Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Facebook is lazy when it comes to release notes for software updates.
- Thread starter ajiuo
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yes and it's infuriating. The background usage issue is not fixed in this update by the way. I've got 8 minutes on screen and 18 minutes background activity right now. With background refresh OFF.
Apple should identify it as a memory leak or something that is detrimental to battery life and remove it from the app store until they fix it... I bet it would be fixed within 24 hours.
I think it should be a rule that developers aren't allowed to merely write "Bug Fixes". It should be a requirement to have a full list of what the changes are. Facebook and all its subsidiaries included.
I plan to do what I did last time and will continue to do. Every time they update with "Bug fixes", I give them a 1-star review without any explanation (other than "I'll say why when you say what changed"). I'm sure it's a pointless exercise, but I honestly don't care.
Background App Refresh is not the same as Background Activity. By enabling Background App Refresh you are not giving permission to an app to run in the background.
You are giving iOS permission to refresh that apps content based on your user habits. i.e. if you open the CNN App every morning at 8am to read the latest news eventually iOS will learn this habit and already have refreshed data when you open the app so it doen't have to update as the app opens.
From previous discussions that came up relating to it, it's more than likely that Facebook, like many software companies, is working using an Agile methodology to their development and releases, meaning they work on certain features and bugs in a period of a few weeks (a sprint), and whatever gets done at that time and is in good enough shape to go out that gets released at the end of that sprint. That's essentially what's likely behind a new release every few weeks.I actually find it annoying.
When it comes to release notes, there are probably a few things in play there, one is that sometimes it takes time and effort to gather up everything that was actually done in a sprint and then have it go through legal/PR for approval to be posted up, which would delay the release until all that is done, rather having it out the door right when the sprint is done. Not really an excuse, but a potential explanation.
Perhaps an even more likely one that might be playing more of a role is that Facebook releases features to users in buckets--basically some people will get some new feature before others, others might get a different one before others, and others still might get one that ultimately they don't decide to release to more people or at all and remove it from some of the ones they made it available to. It's sort of along the lines of bucket or A/B testing that quite a few companies do. It can make it hard to say what new features are there when not everyone gets them, and those who do might have somewhat different ones than some others.
That's fine. All I know is that when an app uses 30% of your battery and the background usage is 5x the actual on screen usage there is an issue that needs to be resolved.
I had no idea how this worked until your post. It makes perfect sense and I feel my anger slowly retreating. They still need to fix the battery drain and background usage though!
Couldn't agree with you more
I deleted my Facebook account 2 years ago and haven't looked back.
I've been doing this since they started being so generic. Before they wouldn't say anything except recommending you to turn on automatic updates. I still put "release notes still too generic - 1 star".
We use Agile here where I work. Based on what I've seen, I would agree that they seem to be using that methodology. With that said, we plan our sprints at the beginning (as does any team working with an agile methodology). We always go into a sprint with a plan of what work will be accomplished in that period of time. Things can obviously change. That's part of being agile. But things shouldn't change to the point that no one has a clue what changes are there until the end of the sprint. If that is what's happening, their system is broken. Extremely broken.
This is a possible explanation. And my response would be, why is FaceBook the only app in the store that has to deal with this issue? If your explanation were true, I'd expect to see this behavior from MANY more apps. Since I don't know their internal politics and such, I can only speculate. But it doesn't seem to match up with the behavior of ANY other vendor in the app store.
That's the best explanation I've seen yet (I also saw this a few weeks back when you made essentially the same post in a different thread). This explanation just feels right. And yet I still don't find it to be an acceptable excuse. I suspect that bug fixes for example would be rolled out to everyone. So why not list those? And even if they do roll out fixes and new features in batches, they could still list what's changed along with an explanation that the changes will be rolled out in the coming weeks in batches. I'm sure that would confuse some. But the rest of us are constantly confused about what has changed. I don't see their current method as the lesser of two evils.
At the end of the day, we can speculate about why this and why that. But I still come back to the fact that EVERY other vendor in the store (that I know of) finds a way to inform us of their changes. FaceBook can't be so utterly different in how they operate that they're the only company in the entire App Store unable to compile release notes.
Being a developer myself, I understand your theories. But they don't seem to hold water when examined closely. Not to my eyes. I believe Apple is encouraging us to review a specific version of a given app based on their policies of removing ratings on every new version of an app. So for now, they will continue to receive 1-star ratings from me without any explanation. If I don't know what has changed, I can't fairly judge those changes.
Well, to be fair, there are various apps that take a similar approach, especially those that are on a more or less regular schedule of releases every few weeks. Pinterest is one example, Nextdoor is another, and I'm sure there are more. They likely represent a minority by far, but Facebook aren't the only ones that are like that. What's even more prevalent though is how many apps often don't put anything more than just generic "Performance and stability improvements", or "Bug fixes", or something else similar--big apps like Twitter and Instagram (which is technically owned by Facebook now) and various other ones do that fairly often. So, while it seems to say something more than Facebook just actually not saying anything, it still doesn't actually say anything and in practice is basically equivalent to what Facebook is doing. That type of thing has been present for quite a few apps for quite a while now (perhaps not for every update of those apps, but more often than not). Again, none of this is to excuse anything or anyone, or to say something is better or worse one way or another, but to give it a bit more context from what I've observed and concluded.
As a developer, I actually like writing release notes. Release notes boost my confidence since I get to discuss all the new features I've been proud to accomplish.
So why doesn't Facebook wish to tell us about all the potentially amazing changes they've worked hard on? By writing no release notes, it dissuades me as a user to update since they're hiding the new features on us. We should get excited about these features instead of having to hunt them down (if there even are any).
So why doesn't Facebook wish to tell us about all the potentially amazing changes they've worked hard on? By writing no release notes, it dissuades me as a user to update since they're hiding the new features on us. We should get excited about these features instead of having to hunt them down (if there even are any).
Maybe when they release Facebook 82.0 in 3 weeks it will have release notes... seriously I bet all these "releases" they are doing are really .1 releases!
Does the version number matter? Whether it goes up by a full number of by .1, doesn't really make a difference.
Updates versions are relatively subjective to the author however there are guidelines for iOS devs. Positive integers separated by two periods. First number is major update, followed by minor update, followed by maintenance update.
Couldn't agree with you more
I deleted my Facebook account 2 years ago and haven't looked back.
*gasp* have you had to actually talk to people in real life?!
Could you imagine not having "official" friends or relationships for 2 entire years!?!
The travesty! How would anyone know what he had for lunch today?!
That may well be the case. Only downside is, it gives you an impression that you had been using a buggy app all along. By not providing detailed release notes, the developer is sort of ignoring tech oriented users who probably are the ones who care to read the release notes.
This seems to be quite prevalent on the app store and if you read most of the reviewers complain that it's just to wipe poor reviews/ratings. These reviews are supposed to be a feedback to the developers for improving their apps, but they seem to be content with releasing .x version and hoping that reviewer will give up posting poor ratings.
It would be better if they inform users that they are doing bucket, A/B testing and everyone may not see all the new features all at once.
This seems to be quite prevalent on the app store and if you read most of the reviewers complain that it's just to wipe poor reviews/ratings. These reviews are supposed to be a feedback to the developers for improving their apps, but they seem to be content with releasing .x version and hoping that reviewer will give up posting poor ratings.
It would be better if they inform users that they are doing bucket, A/B testing and everyone may not see all the new features all at once.