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What's up with all these 2 week mysterious Facebook app updates?

phillytim

phillytim

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 12, 2011
1,784
1,273
Philadelphia, PA
It used to be every 4 weeks, now it says every 2 weeks. There is no explanation of changes other than the updater saying this:

"Thanks for using Facebook! To make our app better for you, we bring updates to the App Store every 2 weeks. If you have iOS7 or up, you can update the app automatically (without checking back here) by going to Settings > iTunes & App Store > Automatic Downloads and turning on Updates.

Every update of our Facebook app includes improvements for speed and reliability. As other new features become available, we’ll highlight those for you in the app."​

I'm so glad I disabled Automatic App Updates and stayed with Facebook app version 6.7.2, before they circumcised Messages out of the main app and enabled all these crappy auto-play videos.

They will have to pry version 6.7.2 out of my cold, dead hands before I ever upgrade.
 
Right? It's all a big secret. They somehow updated my app or perhaps I mistakenly did it. I was trying to not update. The solution for that is easy though - don't use Facebook messaging ever again. Currently the app will tell you you got a message and who it is from. It just won't let you open or read it. I've been sending return emails to those people (the ones I give a crap about) stating that I no longer use FB messaging and can't see their message and they will need to email me.
 
good ole facebook for ya, hiding things. unlike any other apps, it's been that dumb message telling me to turn on auto update and every update has speed improvements (WRONG!) and new features that are highlighted in the app. yea right.

more adds, more clutter, less feed. good job facebook/myspace
 
Auto play can be disabled in settings.

As far as I can tell the last few Facebook updates (including the very last one from a day or two ago) still mention 4 week releases, not 2 week ones. (Today's Messenger app does mention two weeks for its releases, but not the main Facebook app as far as I can tell.)

Facebook is likely just going with an agile sprint process where they work on things in sprints of probably every few weeks and release whatever they finished in that time.
 
C DM said:
Auto play can be disabled in settings.

As far as I can tell the last few Facebook updates (including the very last one from a day or two ago) still mention 4 week releases, not 2 week ones. (Today's Messenger app does mention two weeks for its releases, but not the main Facebook app as far as I can tell.)

Facebook is likely just going with an agile sprint process where they work on things in sprints of probably every few weeks and release whatever they finished in that time.
Click to expand...

on their version history, yesterday's release shows 2 weeks. prior to that shows 4.
 
C DM said:
Facebook is likely just going with an agile sprint process where they work on things in sprints of probably every few weeks and release whatever they finished in that time.
Click to expand...

Even if I was still updating Facebook, I certainly would have immediately stopped updating when they started keeping their update changeling a secret. That's for 200% sure! There is something menacing going on when they start keeping secrets.
 
phillytim said:
Perhaps so, but Facebook's rogue app is reason enough for me to not trust my personal data going through it. That is all.
Click to expand...
Not sure what's rogue about it or how that really relates to the service itself. But plenty of people don't want to use Facebook for whatever reason and that's certainly their own personal decision, as is the case with many other products, services, and things in life in general.
 
An app is rogue, Facebook in this case, when it updates without explanation of what it updates for. And/or when it updates like this at regular intervals. This is not normal activity in the history of the App Store. And that's all I need to know to avoid it, since it's parsing my personal information.
 
phillytim said:
An app is rogue, Facebook in this case, when it updates without explanation of what it updates for. And/or when it updates like this at regular intervals. This is not normal activity in the history of the App Store. And that's all I need to know to avoid it, since it's parsing my personal information.
Click to expand...
Agile sprint releases for software companies are basically the norm for a while now. It's been the trend in the industry for years now and just getting applied to apps in this case. Nothing new or surprising or unusual for anyone in the software industry. And even that aside tons of apps releae updates that don't say anything make than a generic "Performance and stability improvements" and/or "Bug fixes" without much else in quite a few cases. Seems like many apps are "rogue" then with many of their updates.

Again people are certainly free to have their own opinions and preferences. I'm just pointing out that it's easy to read something into nothing (or at least something that is effectively practically nothing of consequence).
 
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