Better firmware update notes for users

We get a major update (12.0) notification and then I go in to check out what is new.
First of all, it would be nice if those notes were easier to find… like directly in the app for instance.
But also the content of the notes themselves:
There is a single short sentence with a link and all I know is that ‘something’ was updated, but I don’t know what it means. The link doesn’t tell me anything that I can understand so much.

It would be nice if there would be just a short message for us regular users, describing what it means. Like just an example of what is affected or how it has improved, just so that we can actually be excited about it.

It was the same with 11.0.
“Added support for moods” does not tell us what it actually does or even what ‘moods’ actually are. I did eventually find out what it was, but only after searching for an extended time.

I get excited every time there is a major update, because I love the product and how it has evolved, but it is immensely frustrating to have to spend a long time figuring out what those new features actually are.

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It’s “nerd” language unfortunately, and with that I just mean to say: they forget there’s also a big number of non-tech owners out there.

About moods: this was introduced in a mailing and marketing ads

You have to understand that Athom’s versioning has nothing to do with “major”, “minor” or “patch” levels of updates, it’s basically a random process which of the 3 numbers they increase :man_shrugging:t3:

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Before v10 I would agree but:
V10 was cloud / containers internal rewrite. So also for Homey Pro (Early 2023)
V11 was for Moods
V12 is for new device classes…

For most normal consumers they dont have to write anything. Guess just the tech savvy want to know. Also, They often just release the version with a couple of days later the enabling of the features and press releases or email information.
V11 on it’s own fe can’t do Moods, only with updating the Mobile App.

V12 is more a developer update enabling future development and apps using this new device classes won’t install on lower version Homeys. And yes there are also latest fixes for HP 2023 in it.

Anyway, you can choose not to upgrade ,but you cant choose to stay on fe v11 and keep getting updates. The only update is to the latest stable or the latest experimental.

There’s always the changelog : Homey Pro (Early 2023) Changelog | Homey

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Well… it is the changelog that I am referring, though I have the ‘old’ Homey Pro. My point is that the changelog doesn’t really tell us much.
Bear in mind that I am not asking for them to write out something for the minor updates (like 11.0.1 or the like).
All I want is to get a better picture of what has been changed in the major updates.
And it doesn’t have to be that much. Just a paragraph or something, to explain what has been updated… they don’t have to go into detail or anything.

It wouldn’t hurt them to write just a short summary as to what it means for the regular user. We get informed over the app that there has been an update, but we are not informed as to what that update is.

Bear in mind that I am not demanding that every major update has to mean something for everyone, nor am I demanding that they write a full page write-up for each of the updates.
I just want a bit more information… even just a paragraph would be enough.

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The thing is that HP2019 is a mature product, we can’t expect any major updates to be “excited about”, it’s now in a phase were we can mostly look forward to security patches and the odd bug fix, hence the rather sparse information in the change log. Revision numbering is however kept in step with HP2023 where there are actual feature growth between each release.
Even if I sometimes would have appreciated a bit more information in the change log I think it’s quite OK, too many manufacturers of consumer goods don’t publish any change log at all.

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