

It's still pretty annoying. I'm assuming auto-update will be an option in the next major OS update, because it is sorely needed.

Obviously it could be more efficient with an auto-update mechanism, but I'm genuinely surprised people find that annoying.

It's annoying because it happens every single day. Or more.

Some design issues prevent me from updating regularly and when I do, it's a painful process.

1.) Installing applications of size X generally requires 2X amount of space. I'm not a dev so I don't know what happens under the covers, but I can understand why (copy compress package, unpack/uncompress and deploy to filesystem)

2.) When you update, it's an all-or-none proposition with the "Update All" button

3.) Because of 1 & 2, if you're low on space and one application is too big to update, when you press the "Update All" button you get an error message and nothing gets updated

So, I now have a red "93" on my App Store icon, and unless I want to manually go and update each non-big app individually, that's how it's going to stay.

Bonus: Loading the icons in the "Update" screen impacts the UI something fierce (as does updating, I guess), so Updating individual apps is an exercise in frustration. This scales linearly with the number of apps you need to update, so at this point I'm past the point of no return and will likely not update an app unless it complains directly to me. Even better, finding the app in the update screen is painful since they're sorted by time and not name, so it's nearing the point where if I can't use your app because you complain to me, and you're not an absolutely essential application, I'll probably just delete you.

One workaround is to sync your apps with iTunes on a computer, do the app updates there, then sync the updated apps back in to your iOS device.

Re: Your first point, the App Store uses delta updates now, so, it doesn't download/replace files that haven't changed.

Take a step back and think about the ritual of what you are doing. You are babysitting something that doesn't actually matter to you (maybe it does to you specifically, but it shouldn't have to matter).

Think about needing to use an app when you have 10 updating and it is the last in the queue. Remember what computers are for, for getting to information you need.

> Think about needing to use an app when you have 10 updating and it is the last in the queue.

If you tap an app icon while they are updating it will be given priority and moved in front of the queue.

When I moved to Android I was excited for auto update. Sure three taps seems simple, but people are lazy. Lazy on a level you can't even comprehend where opening the App Store to do anything but install a new app is a chore.

I'd hazard to say that the graph is representative of the general app-using population and you are the outlier. You're one of a very small handful of iOS users I know who do this (my girlfriend is another one).

My wife never updates her iOS apps. Any lawyers here able to tell me whether that constitutes "irreconcilable differences" ?

For me it's the Peter Principle - update until the app becomes worse than it was before. I don't trust them not to ruin more things in the future and I can't really revert, so that's where things stay.

If it is an app you care about then you better go read the reviews before updating because you cannot roll back.

Sure you can, if you have a backup of the ipa file on your computer.

I haven't connected my phone to my computer for years so that won't really work for me, but yeah you could go that way.

Technically, you don't need to connect your phone to the computer. It will do it w/o your intervention. I backup/sync all devices in the family to one computer over Wi-Fi.

Can you roll back to a previous version of an app using iCloud after you update? I don't think so.

How does iCloud comes into this picture?

Grandparent suggested using iTunes on computer for ipa backups. I've added that you don't need to connect your phone to that computer.

I think the better option is to update the app until it starts getting worse, then switch to something better. If I was depending on a particular app to a point where losing feature X or Y would be any kind of disaster, I'd be actively looking for a different solution.

I only update the apps when I had a chance to read the reviews. Often the latest versions have bugs and may reduce the functionality, so I make sure there is an improvement before updating. For example, I have my old kindle app from 2011 that allows in-app purchases.

Our server API still receives noticeable traffic for versions of the app that date back to late 2011 when we first launched.

Same. A lot of people don't update ever unfortunately.

I wonder how this compares to Android users, where (I presume) many users have auto-update turned on.

I'm also pretty curious about this. I'd assumed that auto-update was a pretty basic feature and that of course iOS would have it- it's only with this thread/article that i'm discovering otherwise. Is there any particular reason that iOS doesn't do automatic updates in the background? I've just got "update automatically on WiFi only" set up on my Android phone and I've never had any problems.

Here's their decision: Update or Delete. People don't like that extra notification laying there. So you will either retain them or loose them when you update. Some who are disengaged will just update all, but those users you care about will either update or delete.

I'd like to point out that Octopart customer base is probably tech friendly (as they are an electronic parts search engine), I would be more curious about numbers from an app geared toward general consumers such as Yelp.

That curve fitting seems a bit off in the middle and at the tail. What does the log plot show? Log-log plot? That will nail down a power law or exponential law if there is one.

Along these lines, it was surprising to me that many non-techies never close out their apps. They leave them running in the background and are not even aware it was possible to close an app.

As a developer, this means the only time many users will "restart" the app is when they update, and the restart is forced upon them. So make sure your apps are stable!

Ever as a techie I don't close apps very often. Is there a reason you do?

(at least it seems like) Maps kills my battery if I leave it open - iPhone 4

Things that show you icons in the status bar usually have battery consequences. Maps while tracking your location, Bluetooth, device orientation change things, etc.

The need for memory imposes an upper bound on application life. Eventually Safari or a game will require the app close itself.

Running in the background is a bit a misrepresentation. Most aren't really running, and apps will close on their own if resources are needed.

I'd say most techies also don't close out their apps. I certainly don't.

More surprising to me is that ANYONE closes out their apps.

I've never ever ever pressed that little red (-) icon. On pretty rare occasion, I need to hold power and then hold home to kill an unresponsive app. But I've never "quit" an app when I was done with it. I've had an iPhone since the beginning and my battery life and performance has always been stellar. Only apps that passively use GPS have been a problem , so I uninstall those.

This is also (mostly) true on my Mac as well. I leave DOZENS of apps running and only kill them if they start sucking down CPU cycles. Generally, most apps sit there, do nothing, and get paged out to the flash disk.

I'm also a little annoyed each time I meet a non-techie who had some techie tell them "Oh, here's how you close apps. It will make your phone faster." Try as I might, I can't convince my girlfriend that it has absolutely no effect. She religiously closes every single app in that little tray once or twice a day.

It's 2013 people. We don't (shouldn't?) need to manually manage memory for our computers.

It's not always about memory. With my (current iOS, but not current hardware) iPhone, it's about battery life - for whatever reason, applications that use the camera dramatically drop battery power even if the app isn't "active".

It shouldn't be that way, but it is, and the only way I have to control it is to go manually quit certain applications when I'm done with them.

> applications that use the camera dramatically drop battery power even if the app isn't "active"

Do you have any evidence of this? Have you run a controlled experiment? Because that makes zero sense. I'm 99% sure that you've been conditioned to press a placebo button.

Others (and you) note battery drain when the gps circuits are used, why does it make "zero sense" that current draw is higher when the camera is powered on, vs when it's off?

To answer your question though, yes, I have experimented several times over the nearly three years I've owned the phone (plain old iPhone 4 from sept 2010). From a full charge, airplane mode on (turn off the RF drain and minimize outside events -- namely texts and phone calls that I cannot control), phone set to sleep after 1 minute, screen brightness minimum, and with nothing else running, I can start the camera app (pre-configured to be in still photo mode, with flash set to "off"), hit the home button to drop the camera app to the "background", start and then quit the notes app to make sure the last thing I did was something other than the camera app, and doing nothing else with the phone -- lay it on the coffee table and literally do not touch it -- will drain the battery in about 3 hours, 4 max. Doing the same routine, but quitting the camera app, then starting and quitting the notes app and I can leave the phone on the coffee table for days (although I usually give up after about three and start using the phone again).

Everything else I can (and do) leave running with no ill effect.

Bug in the OS? Bug in the built in camera app? Something defective in my battery/phone? Perhaps -- I don't know, and don't really care. I just make a point to turn the camera app off when I'm done with it. Since I usually have a DSLR with me, I rarely reach for my phone for photos in the first place, so it simply isn't that big of an issue.

The only time I ever bother to close apps on my iOS devices is when I do Pimsleur language courses, played in the stock music app. I found that pause/play would introduce stutters and skips if I had a lot of apps open. Each course file is ~30 minutes long, atypical of songs. Reproducible over many tries and several iOS versions.

OK, I lied. The only other time I close an app… The. Chess.com app's analysis board becomes unbearably sluggish if the app has been running too long.

Both instances can be pinned on the app rather than iOS.

This is false. The OS will auto close apps when it gets memory pressure from other apps. The "app tray" is an LRU & has nothing to do with whether the app is running. Our app (used once a day) gets restarted almost every day on old phones, and more than once a week on newer phones

When it comes to multitasking, if a user has to use a task manager, they [the developer] blew it.

-- Steve Jobs iOS 4 introduction http://www.pcworld.com/article/193590/liveupdate.html

You don't need to do that to save battery life. Trust the iPhone. -- Steve Jobs email http://www.johnsphones.com/all-articles/steve-jobs-trust-the...

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