Comments on: Why Don’t People Update Software?

By: Bad Things, Man | Oracle

Bad Things, Man | Oracle — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:03:18 +0000

[...] people don’t follow the advice, and cybercrime hasn’t abated, it’s gotten [...]

By: Jake

Jake — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 20:53:14 +0000

Weird, my iPhone O/S upgrades stopped rearranging my icons a long time ago. I just did the 3.0.1 upgrade on Friday, and it did take about 20 minutes. Funny that it actually freed a dozen or so MB of space.

Your reasons are solid, but I still think auto-applying is the way to go for security vulnerabilities, at least for n00bs. It's funny that two of your three reasons actually are what people are told to see as the hallmarks of viruses.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:40:59 +0000

3 reasons: updates can produce unpredictable results, deficient is not the same thing as broken, it's inconvenient.

To update the iPhone for the MMS issue requires #1 that I trust Apple has fixed that and not meddled with other things #2 wait a half hour while it performs the update #3 play the Rubic's cube game of rearranging my icons to the way they were before the update.

My 2 cents.

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:23:49 +0000

Pre lost me entirely with their spooky ads.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:59:45 +0000

Yes, in fact, that's the way I set it up for friends. As for Apple and the Pre… not surprised at all. On the other hand, since other Apps like Media player seem to have no trouble reading the iTunes set up, it should make it easy to synch with a Windows-based machine and I would think it would be easy to create a Mac-based synch. But what do I know?

By: Jake

Jake — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:17:03 +0000

I can see that auto-updates would be baffling if your connection suddenly went slow for no apparent reason.

Maybe the default should be auto-update, Chrome-style, for less-experienced users, and triggered for power users? That might work.

You weren't surprised that Apple dissed the Pre, were you? That's not going to end well.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 07:06:34 +0000

I configured my mother-in-law's machine to auto-update IE & FF. She is “trained” (as is my mother) to never click on anything (that pops up) that she does not understand. And neither my mother nor my mother-in-law understand anything about computers. They both follow a hand-written script for starting the browser or word processor. So, for them the auto-updates make sense.

For me, I installed Chrome and it suddenly slowed my machine to a crawl while trying to do an update (I was in a place with a very intermittent connection and was only lucky that I happened not to be paying for the connection since I was traveling in India) and I then realized it was not asking me for permission. So, I uninstalled it (I also did not see where they clearly guarantee not to take information off my machine, but maybe they did bury that guarantee somewhere).

Also, if you are a new Palm Pre user, I heard they were able to synch with iTunes and so Apple did an “update” to disable that. Nice.

By: Jake

Jake — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:50:45 +0000

So, as I mentioned, I get why businesses can't always take updates, but person users should. Chrome installs and applies w/o a reboot, so that approach would have saved your uploads. O/S updates fall closer to the business use case, but there's still room for improvement there.

Maybe a message if your network connection is active?

I did notice the Chrome logo's likeness to Simon, but I don't know if I included it in my post. I prefer the ominous resemblance to HAL for obvious reasons

By: joel garry

joel garry — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:41:40 +0000

Here's An interesting reversal of the usual credit card problem

Maybe updating is too much like Simon. Doesn't that look like the google chrome avatar?

Just recently I was uploading a mass of pictures, and while I was out of the room, an auto update rebooted the machine right in the middle. Grrrrrr.... so much for mental notes.

By: Jake

Jake — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:41:08 +0000

I remember hearing that about Vista, never used it. That can't help the overall problem, having major problems with the important updates.

By: pgkiran

pgkiran — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 23:15:34 +0000

Just to be clear, I am with you on updates, I always update when its my mac. For many updates are a no-no for windows because of the 'Vista Effect', upgrades are not always better.

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 22:05:34 +0000

Ha, don't get me started on backups.

By: uvox

uvox — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:53:19 +0000

I guess these guys fall into the category of people who never do backups.

It's like cleaning your teeth. People learn when they lose something…:)

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:24:51 +0000

You're getting at a utility thing there. I don't find TweetDeck to be critical, since I can go to Tweetie or web, if I need to watch Twitter.

O/S updates are different. /me shakes finger.

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:22:57 +0000

Mac runs in the background on a schedule too, but you then get the bouncing icon if there's something new. I do like that in Jaunty the Update Manager is completely hidden, no more icon in the top panel. Although it's more of a chore now, remembering to look for it. I've been finding it open in the background in one of my workspaces, waiting.

There's probably an idea there, the uber-updater that scans all your installed software for updates and classifies them as critical, requiring reboot of the O/S, or of the application. Would be nearly impossible to pull off though.

By: Jake

Jake — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:19:32 +0000

I'm happily running Chrome and Chromium on both my Mac and Ubuntu machines. They're pretty fully baked now, minus Flash support. I'd say Chromium is a bit closer, but either way, you can't go wrong.

Ah yes, I remember anti-virus

By: uvox

uvox — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:11:00 +0000

I am out of the office until Monday 27-July-2009. I will respond when I return.

Ultan

By: jpiwowar

jpiwowar — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:00:01 +0000

When, oh when, will Chrome for Mac be ready for mere mortals like me? *sigh*

I avoid asking parents and non-tech relatives too much about updates, lest I be asked to help.

Actually, I know my parents update their antivirus software, because it prompts them. I'm pretty sure, however, that they let Windows Update slide, for fear of upsetting the house of cards.

By: megbear

megbear — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:00:18 +0000

Couple reasons why I ignore updates — biggest one is the reboot. Esp. on the mac that is playing my music in the house, I don't want to stop that to run the update (and yes I ignore the bouncing icon for a very long time too, maybe it's a girl thing and it's related to noticing the trash can is full?). In the case of applications like TweetDeck there is also a trust issue as a few of their updates have hosed me up.

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 05:48:50 +0000

What I hate is having programs trying to run something at OS startup to check for updates when all I want to do is check email and not even run that program. But I also hate having programs trying to check for updates when I want that program to start up too. And I hate the thought of leaving my PC on full power overnight to get updates when I'm asleep.
So I guess I want a single process that magically fires up when I go for a coffee. Ubuntu seems fine. The Update Manager kicks in a couple of minutes after boot up and does everything in the background.