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Comment by Akronymus | Hacker News Reader

I literally only update apps on my phone when the old version becomes unusable [1] or when the new version actually provides something of worth.

For desktop software, most seem to, sadly, be self updating or a website.

For example, youtube now has a miniplayer when playing a playlist on desktop. I find that "feature" to be absolutely atrocious and would rather do without it. But due to it being a website they changed it to make it impossible to turn it off.

[1] Whatsapp

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Btw, desktop youtube redesign is atrocious: it's slow and wastes a lot of screen space. People have to work on browser plugins that use hacks to redirect to the old page. The old design page is thankfully still served, but it can't be accessed without magic and constant breakage.

Also: reddit redesign is godawful. I HATE that designers think that unifying the look and feel of a website for desktop(horizontal screen) and phones (vertical acreen) is a good idea. For example: twitter has practically no difference between mobile and desktop view. And it wastes so much screenspace.

Altough, the reddit redesign sucks on mobile too.

I do the same thing and I get an unbelievable amount of salt about it from my colleagues (most of them programmers), even though they have the same issues I do and complain about the same things. It's just not understandable at all.

Updates are really important in terms of security.

The problem here is the hostile relationship from the companies to their customers.

Most updates seem to eschew security in favor of new "features" or "improvements".

And even if they say security they usually bundle it with other changes, along with not even saying what kind of security change.

Give me a vulnerability tracker and what has been fixed, and I'll actually update your app.

For me, the "added security" is just not worth it MOST of the time. Partially due to actually only installing apps that don't even have the capability to do much/any damage, due to it only having permission to access parts I don't deem dangerous.

I would buy the "updates are important because security" line of reasoning if software developers would bother to release security-only patches to old software, but most don't. Unfortunately, you need to take the bad (UI re-designs, unwanted features, changed file formats) with the good (securest fixes), so I unfortunately often decide to keep the old, slightly more vulnerable software.

> Updates are really important in terms of security.

We're talking about phone apps. 99% of the time this just isn't the case and the remaining 1% is for issues so widely broadcast you would absolutely know.

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