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   Turn Off Automatic iOS App Updates

   Adam C. Engst

   Let me cut to the chase. With iOS 8 coming out on Wednesday, 16
   September 2014, vast numbers of developers will be releasing updates to
   their apps. If you have automatic app updates enabled for your iPad,
   iPhone, or iPod touch, I recommend you turn that feature off until
   things settle down in a few weeks. To do so, navigate to Settings >
   iTunes & App Store and make sure the Updates switch is off. To get
   specific app updates when you're ready, go to App Store > Updates, and
   tap the Update button for each app you want to download after checking
   the release notes. This is more work, but it lets you update your
   essential apps at a time when potential problems won't be crippling and
   when you won't use up valuable cellular data unnecessarily.

   [1][tn_iOS-automatic-updates.jpg]

   Let me give you a bit of background. Developers have been working madly
   to update their apps to take advantage of both iOS 8's new features and
   the extra attention users will be paying to iOS news. But a rush to a
   finish dictated more by the long-scheduled iPhone 6 release than
   anything else isn't always a good thing, as comments from well-known
   developers like [2]David Barnard and [3]James Thomson indicate. (And
   no, I don't expect any issues with their apps, just that it's more
   likely that bugs will sneak in while numerous developers are trying to
   hit the same arbitrary deadline.)

   [4]Image

   Plus, there will be an awkward time between when iCloud Drive becomes
   available in iOS 8 (right away) and when OS X 10.10 Yosemite ships.
   During that time, updated apps that rely on iCloud Drive for syncing
   may not also be able to sync using the iOS 7 approach that works with
   10.9 Mavericks. [5]David Chartier warned about this on Twitter, and
   although it remains to be seen how many apps are affected, it's best to
   play it safe.

   [6]Image

   The overarching problem here is that a major operating system update is
   a moving target, with Apple changing how features work while developers
   attempt to code for them. You can get a sense of how frustrating this
   can be in [7]Bryan Irace's blog post outlining all the problems his
   team had building a share extension for the Tumblr app.

   Developer [8]Craig Hockenberry put it best, noting that the only way to
   guarantee an app works is to put it into a production environment,
   something that's not possible until Apple has both released iOS 8.0 and
   flipped the increasingly large number of switches behind the scenes to
   ensure that all the iCloud-based services are enabled.

   [9]Image

   To an extent, Hockenberry's dictum has always been true, since no
   amount of testing can anticipate every real world usage scenario. But
   with iOS, making an app requires a constant dance between developers
   and Apple, making that production environment increasingly hard to
   simulate in advance.

References

   1. http://tidbits.com/resources/2014-09/iOS-automatic-updates.png
   2. https://twitter.com/drbarnard/status/511922857920565249
   3. https://twitter.com/jamesthomson/status/511573167350247425
   4. http://tidbits.com/resources/2014-09/developer-comments.png
   5. https://twitter.com/chartier/status/511885363942809601
   6. http://tidbits.com/resources/2014-09/chartier-comment.png
   7. http://bryan.io/post/97658826431/everything-that-went-wrong-while-building-the-tumblr
   8. https://twitter.com/chockenberry/status/511916804155785216
   9. http://tidbits.com/resources/2014-09/chock-comment.png

.