A Call For Rollbacks To Previous Versions of Software 199
colinneagle writes "In a blog post, Andy Patrizio laments the trend — made more common in the mobile world — of companies pushing software updates ahead without the ability to roll back to previous versions in the event that the user simply doesn't like it. iOS 7.1, for example, has reportedly been killing some users' battery power, and users of the iTunes library app TuneUp will remember how the much-maligned version 3.0 effectively killed the company behind it (new owners have since taken over TuneUp and plans to bring back the older version).
The ability to undo a problematic install should be mandatory, but in too many instances it is not. That's because software developers are always operating under the assumption that the latest version is the greatest version, when it may not be. This is especially true in the smartphone and tablet world. There is no rollback to be had for anything in the iOS and Android worlds. Until the day comes when software developers start releasing perfectly functioning, error-free code, we need the ability to go backwards with all software."
The ability to undo a problematic install should be mandatory, but in too many instances it is not. That's because software developers are always operating under the assumption that the latest version is the greatest version, when it may not be. This is especially true in the smartphone and tablet world. There is no rollback to be had for anything in the iOS and Android worlds. Until the day comes when software developers start releasing perfectly functioning, error-free code, we need the ability to go backwards with all software."
Shades of WinAmp 3 ? (Score:2)
This story reminds of the wisdom of this cliche ...
"Those that forget the lessons of the past
are condemned to repeat the same mistakes"
I see this "latest-is-greatest" fallacious attitude all the time. New version adds new features, fixes bugs, but introduces new bugs or rose redesigns the UI. i.e. WinAmp 3, TeamSpeak 3, etc.
The problem is that there is no good solution. What is the developer supposed to do when ...
* Older version has major security issues
* Newer version has a fracked up UI, bloatware, et
Re:Shades of WinAmp 3 ? (Score:4, Informative)
Apple now lets you install old versions of Apps on iOS provided that
* You installed the old version when it was available
* The developer has not opted out of this policy in iTunes Connect
* The new version is not supported on your device
If they dropped the third requirement it might satisfy a lot of what you'd like to see.
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Only works when the last working version isn't broken.
Want an example? Get an original iPad and install Google+. The version that installs won't let you get past the login screen. It's that last version that's compatible with the original iPad.
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Re:Shades of WinAmp 3 ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, I think I see your problem. Where did you get the idea that it was your machine?
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In case the software interacts with any server owned by the developer and they want to stop outdated or possibly bugged requests to the server?
Have each connection prefaced by a communications protocol version. Refuse connection to anything not running the correct protocol version.
The developer doesn't want to deal with bug reports and customer service issues from old versions of their software?
Ditto as above.
The developer found a security issue with an old version, and the developer and/or Apple doesn't want to be responsible for people continuing to use it after an update fixes it?
Make a simple and explicit notice that if the user refuses auto-updates, the user is subsequently on their own, and it's up to them to keep track of future security updates and make sure there hasn't been a compromising bug discovered.
Re:Shades of WinAmp 3 ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't like when companies turn my app from a standalone product to one requiring a subscription to access new features. BranchFire did it with "PDF Annotate" and Abvio has done it with "Cyclemeter".
Part of the reason I purchased "PDF Annotate" and "Cyclemeter" ($25 and $5, respectively) is they didn't phone home or require a subscription that was looking for an excuse to go belly up.
My guess is once new user growth slows, the companies consider monetizing their current user base (aka "seeking rent"). So, in the next upgrade they introduce subscription services.
I'm sorry, but I'm not interested. At all.
Users should have the ability to roll back any upgrade, including OS upgrades.
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When the curators of your device/app store/whatever take an X% cut of whatever moolah you spend on the application or attached subscription services, surely there's a vested interest from both parties for you not to have the ability to keep reinstalling the appallingly stone aged one that still works just fine but doesn't make them any money...? Rent seeking then becomes more profitable for both the creator and the curator, so as long as you ignore the w
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This whole we-are-always-right started with Microsoft and IE.
I think you misspelled "Bell Labs and Unix in 1969". Autocorrect is always purple monkey dishwasher.
The ones I really hate... (Score:4, Insightful)
Are the updates where the hardware requirements have changed so much that you effectively have to buy new hardware. Obviously, not an issue for phones, but annoying as hell on PCs.
Or the company that comes out with an (non-free) upgrade ~every~ year, necessary or not, and immediately stops supporting the previous version. "Yeah, we know about that rare bug. It's fixed in the latest version, which will only cost you $150k, across your user base, to upgrade to."
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Are the updates where the hardware requirements have changed so much that you effectively have to buy new hardware. Obviously, not an issue for phones
Clearly you have not tried to use an iPhone 3s or even iPhone 4 (non-s) lately. If you follow Apple's recommended IOS upgrade path, your device becomes unusable, which has been a pretty sound business model for them, I suppose.
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I have an iPhone 3GS running iOS 6 - it took over our land line number. It runs fine - as well or better than it ever did on any version of iOS 4 or 5. So what are you talking about?
Re:The ones I really hate... (Score:4, Interesting)
When my iPhone 3G stopped being able to run new iOS versions, I was still able to run the old versions of my apps, even though newer ones were available. Actually, it simply didn't even tell me there were newer versions available; it just continued to run the newest versions supported by the OS.
Of course, I made the mistake of wiping my phone, and then I was no longer able to install any version of some apps since the iTunes store only offers the newest.
That simply encouraged me to get off my ass and get the larger Android phone I'd been eyeing.
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I bought the Flightradar24 app. Cost a pretty penny back then, too. Half a year later, it got so bloated (new HD graphics included in the package even though it's not an HD device, developer can't be bothered to make 2 separate packages) that it wouldn't even install on my lowly device anymore. I'd have no choice but to clean out some other apps to make room.
Not much later, the version of Android (2.3) was just completely not supported anymor
Re:The ones I really hate... (Score:5, Insightful)
You think every year is bad, we had a vendor once who went to an 'agile' release cycle and started pumping out releases every 2-4 weeks, and then would say they couldn't support you because you were out of date.
Our production deployment cycle is longer than 2-4 weeks, and we eventually had to tell them that if they expect to be making grown up software for production environments, they'd need to support any given release for no less than six months to a year, or we'd terminate the contract. It took some yelling for them to understand that real production environments can't be updated every time a developer bloody well recompiles.
I updated an app on my Android phone from the Play store recently, and *after* I updated it it started telling me it was only Beta software. Why the hell didn't you tell me is was a steaming turd in the bloody app store? Because I have no interest in a beta version of your damned software.
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Which is why I recommend running 1 version behind. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can avoid the pain of new releases, at least in most cases, by simply deferring the upgrade until a period of time has passed whereby the new release will be vetted by those eager to try it.
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Indeed. In fact you may fall several versions behind waiting for reliability and/or usability to return to previous levels. Personally I'm just about ready to upgrade from XP to Windows 7 on my gaming rig, except that I'd need to upgrade a fair bit of hardware to maintain the same performance.
Re:Which is why I recommend running 1 version behi (Score:5, Funny)
And how is XP, by the way? I'm running 98, but it's getting a little long in the tooth. I'm thinking about upgrading to XP this April 8, when I'll consider it to be fairly well tested.
Speaking of VMs (Score:3)
Quite good actually. It takes a little getting used to, but the stability improvements are enormous. I'd recommend skipping it though, 7 has reached the point that it's an improvement in almost every way, way better than the 95->98 transition, though it does have somewhat higher system requirements and there are some serious issues with backwards compatibility, especially with 16-bit software. Still, 98 mostly works without issue in most virtual machines.
Speaking of VMs, can anyone recommend a cross-pl
Branching off of topic with this, but.... (Score:2)
I'd like to be able to set up a win98 VM with all my old games...
Serious question here...
Where do you find drivers for modern hardware that works in Win98?
My problem trying to do this very thing has been finding graphics drivers for Win98. None of the so called 'generic drivers' have worked for me, and the only two solutions I have reached is:
1) run some *nix distro + WINE for a few
2) keep one of my retired boxes that I can run Win98 on that I have/can find drivers for(I don't have the space for this)
If I could find a working 'generic' SVGA driver to run Win98 in Virtual
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The only thing you get from Android app updates is more ads. I let it update my kitchen timer app. The new version was the same as the old one but came with fucking banner ads. So I've learned to never, ever update anything on my phone.
But that's not as bad as Google who pushed a Chrome update that removed the buttons from the scrollbar. I guess nobody at Google has ever used a touch pad.
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So I've learned to never, ever update anything on my phone.
Or root it and install Titanium Backup, whenever I get a bum update I just leave a bad review and then install the backup from the previous night.
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that works until your old version has a major security hole and your choice becomes moving to the new version or risking being exploited: for example I've always run my ipad2 on ios5 until ios7 was released, then ios6, but now I *had* to update to ios7 due to the ios6 patch for the major security hole not being available to me (given that my ipad2 can run ios7 itunes only gave me the choice to update to that).
I completely agree with this article, I also think there are no reasons but greed to prevent itunes
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Debian FTW! Oh, wait, that's usually 2 - 3 behind! :-)
Devs don't want to maintain old versions (Score:5, Insightful)
Developers don't like having a lot of different versions of their software out in the world because it means they have to maintain those versions. Adding some sort of default rollback ability implies that devs will have to continue to support those old versions. That's not going to be very popular.
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It goes deeper than this.
Businesses have to pass down the costs of software maintenance to consumers; consumers won't pay what it actually costs to do this at the device level.
For servers, that's why you pay extra for long term support at a particular stable revision. See Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu LTS, or Microsoft's long term support for older versions of Windows Server, for reference.
Developers of course would prefer to work on 'sexy' things like new features; maintaining older versions and bac
Re:Devs don't want to maintain old versions (Score:4, Insightful)
Developers of course would prefer to work on 'sexy' things like new features; maintaining older versions and backporting security updates and bugfixes is decidedly 'unsexy' in comparison.
It's not just "unsexy," it's downright annoying to try to dig through an old codebase written poorly by people who have since left the company/community and has since been replaced in newer versions. It'd be one thing if that was free, but trying to maintain that abandoned code requires real work, often far more work than in your current codebase. The more effort you have to expend to maintain the old code, the more complicated and bug-ridden complimentary servers (like online servers and database servers) have to become in order to interact with multiple versions of the app, and the more resources are siphoned away from working on the future. Eventually your project will grind to a halt the more old versions you have to support so obviously you have to draw a line somewhere.
Re:Devs don't want to maintain old versions (Score:5, Interesting)
We've rolled out around 16 updates in 16 months for our software. New features, bug fixes, etc. While even our X.0 software will work with the API in X.16, it takes a lot of work to ensure that you are backwards compatible.
Eventually we will break that, but it isn't all that trivial, especially for a small team.
Re:Devs don't want to maintain old versions (Score:5, Insightful)
who asked for maintenance? I just want to be able to reinstall the same version I was already running before, if to do so I have to click a 'this is unsupported, you are on your own' checkbox then whatever, I just want to:
- if I have an old device and I wipe it, I want to be able to reinstall the applications I ALREADY HAD ON IT even if new versions are available (which would not run on it)
- if a developer releases a bad update (significant changes in functionality, crash bugs in my scenario, redesign, whatever), I want to be able to downgrade to the previous version I ALREADY HAD
developers would totally be free to say 'if you want this issue fixed you need to upgrade to version x.y.z', that's fine with me, but as things stand now the state of walled garden app markets is not very good: if in my job I told my customers that they have to force upgrade to every release (major OR minor) I put out and they won't be able to downgrade after doing so I would (rightly) go out of business very quickly.
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No, this doesn't put developers at any obligation to continue to support old versions. "If you really liked version n-2, then go ahead and install it, but when you get hacked it's your own damn fault for ignoring our security patches."
The thing I don't like about the patch circus is that you never know when the devs are going to let you down. I might be satisfied with 1.0, but I really need new feature X, and I'm willing to pay for and install 2.0 as long as I get X. So I install 2.0 and get feature X, b
Even more than rollback... (Score:2)
... you should be able to install whatever version of software you want on your phone.
The *only* think I want from a phone is a safe enough firmware bootloader that if someone installs something that doesn't work on a device, they can un-brick it and replace it with something that works.
That would handle the specific case of "rollbacks" this article want; as well as the more general case of deleting Windows Phone and putting Android on the otherwise nice hardware.
On the other hand (Score:4, Insightful)
Rollback functionality is also not guaranteed to be perfectly functioning, error-free code, and there's no guarantee that reverting to the previous software version will also revert the user experience to its previous status.
What about data changes? (Score:5, Insightful)
restore from backup (Score:3)
If you have good backups, you should still be able to restore. Sure, you trash whatever you might've done since the upgrade, but sometimes it's worth it.
Of course, that's not the case on the iPad -- you might've done the smart thing and backed up everything before testing a new iOS update, but once it's applied, it *will* *not* let you restore the old OS.
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Sure you can.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ios7-... [ibtimes.co.uk]
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Paul Stachour describes fixing this (and other problems) back in the Mainframe era in the article http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/... [acm.org]
Whether the companies in question can read is a different question...
Bingo (Score:2)
Most android phones can go back (Score:2)
All android phones I've owned (and most I'm aware of) have the option to flash any version of their software (some only signed official versions of course). The only problem is getting the older version - even the latest version isn't always the easiest to get hold of simply from the manufacturer - but they can usually be found easily enough via google.
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Yes, the only difficulty in installing an older version of an Android app is finding a trustworthy source. Of course you could back up your own APK files.
Personally I leave auto-update turned off and only upgrade when I need/want to. I don't need an unexpected update changing the functionality of the app before I'm good and ready for it.
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Computer Science != Software Engineering..... (Score:2)
Too many developers with CS degrees, too few with SE degrees, and nearly none with IS degrees. See http://www.acm.org/education/c... [acm.org] for more details on the differences.
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SE majors learn the how and why of release management, that's why it's relevant. IS majors learn business processes, and those tend to include release management and the importance of rollbacks.
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Sure, I'm aware of the differences between IS, SE, and CS. But we're not talking about "developers forgot to put it in" here. Apple and others are making a deliberate decision not to include rollback for end users.
CS vs . SE (Score:2)
The CS major can calculate the time complexity of the rollback algorithm.
The SE thinks that allowing for rollback might be a good idea.
The IS person cusses the PM who didn't allow for rollback because OF COURSE you should plan for contingencies.
Some users want buggy behavior in upgrades (Score:2)
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It's called "bug compatibility" and there's a valid reason for it. When you install a software package to handle some core function of your business, you build up a lot of dependencies on it. If that package has a quirk, instead of waiting for the vendor to fix it you build a way to work around that quirk. If someone later fixes that quirk, your workarounds can suddenly cause breakages.
Let's say your old accounting package has a buggy feature that automatically applies the "1% net 7" discount on an invoi
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Backward compatibility is expensive (Score:5, Informative)
That's because software developers are always operating under the assumption that the latest version is the greatest version, when it may not be.
No it's not. It's because engineering for backward compatibility and maintaining multiple versions is both difficult and expensive. Building, testing and maintaining multiple backward compatible versions is an expense that most app vendors probably can't afford.
Re:Backward compatibility is expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
This. Software is expensive to maintain. For every old, supported version that a customer can rollback to, the company must maintain development and support infrastructure. This is likely a full time QA person whose job it is to ensure the rollbacks work, at least a part time developer to fix things that break the rollbacks, the team that supports the packaging and distribution of the rollback versions, and the front line support staff to answer calls when something goes wrong with the rollback. Already, that's at least 3 FTEs and likely 5 or more. Just to support rollback functionality. To put a price on it, it's at least $300k/year in direct costs, and more in opportunity and indirect costs.
For free apps, or apps that only cost a few dollars, there's absolutely no way a company can justify the cost and effort to do this.
Now, if users were willing to pay $50 for an app, then there would likely be resources available to support this. Of course, with those prices, the dev processes could be more robust and the need to rollback would be greatly diminished.
tl;dr: you get what you pay for.
-Chris
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If backwards compatibility is costly, then imagine the cost of spawning all those new buggy versions every other week!
Security updates (Score:2)
Too much server integration to go back (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with making the argument that you should be able to revert to older versions of software is that software is more and more getting at least some functionality from a server component. Sure that server has to allow migration from an older version to the next, but the truth is you just can't maintain server versions for every client forever.
This isn't even a mobile only issue anymore as lots of desktop software these days has server interaction. It's a consequence of moving to a world with more pervasive networking.
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Do I really need a server component to do word processing, or spreadsheets, or spell checking, or compute the total of an invoice? The answer is yes in a couple of specific cases: 1) the vendor wants to charge me rent instead of selling me the software; 2) the vendor wants to deliver "content relevant targeted marketing messages"; 3) the vendor wants to run all my personal data through their analytics servers.
Notice the thing all these cases have in common is: "the vendor wants" and not "the customer needs
Why I didn't upgrade to iOS 7 for a long time. (Score:2)
This is exactly why I didn't upgrade to iOS 7 when it came out. I had heard that Apple invalidated the checksum for iOS 6 so you couldn't install it from a backup in case you needed to restore your phone after upgrading. My iPhone 4 worked rock-solid with iOS 6, but I had heard iOS 7 had extremely bad performance on it.
Since iOS 7.2 was recently released and supposedly offered better performance on the iPhone 4, I decided to roll the dice and install it. No problems so far over the past week (fingers crosse
This would fix bait and switch adware games (Score:2)
It seems to be an increasingly common tactic for games developers to put out an advert-free game, wait for it to gain market share, then force an 'upgrade' that has no improvements at all, but is crammed with so many adverts that the game is barely playable. I deleted "4 words 1 picture" when it turned into "4 words, 1 picture, 1 full screen advert", but I would rather have kept the old, playable version on my phone.
OS Backup and restore... (Score:2)
- Windows you can backup / restore / reload .... ooops.....
- Andriod you can backup / restore / reload
- UNIX you can backup / restore / reload
- OSX you can backup / restore / reload
- iOS you can
It does like like there may be some rollback options for iOS users, though. See http://downgradeios7.com/ [downgradeios7.com].
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Devil's advocate here:
One reason that Apple may not allow downgrades is the fact that some people who downgrade might later on get stung by security issues... then blame, perhaps sue Apple for deliberately putting a downgrade mechanism that puts them back in harm's way in a backlevel iOS version.
Harder than it sounds (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been in charge of update deployment and strategy for several companies now. There's a few issues that come into play when deciding whether an update can be reverted or not. For a trivial app that doesn't maintain much data there's no real issue. Anything that does maintain real data, you must determine whether the database schema change between version A and version B is backwards compatible so that you can roll from B back to A. If the database schema change is incompatible, then you can't roll back. Same thing with on-disk data formats in general. I have Fedora 20 installed on one of my systems. If I wanted to roll back to the previous Centos 6 I couldn't, because the XFS file system format changed between 2.6.32 and 3.12. Centos won't mount Fedora 20 XFS filesystems.
Then there's binary compatibility issues. One release of one employer's software was based on Fedora 7 with a lot of modifications (different kernel, various applications updated, etc.). The next major release was, due to a gigantic change in hardware architecture for their newest systems, based on Fedora 13, including a major version update to Postgres for the database. The upgrade process runs out of a special imaging initrd and consists of save off the database with pg_dump to a couple of data drives, wipe out the base OS, plop on the new base OS, install the new application layer on top of the base OS, and restore the database with pg_restore. The pg_dump and pg_restore are necessary because the binary format of Postgres databases changed between the two different versions of Postgres. Downgrading in this case is impossible because the older version didn't know how to do pg_dump and pg_restore, since its previous releases had used the same antique version of Postgres (a version so old it wouldn't even compile under Fedora 13).
Finally, there's the question of whether an update scheme even has provisions for forcing arbitrary versions. The ones I've designed did, mostly because they were for very large data storage appliances where you didn't want anything updating automatically because scheduling a service outage for the update is a Big Deal for big data storage systems and where you needed the ability to roll back to the previous version if the update happened half-baked (if, say, the power supplies both blew out halfway through the update and left it only halfway on the disk). So you had to manually select which version you wished to update to, based on a list of what was compatible with your hardware and current installed version. But it appears to me that Apple has no such ability within their App Store interface. They make only the latest version available, period, even if it isn't compatible with your older iDevice.
So: Being able to roll back to the older version of the software is a lofty goal. But sometimes it just isn't feasible. On our web application once the database format has been updated to a new incompatible schema and new data is flowing in, there's no going back -- even though we saved off a copy of the old database before doing the database schema change, going back would discard all the new data that's flowed in since. So we cross our fingers, run it in parallel with a clone of the old system's data stream for a while to assure ourselves it won't blow up, and test the bleep out of it before cutting it over as the active version. Because once it's been in service for over a couple of hours there's no going back -- people may tolerate losing a few updates, but not days worth.
That said, when I had my Europa Universalis IV save games wiped out by an update to EUIV that Steam auto-updated without my consent or knowledge, I certainly was peeved! I should have at least been given the opportunity to *not* update, which even Apple gives you. That would have allowed me to spend a couple of days researching the update and waiting for people's feedback on whether it was worthy or not. Instead... sigh. So it goes.
You left out... (Score:3)
Shared dependencies:
Packages A and B both depend on shared library C. A critical bug is discovered in package A that requires a change to library C. Package B releases an update to stay compatible with library C. It turns out that the update to B doesn't work. There is no way to revert B to the previous version since this also requires reverting library C and package A to the version with the critical bug.
Testing:
Each old reversion point for any sort of shared library means that every package that is de
This killed TuneUp (Score:2)
Anyone remember TuneUp for iTunes? I got an email from the TuneUp team a couple days ago announcing the developers had reclaimed the codebase. Seems after the 3.0 release which was apparently so bad and no way to revert to 2.4, that they had a user uprising and the company literally imploded dealing with the ongoing crises. Seems in this case, having a rollback plan in place could have saved the company by giving angry users an out and averting a complete crises.
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TuneUp has been on the ropes for awhile and the 3.0 release was the last straw for a lot of people.
Backups (Score:2)
You're not? And you think that every application developer should devote time and money to making up for that?
A few years ago, (Score:2)
there were articles complaining that software was never updated on mobile devices, even though the technical facility to do so was.
Now that is is being updated, complain about that, too.
If companies kept a backwards compatibility support team, the cost of new products would be higher... and you would complain about that, too, I suppose.
Got you covered (Score:2)
Until the day comes ... we need the ability to go backwards with all software.
Portable apps [portableapps.com] offer this and related features for a large body of applications on the Windows desktop.
Disclaimer: I use apps in this format a lot. I met the founder a few years ago at OSCON -- I'm making the extra effort to plug the project here because he's a friendly, dedicated, focused guy.
Cloning as backups? (Score:2)
Isn't there a way to make image copies in these mobile phones so we can restore when needed like we do on computers?
Don't get me started (Score:2)
about the lack of backward compatibility in 3D CAD software. SolidWorks (for instance, but they all are pretty much guilty of the same strategy) will not allow you to save a file that can be opened by a previous version. They pretty much force you to buy a "subscription" to keep your software up to date, and hope your customers/stakeholders all do the same. They say it's impossible to create a converter that would allow backward compatibility.....
Be thankful (Score:2)
Be thankful developers and companies put in the time and effort to migrate your data forward.
You want to migrate it backwards? Prepare to pay up. Big time.
Your homework assignement for tonight (Score:4, Insightful)
Tuneup 3 went just as planned ... (Score:2)
Tuneup 3 did what it had to do, it killed the company and made the annoying VCs pestering them for updates go away so they could spend more time on the hookers and blow. The game was up and the game was never delivering a good product, that was only ever a hook.
Acronis solves this for me already (Score:2)
Since Windows has a ton of scope creep and behind the scenes changes that go on it seems with ever update or install, I leverage Acronis' [acronis.com] Try and Decide feature. It works although I haven't tried it at the full O/S upgrade level. For that I still use Acronis in terms of a full backup and recovery if necessary. For all other updates or new installs I really like Try & Decide. I have never tried it but there's also Returnil [returnilvi...system.com] which a lot of people seem to have good luck with as well.
some android dev's are brain-dead (Score:2)
sigh. there was an app I used quite a lot and it worked well on my old android 2.x phone (N1). it was 'open source' but the source tree was not tagged by version and the lazy-ass developer could not be bothered to list which versions of each file worked for the old series of phones. I emailed him and tried to work with him but he said he didn't really care or have time and I'm on my own.
the latest version tree will not build or run for my phone and since the phone works fine, still, I'm NOT throwing it o
That would teach you ... (Score:2)
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Not a big deal. With 64G RAM it'll be easy to start up a VMware image of Win7Pro-x64 and give it 2 or 4 cores and 16-32G.
Multiboot is so last decade/century.
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I suspect this has more to do with the way new hardware devices are certified by Microsoft than some conspiracy at Apple. I am glad you said something I would have never checked the FAQ until I had a new Mac Pro and was trying to install Windows 7 on the one user's machine who insists on buying an Apple product and running Windows on it.
Luckily everyone else in this office uses OS X on Apple hardware because we are mostly a Linux/OS X unix shop. I think all companies have at least one troublesome user.
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I don't desire a rollback and I believe the OP is wanting Windows 7 support to be added to the current version of Bootcamp.
I continue to get new windows machines with Microsoft Windows 7 installed on them and pay for the privilege of the "downgrade".
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On topic: I had to abandon SpashID Safe when an automatic update hosed the software, losing data and making the UI less-pleasant. I'm now happy with mSecure, and have automatic updates turned of
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Fortunately Windows reboots often so it will keep itself in pristine shape.
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My reaction would be how shit the video driver was.
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I'm a little mystified as to why some moderator decided that my post was off-topic. I consider "rollback" to include "let me install an older version if I have the discs for it."
Re:New Mac Pro sans Windows 7 (Score:4, Insightful)
It's because windows 7 cant cope with the modern hardware.
Which is why I run Windows 7 under a VM on Mavericks (well actually multiple VM's with different versions of W7)
it's (Score:2)
don't forget it's = it has, and a few others as well. As in it's come to may attention that...
Re: (Score:2)
Correct.
For the amount of times I have to type this to show people, I generally just address the direct issue.
Thank you though.
Re: (Score:3)
Greater acceptance in the business community? There are still plenty of corporate IT staffers who refuse to acknowledge anything made by Apple if for no other reason than the support requirements of a Microsoft environment is job security for them.
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But you CAN'T try out the software first. You can't try it out and see if it works for you or not.
There is no back switch. There is no test drive. The user has little choice.
Re:not even close (Score:4)
But you CAN'T try out the software first.
It's for exactly those cases that the GP is suggesting letting other people try it out first.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately when you are dealing will phone apps you have to deal with two things;
Firstly a continual stream of minor updates. Are you going to test every single one? Personally I have a life, and am not intent on being a beta tester for most of it.
Secondly, automated updates. Again, I don't want to spend half of my free time performing manual updates. So often allowing automatic updates is the only solution.
But yes, there is nothing more annoying to discover that the latest version is broken in some
Re: (Score:2)
It would be nice if there was an option for automatic deferred updates - don't apply an update unless X weeks have passed with fewer than Y% of users complaining.
Rollbacks on the other hand can introduce all sorts of issues with anything that stores non-trivial settings or changes internal file formats. It's easy enough for version N+1 to support and upgrade all previous versions, but do a rollback and there's no way for version N to support the changes made by N+1.
RollbaIs there anywhere that /does/ do rollback? (Score:2)
Where have we seen in consumer space the ability to rollback an uncompleted install? Once it's installed, the only way back is to find a previous installer, nuke, and reinstall.
This has been standard IT procedure since Microsoft invented "service packs."
Indeed, and since way before too.
It used to be that you never went for the x.0. Nowadays, we have to be wary of getting any x.y.0
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I remember the old joke this way:
"Thank you for installing Windows by Microsoft, where quality is job 1.1"
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This is a GREAT idea for my grandmother!
Oh, wait.
Even if this was something she was inclined and able to do, Apple locks it down for market share and security.
OSS is great! But it can be modified by anyone capable for good means or bad.
Re:Downgrading is a horrible idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, occasionally it would be nice to go back.
Or more than occasionally, if I've forgotten to turn of the abomination that is automatic updates.
The upgrade might be required to work with changes to the back-end server for example.
Which is yet another point in the lengthy list of reasons to avoid anything that depends on the cloud or proprietary third party servers to function.
Ultimately, the best solution is for the users to quit being such whiney bitches.
Ultimately, the best solution is for developers who can't bring themselves to actually take customer needs and desires seriously (or at least to stop insulting them) to get out of the business that they obviously loathe.
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what's with the string of people saying "No you can't because of something server side" if something server side prevented you from rolling back due to incompatibility it would prevent people who haven't upgraded from working in the same way.
The best solution, in your opinion is to STFU and do what apple and google says is best for us then?
I have never heard an opinion on this site i respected less.
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if I put my phone to sleep on Friday when I leave the office, it's dead when I come in on Monday.
Uh...
It's not just my phone, but all other members on my team too.
That's it. I'm calling the police.
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Next on Nancy Grace: "iPhone Torture Cabal Nabbed in Software Company. They left phones unplugged for days while they starved to death. Public stoning at noon. Bring your own throwing rocks."