Android developers can now force app updates

Re:Android developers can now force app updates by jayd16 on Thursday May 16, 2019 @11:47AM (#19930065)

Everyone is so damn negative. Devs were force upgrading apps before and this just makes for a consistent UI. It also fixes the race condition where the dev rolls out a forced update but it hasn't propagated to all regions. This is a good feature.

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Re:Android developers can now force app updates by crankylinuxuser on Thursday May 16, 2019 @12:30PM (#19930441)

We're 'so damned negative' because this is yet another anti-feature that removes control from the owner of the device.

If I don't want to update now, I shouldn't have to. My device, my rules.

And this feature encourages bait and switching: free app is no ads and free, and then at update+1 gets malware installed for free on forced update. We've already seen this with optional updates - only now they won't rely on tricking the user. They'll just update.

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Re:Android developers can now force app updates by jayd16 on Thursday May 16, 2019 @12:49PM (#19930619)

You think anyone that was going to bait and switch was stopped because there wasn't a consistent UI for the feature?

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Re:Android developers can now force app updates by mobjack on Thursday May 16, 2019 @12:31PM (#19930446)

Before devs had to have the insight to implement the force update feature in the first release of the app.

If you didn't do that, then you really couldn't force the updates to the old versions.

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Re:Android developers can now force app updates by jayd16 on Thursday May 16, 2019 @12:47PM (#19930604)

You still need to bundle in the library and code for this API.

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Re:Android developers can now force app updates by JohnFen on Thursday May 16, 2019 @12:44PM (#19930569)

> This is a good feature.

I disagree. This will just encourage app devs to engage in more forced updates, and forced updates are always bad things.

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Re:Android developers can now force app updates by jayd16 on Thursday May 16, 2019 @12:53PM (#19930656)

>forced updates are always bad things.

The major case is game clients for multiplayer games where it doesn't make any sense to split your player community into older versions. Games across all platforms work this way so its nice to see a consistent UI for Android.

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Re:Android developers can now force app updates by JohnFen on Thursday May 16, 2019 @01:05PM (#19930759)

That's a more reasonable use case, but it still doesn't make forced updates a good thing. Opt-in automatic updates, sure, but not forced.

However, this will encourage the use of forced updates outside of that use case. That sounds like a terrible thing.

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