I need to declare "app bankruptcy". Every couple of weeks iTunes will tell me how many updates I have waiting on the app store: generally nine or ten. The volume doesn't bother me as much as the relevance, since usually only one of the apps is one I use regularly.

The iOS app update system is broken because it's not user-centric.

Low relevance makes updating a chore. You have to wait to download hundreds of megabytes of apps just to get the one in the middle you like. And if you're tempted to solely update the one you care about, the rest of them just stay in the update list. Eventually you'll have 100 apps that need updating and you'll need to scan through pages to find that one that's new. And when there is an update, what's in it? Is it important?

There are interface elements that could make that easier: hiding apps, sorting by how new the updates are, etc. But that's just masking the problem. The problem is that the whole update experience isn't designed for the user, it's designed from the point of view of the distributor.

Apps I Don't Use

First of all, there are the apps in iTunes that I don't have on any device. I either keep them because deleting is a pain, or because I paid for them already and I have a tendency to packrat away digital things that cost money, even 99 cents. Plus Apple taught me with music that I shouldn't count on re-downloading stuff from the iTunes store.

There should be no updates for apps I don't have on an iOS device. In fact, I'd rather not have copies of these app, even on my Mac OS system. Once it's been removed from the last registered device, I don't know why I need a copy of it in iTunes. I don't want to lose the investment — it should be re-downloadable from the store, and should show up in a list of apps I "own." But it's not something I need to maintain a version of, let alone update the version.

Apps I Do Use

But that doesn't help the big list of apps that remain. For updates of installed apps, I think we need a much more sophisticated update system than the current one in iTunes. It needs to be sophisticated enough to aid the user in management of the installed software. Isn't that the right goal?

So what things are involved in helping a user manage their installed software? There are two sorts of things in updates: bug/security fixes and feature updates. I want bugfixes but don't care to approve them before they go in. Just put them in. This applies to every app. To keep the systems secure and working well I don't think these updates should be voluntary. Download them when they're available and put them in.

A developer that abuses this by marking an unpopular feature update as a bugfix should have their app removed form the app store. It's a violation of the user's trust, just as would be true if the app searched around the phone looking for passwords and sent them to a foreign server.

For feature updates there can be some user direction. Many iOS apps have put in user-hostile feature updates by incorporating ads or annoying popups to steer users to a new app. Many times it's just unpopular redesigns. Not only do I want to see a list of these to choose from, but I want to be able to rollback to an earlier version if there's an issue. And I want to know that bugfixes are supported for the version I am allowed to rollback to, at least for a predictable time.

Right now the system is a big list of apps with any sort of change the developer pushed. It's set up from a developer or distributor's perspective, not from a user's perspective. Users don't get helpful information or control from the interface. This is contrary to a lot of Apple's policy choices, which aim to improve the user experience at the expense of developer time.

It will take a lot of effort, and for sure some groaning from the developer community, but the end result would be a safer, better app environment.