Software is, in a sense, a living entity. Applications do not die after they are released, but rather they do not stop evolving. They do this through updates, which are an ideal mechanism for fixing potential bugs, adding new functions and features, or removing them.

Just these days, a developer named Dylan McDonald posted a message stating that he was providing information.

Instead, they focus on general messages like the one in the image. The example shows updates to Google’s mobile apps, but the same is true for many other apps. These often include messages like “bug fixes and performance improvements,” but don’t go into much more detail.

McDonald complained that this was really annoying for him and tried to encourage his fellow developers to take the time to show off the details about the update.

Other users responded by saying that if a developer provided details of the update, it could result in their app being rejected from the App Store if there was something Apple’s censors disagreed with. McDonald responded by stating that he’s been doing this for 10 years and has never had any issues with Apple’s mobile app store.

Knowledge is power

I don’t know if any of you read the ins and outs of software updates for your devices. At least, I don’t usually do that: I have so many apps installed on my mobile phones and computers that I “trust” the developer and trust that they actually fix bugs and improve performance with each new release.

However, there are times when I review these details to find out if a new feature is coming to my phone, for example. It’s not something I do very often, but I do it occasionally.

It is true, as McDonald said, that there are many developers who do not show this information, at least in the App Store, but there is also the other extreme: Logically and fortunately, there are platforms and developments that offer all the information and various details about each update.

This is the case of Microsoft, which shows all the details of each new update made to the operating system on its support website. In the latest “minor” Windows 11 update, we have a good example that shows that the Redmond company takes the documentation of these changes very seriously.

The documentation for each update is a great source of information for users but above all for Microsoft itself, so that Microsoft can keep a detailed record of the changes.

As Sir Francis Bacon (allegedly) wrote in his ‘Meditations Sacrae’ of 1597, knowledge is power here (“ipsa scientia potestas est”): it may not mean much to most people, but all that detail can end up being very useful, especially to those responsible for these updates.

The problem is that the details surrounding updates are often not very entertaining. The text in these “release notes” is descriptive but usually formal and, let’s face it, boring.

But be careful, because there are (more and more) exceptions.

Slack gives updates a different tone

As we said, the style is informative but can be a bit boring, although there are many good development examples that provide detailed information about the changes between one version and the next.

The text describing the release notes on Slack is… different.

Slack has had a very different tone for a long time. In fact, Slack release notes have become a topic of discussion on Reddit because there are those who hate them and those who love them. And rightfully so, because they don’t look like release notes. Or rather, they don’t look like them.

We have some good examples in the Android app release notes. The information shown in the latest update dated September 18, 2024 is as follows:

“All the bugs fixed in this version were small details that were barely visible and impossible to describe without making us look like real enthusiasts. Regardless, we got our hands dirty, worked hard, and now the app works a little better.”

You would have to say that the person responsible for the text at least made it funny that the changes were so boring that it was almost better not to detail them at all. But this is a problem, because while the text is funny, it does nothing to help us understand what has changed.

Sometimes yes, they present the details in a relaxed and fun way. The same thing happened in the version before 9/11, which resulted in a change in the behavior of one of the buttons, for example:

“There are some things that are worth admiring. Great works of art, animals in their natural habitat, a person trying to parallel park… But overly long URLs are not one of them. So we apologize for not including Continue or Cancel buttons in the “Check this link” pop-up.

It’s clear that release notes for Slack are more of a marketing tool than a tool for documenting changes between versions in technical and detailed terms. It’s clear that they do this detailed checking, but they probably do it internally.

The Wonderful World of Release Notes

While we’ve cited Microsoft or Slack as rather contrasting examples of how update information is provided, the truth is that managing release notes is a world unto itself.

We actually have a hybrid of the two above on Discord, where the company tries to give its press releases a more playful tone, like the latest update on August 28th. The tone of the text is relaxed but also very informative, so it combines the part of providing details about the changes with the part of making that information “digestible.”

But as we said, there are many styles and examples where these types of details are the distinguishing feature of the platforms. They have explained it exactly with the striking release note announcements at LaunchNotes, which provides communication and organization services to companies and where they give various examples of applications and platforms on their blog.

For example, in Airtable they take advantage of their own tools and organize the update information in one of their “airtables.” In their email client HEY they use a visual timeline and short, visual descriptions, and in Notion they like the guys at Airtable and use their own app to display that information.

Meanwhile, on GitHub, they leverage a very visual and powerful format, a sort of “Tumblr” adapted to the function of displaying the details of release notes in a concise manner.

1Password is another example of concise, informative language, and Stripe’s informational layout for these updates is also clear and concise. Postmark, an email platform, particularly stands out for its short blog format and categorization.

There are many more examples, but as we have seen, at least there are developments that do not want to show details about the changes made to the App Store, but many people want it. And they do not just do it: they do it in an exemplary way.

What Sir Francis said: Knowledge is power.

Image | Mika Baumeister

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