When updating a mobile app, say, from Google Play, how can it apply the same update to two people who both may have different versions prior to updating?

Question

When updating a mobile app, say, from Google Play, how can it apply the same update to two people who both may have different versions prior to updating?

In: Technology

Answer 1

There’s two different ways of updating stuff. Think of it like fixing errors in a book. One way is to provide errata, a sort of list of things like “replace the second sentence in the fourth paragraph of the third page with this new sentence”. The other is just to send out a new copy of the book with the errors fixed. The first way usually takes less space (which means less data when updating an app), but the second version works regardless of what previous version you had, so most places provide updates that way.