Software Update != Simple

<rant>

Software changes and updates are inevitable , no matter how perfect you make your software there will always be changes that need to be made to it. Whether its a request from a client or a bug fix or even a security fix, your software is always going to need a update.

So it would seem pretty obvious that one of the earliest features that you build into any application is a distributed update system. While web applications don’t suffer from this problem since the apps are served from a central location, fat client applications suffer quite a bit.

Recently i have been really pulled into the Evernote application but unfortunately because of the app still being in beta there are constant changes. These changes have been to me at least pretty important as the features they enabled or added were entirely worth the while it takes to download them.

Unfortunately Evernote and quite a few other applications that i use constantly have taken a different stand on keeping there applications updated. They begin by putting a check into the client to constantly check for updates and to notify the user when they are available. This is great as doing the checks manually would be a down right killer to the application. The next step is to download the update and apply it to the application. It is at this point that i am getting frustrated with these applications. The downloads do not just simply update the application ,they perform a uninstall and re-install of the applications or at least components of it. So when the update starts it seems as if all is going well and the operation is almost done but no , this is only the uninstall part of the update. After this comes the actual install and the mandatory close all applications while they update the system.

I understand that Evernote adds widgets to Outlook to help with the clipping of data from when i need to do a update of the application i typically don’t want to shutdown my Outlook as i may very well be busy with work.The installer now has to wait until i have completed my work to complete , all the time using valuable system resources.

Surely with all the effort that they have put into making such a great application , creating a seamless non user interactive update. Its not as if this is a new technology from the future , it has been done many times before with awesome results.

Microsoft’s one click install for .Net applications installs the app for you and makes sure that it is always up to date. While it does block the user from running the app until it is updated , i think this is acceptable as in case’s with big fixes and security updates. These should not be left up to the user to install but should be manged by the system.

I hope some one from the Evernote team reads this and implements a new update system into Evernote as the current process is a test of my will power.Also updates should be used for major releases hot fixes and patches should be used for the kind of updates that they are using. I would really hate to stop using such a awesome application for such a stupid problem.

</rant>