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A comment on No user accounts, by design. Parent comment

Re:No user accounts, by design by staindk on Monday February 28, 2022 @04:45PM (#30505557)
Not really a counter point because you mention a lot of other issues with f-droid that sound valid (I haven't used it myself) - but as a tangent regarding auto updates, I disable them basically everywhere because I seem to have buggy experiences too often if I allow stuff to update all the time.

I then go through the list of updates in the Play Store once a week or so and install those that I think might improve app functioning/stability. I look over and install Windows updates once a way-too-long (need to work on this).

Feel like everyone is skimping on QA these days or something else fishy is going on. In the last handful of years there have been 2 or 3 Windows updates that either permanently erased data or caused some other insane issues. I didn't get them (tbf I understand that most people didn't), partially thanks to having auto updates disabled.

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Re:No user accounts, by design by freedomben on Monday February 28, 2022 @09:36PM (#30508625)
Yep, me too. I used to evangelize frequent updates because of the security aspect. However over time I kept getting burned by disruptive or buggy updates that broke things that I depend on.

The last straw for me was a few years ago when my podcast suddenly stopped playing. When I unlocked the phone to investigate why the episode had stopped the UI had completely changed, in a way that I was completely lossed and had to start over learning it from scratch. I was right at the beginning of a long road trip and had pre-downloaded many hours were of stuff to listen to because I didn't have much data in my plan. All of the episodes I had downloaded were gone. Additionally because I was driving, learning a completely new interface was horribly dangerous.

That was the day I disabled auto updates, and now I manually approve each one. Certain apps where I don't want to risk UI changes or new bugs, don't get updated right away. When they do, I always backup the old APK first so I can easily restore it if needed.

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Re:No user accounts, by design by mehdix on Tuesday March 01, 2022 @08:35AM (#30513885)
Exactly the same here. Nowadays I go through the changelog and often I realize there is no changelog for the update, or it is totally irrelevant for me (e.g. bug fixes for other android versions or problems which I don't have, marketing changes, cosmetic changes, features I don't need, etc.)
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Re:No user accounts, by design by tentacleuno on Tuesday March 01, 2022 @04:33AM (#30511817)
F-Droid lets you downgrade apps. The only problem is that due to Android's security protections, you have to uninstall the app to install an older version (downgrade protection).
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Re:No user accounts, by design by cmeacham98 on Monday February 28, 2022 @07:21PM (#30507264)
This still sucks for your usecase on F-Droid. If you look through the available updates and pick 10 to install, you have to click through 10 popups to allow the installation, one for each update, waiting in between each for the previous update to finish before being able to approve the next.
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Re:No user accounts, by design by toastal on Monday February 28, 2022 @08:26PM (#30507941)
How many apps do you need installed (and why)? I feel like I'm a pretty heavy user, but if I forget to update for a week at most I have 6 apps to manually click through. It seems likes an insignificant gripe considering the other alternatives (Play Store, Amazon, Huawei, etc)
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Re:No user accounts, by design by freddie_mercury on Monday February 28, 2022 @09:43PM (#30508677)
These are the apps on my phone that have updated in the past 7 days:

Subway/public transit app (see how much money I have left on the cards)

Grab (an Uber competitor where I live)

Facebook

YouTube

Google

Google Maps

A bank app

Signal

Google Calendar

GMail

Android Auto

Agoda, a hotel booking app

Dropbox

Netflix

Instagram

AirBnB

A second bank app

A boardgame helper app

Uber

TripIt

Microsoft ToDo

Shopping app for the baby store we order diapers and formula from every few days

Pocket

Spotify

Proton calendar

Facebook Messenger

Google Docs

Google Photos

Google Voice

Google Sheets

You Need A Budget

Tiktok

Shopee, an online shopping app I use nearly every day

My country's covid vaccine tracking app

Google Translate

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:No user accounts, by design by toastal on Monday February 28, 2022 @11:31PM (#30509599)
From F-Droid? Are you not choosing Aurora store? (Yes, I know what those apps are, I'm in the same region and time zone as you)
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Re:No user accounts, by design by freddie_mercury on Tuesday March 01, 2022 @12:12AM (#30509916)
Not from F-Droid. I was just replying to the parent's claim that normal people don't need a lot of apps.

If I don't have a laptop or desktop, why wouldn't I have a lot of apps on my phone?

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Re:No user accounts, by design by toastal on Tuesday March 01, 2022 @01:08AM (#30510265)
That wasn't what I was asking though... I was talking specifically about the number of apps through F-Droid. They don't seem to require updates every two days unlike the Grab superapp.
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Re:No user accounts, by design by eru on Tuesday March 01, 2022 @02:20AM (#30510735)
That limitation perhaps also drives the infrequent updates?

In any case, it's fine for F-Droid to choose that behaviour, but then it limits itself to a niche of possible apps.

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Re:No user accounts, by design by thaumasiotes on Monday February 28, 2022 @05:58PM (#30506355)
> In the last handful of years there have been 2 or 3 Windows updates that either permanently erased data or caused some other insane issues.

I'm still mad about the Windows update that permanently stopped Windows from working with my Bose headphones. The headphones continued to work perfectly with anything that wasn't running Windows.

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Re:No user accounts, by design by infinityio on Monday February 28, 2022 @06:11PM (#30506490)
Out of interest, have you tested them on win11? One of the later win10 updates broke my Bluetooth headphones (actually, Bluetooth in general became pretty buggy), but they 'magically' unbroke after the upgrade
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Re:No user accounts, by design by hansel_der on Tuesday March 01, 2022 @05:00AM (#30512079)
ime bluetooth has been buggy ever since. not always, but it failed me countless times in the worst situations. one reason why a phone has to have a 3,5mm jack.
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Re:No user accounts, by design by thaumasiotes on Monday February 28, 2022 @06:28PM (#30506674)
No, I haven't.
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Re:No user accounts, by design by mackrevinack on Tuesday March 01, 2022 @02:44AM (#30510904)
i got stung a few times and have turned off updates since. it wouldn't be such an issue if the play store would allow you to roll back to a previous version
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Re:No user accounts, by design by iggldiggl on Tuesday March 01, 2022 @05:14AM (#30512201)
Even if Android would let you easily downgrade apps, the problem remains that each individual app would also have to support that scenario, too (by never doing any data migration that would leave the user data no longer readable by the old app version).
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Re:No user accounts, by design by tgsovlerkhgsel on Tuesday March 01, 2022 @07:44AM (#30513418)
Personally, I've found that disabling auto-updates just means either unnecessarily sticking with outdated/buggy versions (or versions that drift out of sync with backend services and acquire new bugs that way), or I spend way too much time manually maintaining my phone instead of actually using it.

I don't have time to read release notes/research each new version, so I'd likely just spend 10 minutes hitting "update" on everything, then getting bitten by the same issues.

(This is specifically in regards to Android apps, not other platforms).

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Re:No user accounts, by design by autoexec on Tuesday March 01, 2022 @03:52PM (#30519850)
> Personally, I've found that disabling auto-updates just means either unnecessarily sticking with outdated/buggy versions (or versions that drift out of sync with backend services and acquire new bugs that way),

I guess I don't care if my apps are "outdated" as long as they still do what I want. If there's something buggy about an app that annoys me enough I'll often just uninstall the buggy app and find an alternative.

I find that once I install an Fdroid app and I like it, it'll pretty much just keep working just the way I want it to. The only app I use that breaks if I don't update it is NewPipe and that's google's fault. It doesn't happen often enough, or take long enough to update to offset the benefits of using it.

Even most my regular google play store apps don't actually "need" to be updated, and many haven't been since the day they were installed with no bugs or issues.

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Re:No user accounts, by design by axiolite on Tuesday March 01, 2022 @02:07AM (#30510648)
> regarding auto updates, I disable them basically everywhere because I seem to have buggy experiences too often

With Play Store I agree. With F-Droid, I do not. You can easily install older revisions if you find a problem, which I almost never do with F-droid.

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Re:No user accounts, by design by andai on Monday February 28, 2022 @05:58PM (#30506357)
>I look over and install Windows updates once a way-too-long

I thought you needed some kind of registry hacks or something to disable automatic updates since W10, can you elaborate on how you got it to stop pestering you?

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Re:No user accounts, by design by lsferreira42 on Monday February 28, 2022 @06:50PM (#30506927)
I followed this website and it works:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-a...

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Re:No user accounts, by design by andai on Saturday March 05, 2022 @12:49AM (#30564695)
Brilliant, thank you!
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Re:No user accounts, by design by istillwritecode on Monday February 28, 2022 @09:53PM (#30508767)
I also disable auto updates once every six months is enough for me. I really really don't care about the security of these apps.
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