Barry Collins is riled by apps that automatically ‘update’ themselves into obsolescence
There are three weasel words in the tech world that are abused more than any others: “for your convenience”. It’s “for your convenience” that anti-virus vendors automatically scrape £40 from your bank account every year, ensuring you don’t go to the bother of investigating how much cheaper their superior rivals are (which is £40 cheaper, by the way). It’s “for your convenience” that Microsoft automatically updates Windows, always timing those “installing 1 of 3,465 updates” messages for when you’re already 10 minutes late leaving the house. And it’s “for your convenience” that the mobile app stores automatically upgrade your apps in the background, ensuring you always have the latest, most secure version.
Yet, sometimes those app updates are about as convenient as a bout of raging diarrhoea on a long-haul flight. Far from adding new features or the latest security updates, they’re used as a ransom note, forcing you to hand over money to release tools that you previously enjoyed for free.
Such was the case recently with one of my favourite Android apps, Agent. This brilliant, free tool automatically switches your phone into different modes depending on what you’re doing. So, for example, if the app detects you’re driving (by monitoring your movements via GPS), it automatically silences the phone and replies to calls and texts with a templated text message explaining that you’re behind the wheel and will get back to the caller soon. If it spots an appointment in your calendar, it again silences the phone so your meeting isn’t interrupted by constant bleeps and trings.
This wasn’t a free trial or “lite” version of an app. I’d been using it for two years, and it was absolutely free. That was until the app was updated in November. Now, I was informed, “to support ongoing development costs” the app was changing to a paid-for model. There were no new features whatsoever to tempt me to pay – instead, all the tools I’d previously enjoyed were now on a 30-day trial. Sure enough, the app effectively stopped working at the beginning of December, even though Agent’s Google Play Store blurb insists the app is “free for users that already had the app in September 2015”. Well yes, technically it is free – it’s just that none of the features work until you cough up.
A similar thing is underway with another of my favourite Android freebies, Pushbullet, which has been rightly feted in this magazine many times. In November, the company introduced Pushbullet Pro, a $40-per-year service that includes many of the features you previously got for free, such as the ability to send unlimited text messages and a universal copy-and-paste tool that lets you, say, copy a chunk of text on your phone and paste it to your PC. From free to $40 per year? That’s quite an update.
I understand that developers need to put food on the table. And, in the case of Pushbullet in particular, I recognise that there are ongoing costs to providing some of their features. But charging people for stuff that was previously free is a terrible business model, especially if it’s sneaked in via a background app update that you never consented to. Give people an incentive to upgrade, don’t pull the rug from under them. If you abuse automatic updates, expect to be uninstalled. Permanently.