I suspect that approximately no one reads that "What's new" section, and they know it. Even Google just leaves it with whatever happened to be in the field in summer of 2018 when they stopped updating it.
Maybe nobody reads it when they have automatic updates enabled, but I read the changelogs for every app that has them on F-Droid, even though their update flow is not optimized for this. For projects without changelogs, I'll sometimes check the commit messages.
Quality of changelogs has a big impact on how trustworthy I perceive a project to be. Releasing new versions without a (meaningful) changelog says that you expect blind trust from your users; that you expect them to update anyway regardless of the changelog content; or that you don't consider them able to evaluate whether updating is in their best interest -- in summary, "we know what's best for our users better than they do." Whether or not that's true, the attitude strikes me as vaguely paternalistic. It feels to me that a developer who thinks so little of their users would be more inclined to try and pull a fast one.
As an example, Signal has recently stopped writing changelogs for many of their beta releases, and it has affected my trust in them, and willingness to install said updates.
Let me be very clear: I am NOT saying lack of changelogs makes a developer less trustworthy. I AM talking about how they make me feel about them. I'm also well aware that this is an indirect measurement, so there's some variability and Goodhart's law applies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law).
Add me in that category. If the company/developer doesn't care enough to put one or two sentences about what's changing, they lose a portion of my trust. Even the annoying "bug fixes and performance enhancements" message is better than nothing. But the "don't worry about what's changing, just keep our app on autoupdate!" message is worse than nothing.
"We've smashed more bugs and tidied up a few things to make this release even more awesome. Update to the latest to enjoy the best Blablah!"
Actual updates: Version number bump. In my experience outside of the Big Tech releases the most egregious offenders seem to be Credit and Banking Apps with auto expiration. I loathe that feature, it's bitten me in low connectivity areas.
I do, and I cringe at the weasel-worded disinformation that usually ends up being put there. "We've fixed some defects and improved performance". Yeah, right. Running the updated app provides ample evidence to the contrary.
And then the vendors (and the security people) claim that automatic updates are fundamental, because otherwise people wouldn't install them. But maybe, just maybe, people don't want to install updates because they're being force-fed them, with no information about what to expect, and half of the time the update makes the experience worse.
The road to a better user/vendor interaction starts with providing meaningful changelogs and dropping the paternalistic attitude about updates.
Hehe: My dad used to refer to Mum as the CEO, they are both alive and after being married in well over 40 years they are still an example in being nice and respectful to each other.
I have adapted kind of the same attitude: As the one who brings most money to the table I demand a final say on anything major, but in reality my wife has found our last 3 cars, do the majority of the shopping etc, I mostly just rubberstamp and sign and keep telling my kids to respect their mum.
It's infuriating! Netflix even goes as far as condescendingly saying "don't you worry about this kind of stuff, you worry about what to watch next". It's ridiculous, if you're gonna require patch notes they must either be part of the app review, or be optional from the start!
I strongly agree, especially since I hate 95% of the changes they make. Netflix has the most user hostile design of any media app that I use. I'm still a subscriber for now, but it will be the first one I cut.
Yeah, Spotify feels like a really cluttered small shed in the backyard; like I have to step over all sorts of crap to get what I’m after, and every day the stuff is cluttered up in a slightly different way and somebody randomly hangs a big Michelle Obama poster or some other crap from the ceiling once in a while. Very annoying. Desktop app is mildly more tolerable than mobile.
it was game-over to your opinion when you purchased their product and use a proprietary client to connect to the their proprietary servers.
If they want to break every single feature, while also denying access to older versions of the client, there's nothing you can do. Besides cancelling the membership, that is. But in this case there is nothing the changelog that would have helped you.
...all that is the complete opposite of Mozilla though.
I used to read these until every app stopped providing any useful information in there. Now I wait a while to install updates so I can read the new reviews. Apps updates are so risky, especially on iOS where you can't downgrade an app. More often than not an app upgrade will redesign the UI so I have to relearn it all, or remove free features and make them paid. "Bug fixes and performance improvements", yeah right :-(
On iOS, you can connect your device to a computer running iTunes 12.6.3[1] before updating an app to save the older IPA file to your computer. If you later decide to downgrade, you can delete the app and then restore the old IPA from your computer. Backup the IPAs separately from iTunes, as iTunes syncing can screw you if you're not careful.
Yes, this is a complete and total pain in the neck, but it has saved me in the past. Jailbroken devices can also use tweaks that allow downgrading right from the App Store.
P.S. There's actually one more way to downgrade apps—use a version of iTunes from before Apple introduced certificate pinning (iTunes 7 worked for me) and use Charles Proxy to edit the request so Apple gives you an old version. This worked for me as of last fall—but in this case, "pain in the neck" does not even begin to describe it. :)
Discord has been really good with their changelogs but their changelogs in app stores are not as good as the ones in the beta channels. I liked their transparency when they introduced tabs in their Android app.
Android dev here : big fan of having a what's new containing "we improved things".
ALL the majors apps I am familiar with basically launch new features in the same way : first under a feature flag (e.g. the feature code is in the app but deactivated by default, we control its activation server side). We open up the feature to a small percentage of users, look at how it is behaving (bugs, crashes, impact on metrics) and then decide whether we want to open it up to more users or not.
With such a system where your version number does not mean much, at best release notes would be "we added a new feature, you might or might not see it".
What are you talking about?
Google play update section is my most visited app during the day I think.
I love reading the what's new copy. Some companies put a lot of effort into it, like Signal/Slack (when I still had it installed)
Some companies leave it empty which I think is very bad
But the worst are companies that put a constant what's new section like "we're constantly updating our app to make it better for you" bullshit - Uber. This just feels condescending to me.
Overall I think it's a prime channel to let people who are interested in your app to know ... what's new
