John I think the solution is to nag users at regular intervals (like on startup) that a new version is available. I do it (and get good roll forward rates).
TreKing probably does it better than I since he provides an RSS feed of what's new. That's the kind of thing that should be baked into most apps IMHO. Simple stuff that reduces the cost of development by taking away some of the maintenance pain. William On Aug 15, 12:32 am, John Coryat <[email protected]> wrote: > About a month ago I published a major upgrade of my app "Radar Now!" that > included load balancing to prevent the one server it had been using from > being swamped. The app used to suffer when a storm would go over > a metropolitan area like Chicago or Dallas and a quarter of a million people > would all press the button at the same time. > > Curiously, only about 500,000 people (about half) ever upgraded the app, the > rest continued to use the old version. My thought was this is just another > quirk of the market and they must have never received the update > notification. > > Yesterday, a particularly nasty storm went through the Chicago area and the > old server got hit hard. I saw usage rates (/proc/loadavg file) soar into > the 20's. That caused the server to lock up. > > About 20 minutes into the episode, I forced a message to pop up that told > users they had to update the app in order for them to continue using it. I > thought the language was clear and precise, it went like this: > > "The version of this app you are currently running is too old. Please > upgrade from the Android market before using this app again. Upgrading > allows the app to use load balancing, this version does not." > > Immediately, I got a flood of e-mails telling me I had to update the app. > > The only conclusion I can draw from this: There is a percentage of users who > don't know what updating an app means or even that there's this little bar > at the top of their phone that shows notifications. > > I'm constantly surprised by the ignorance and stupidity of the average human > being. How can they get dressed, find their car and drive to work without > killing themselves? These people also breed. That's the scariest thing about > this. > > -John Coryat -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en.
