bigkid posted:Daniel J. Gonzalez posted:bigkid posted:Daniel J. Gonzalez posted:H1000,
You are right, those providers came up with that method of doing business, I cant blame MTH for that.
I can blame them though for not giving the customer options. I can also blame them for knowing the Google/Apple way and not only jumping on board with it but also, not coming up with a better solution.
It's also not to late for them to fix it, but I'm sure they would rather just keep collecting $25.
I also forgot to mention that the app also has a cost to run. Ever time Google/Apple decide to come up with a new OS, guess who has to pay for an engineer to fix the app so that it can run on/conform to the new OS. So updates not only are required when MTH comes out with a new feature (the remote also would need an update in this case) but also when the OS provider decides they too want to add me features. (The remote does not).
That isn't entirely true with OS. There are times when OS are updated that an older app can run into compatibility problems, but in general unless the application is really, really old, they will run fine on new versions of the OS,they engineer some level of backwards compatibility into the OS (they aren't IBM, that used to love to upgrade OS on their mainframes then force users who wanted to upgrade to buy all new software). If the MTH app were to use some new feature in IOS or Android, they would release a new version of it to take advantage of it, but in most cases a new OS level allows an application written to an older standard to work just fine. Not to mention that if a user is using a 'locked down' 25 buck tablet, they aren't likely to update the OS. If MTH stops supporting that version of Android or IOS, then the user may need to get a new tablet if they can't upgrade the one they have to one that is supported, but usually vendors support several levels of OS with their apps.
I'm sorry but you and I must have different phones, next time your phone updates immediately go into the app store and see how many apps are either pending update or within the next week will also roll out an update. compatibility is only one part of updates security patches are usually a very large part of why apps get updated. I see it all the time because my phone is part of Android beta program and every time my operating system updates shortly after all of my apps will one by one also update.
But we aren't talking about a phone or tablet that will be connected to the internet, we are talking a phone that will be isolated and likely will not update anything, it can't unless attached to the internet. Yes, app updates often are about security, as are OS updates, but the other thing to keep in mind is when an app updates after a new OS is rolled out,it is that they want to take advantage of new features in that OS, that is more likely the reason for an update. Long before, for example, IOS rolled out IOS 10 or 11, developers for various apps were working with it, both to look for compatibility issues, but also to take advantage of new features in the OS they can use. We have mobile apps associated with the systems I am responsible for (I do software testing for a living) and once the OS is available to developers our teams start evaluating them to see if there is anything in it that would be a neat thing for the apps, what happens with your phone is that the OS updates, then the app vendors release their apps that can take advantage of it (into beta or full mode), and users get notified unless the app is set up to auto update. In our hypothetical cheap laptop scenario, they can go on running their current OS and the MTH app, and only would have to do something if MTH released a new version that they wanted some new feature on it, at which time they either could update the app, or if the current OS was not compatible with the new MTH version, look into updating the OS or maybe at that point get a new cheap tablet that can run it that has an OS the new version supports.
Dude are you serious? Even if you decide to build a bomb proof shelter to run your trains and never see the outside world again MTH will have to pay a person to update their app on the App Store not on your physical device but for everyone else to use. I said that because they are saying that this change is for cost-effectiveness and since the app continuously needs to be updated even if you don't want it to be it still needs to be done that incurs a charge meaning it is not more cost-effective in some of our eyes.
