>> The app checks for the update every 5 minutes or when the user activates the app.
This is why I use Little Snitch, an application firewall that blocks requests like this and gives me some control over which applications are phoning home all the time. There’s no reason a desktop application should check for updates every 5 minutes. Once a month ought to do it without a compelling reason for more. But none of the lessons learned in the article show any attempt to reevaluate the update check frequency.
No. There is enough apps what I start, use and close. Why it should check the update every time it starts?
And this is even more irritating when the update check isn't working for some reason, eg update URI is not available but overall Internet works, now you sit there and wait while the update checker timeouts. Why, why?
Sounds like a decision that could only be made by a company that believes their API will change often (or is for whatever reason worried about 0Ds) and without enough engineering headroom to handle versioning and translation layers correctly. It could greatly simplify a style of development that allows companies to move quickly without paying certain costs.
Screen studio has gone through a period of incredibly rapid development with many new features and improvements, Adam has launched updates every day at times. So I can understand the motivation for at least a daily check.
However those rapid updates also increase the risk of a bug in a release, and so maybe a more regular update check is needed during that time?
Adam is also following the "build in public" marketing strategy, warts and all. It's worked very well, he has had massive growth in sales. The combination of building in public, a product that is "visual" and one that effectively advertises itself, is very clever.
If your background is web apps with CI, thinking you need a 5min update check interval is an easy trap to fall into.
Why? Updates may or may not be to the benefit of the user, who should have a clear say in the time and place when their stuff is updated, nothing is more frustrating to have a job to do and then to sit there waiting for some silly update process to complete only to find out that (1) it doesn't matter to you anyway or (2) that they've borked the update or (3) that critical functionality you relied on has been removed or (4) that the marketing department thought this was a great time to try to upsell you on something.
Mandatory updates should only happen for critical security issues and even those don't need to be fixed on a five minute interval, once a day at most for a check and less frequently is probably fine as well unless the app is absolutely mission critical and people will die. And even then you should probably wonder if your QA is so bad that you need to be able to intervene on a moments notice, better to design your process in such a way that you can alert the user rather than to forcibly upgrade their system, especially if there is a chance that you'll get it wrong (again).
An upgrade is always a burden on the users, so you really don't want to do this too often and even if you are capable of releasing multiple updates per week it would be ridiculous to expect your users to follow that frequency.
In the past if there was an update for software I use I was excited and was curious about all the improvements it would bring. Now when I see some app has an update I have a feeling of dread as I am sure it will be slower, the UI more clumsy and the power features I like will surely be removed.
Especially if you are like Nextcloud client - just killing Explorer if you like so (without asking the user first) and then even rebooting the machine without asking user first.
It's a glorified sync client, why the hell it should behave like that?
I don’t use Little Snitch but the update frequency definitely struck me as insane. I cannot think of any consumer apps that need to check for updates once a day.
This is trying to bring SaaS update frequency to the desktop. As both a SaaS user and SaaS developer, I think this is a big win. Why leave a bug open for a month, fix it the next day if it's serious.
This is why I use Little Snitch, an application firewall that blocks requests like this and gives me some control over which applications are phoning home all the time. There’s no reason a desktop application should check for updates every 5 minutes. Once a month ought to do it without a compelling reason for more. But none of the lessons learned in the article show any attempt to reevaluate the update check frequency.