This article should not exist in an ideal world. But I still need to talk about it for a moment.
It has taken us years to convince everyone that software updates should be installed immediately. This took some time because not everyone works with computers all day, every day, and knows everything about them. That is logical and perfectly fine. But has a movement emerged that is damaging the reputation of updates?
The world before updates
The idea behind updates is that they make software better. A long time ago, there were no updates. If you bought a CD-ROM containing a computer game from a toy store in 1993, then the game was exactly as it existed on that CD-ROM. Back then, as a programmer, you had to think carefully before declaring your software finished. It was not only about testing everything thoroughly and making sure it worked correctly. It was also about giving a factory the order to produce 50,000 CD-ROMs afterwards. There was very little room for mistakes without turning them into a financial disaster.
If we fast-forward to shortly after the introduction of the internet, we see a new way of thinking emerge. Bugs are annoying, but no longer a disaster. After all, an update can suddenly be downloaded through the internet. And it did not take long before people realised: we no longer need to produce 50,000 CD-ROMs. We can distribute the software itself through the internet as well.
How complacency crept in
This had both advantages and disadvantages when you think about it. The ability to fix software later was, and still is, extremely valuable. But unfortunately, it is a double-edged sword. It also meant that commercial interests seized the opportunity to cut corners. Put simply, instead of a lengthy, thorough and therefore expensive testing process, software could simply be thrown out into the world. The motto became: "if something is wrong with it, we will fix it later". At first, this provided an advantage over competitors. After all, it saved both time and money.
Even today, you can still see this phenomenon throughout the video game industry. A large number of game developers consist of small teams with limited resources. No large testing departments, and therefore either no QA team or only a small one (quality assurance). Betas are common. Versions of a game that can be tested by users, accompanied by the disclaimer that problems may still exist. And if people report those problems, they get fixed. That is a smart way of working. It saves both time and money compared to extensive testing beforehand. At the same time, technology has become far more complicated over the past few decades. So no matter how well you test, there is no guarantee that everything will work correctly on every device. That is why a beta with players acting as testers is so valuable.
Reliability matters
With software other than video games, such as office software, a beta is often much less popular. In an office environment, people need to earn a living. There is little appetite for experimental software. Work needs to be reliable. Office software supports the core business, and therefore it simply has to be robust and dependable.
Yet something strange is happening. One widely used system is Windows, from Microsoft. And Windows in particular seems to have shifted its focus over the past few years, away from full attention on Windows itself and towards subscription services such as online Office packages and Azure datacentres. Attention for Windows as an operating system appears to have weakened for quite some time. This can be seen in the limited progress being made, the introduction of two separate GUIs since Windows 10 that were never properly finished, and much more besides.
Since Windows 11, there has even been discussion about advertisements in the Start menu, along with the integration of Recall and Copilot. Features nobody asked for, but from which Microsoft can most likely derive an economic benefit, either directly or indirectly.
This was just one example that most people will probably recognise, because almost everyone encounters it somewhere. But this trend is broader and seems to be affecting many companies today.
User trust
And that runs counter to the carefully built trust that encourages users to install updates without hesitation. Updates that are essential for keeping software secure. The world changes a little every day. Security is therefore a constant cat-and-mouse game that requires continuous updates. And we all understood that. For that reason, we installed updates immediately.
But if commercial parties start using this process as an opportunity to strengthen their revenue model, or worse, if politicians force a commercial company to distribute an update that serves their own interests, then we lose that trust. Software and IT are science, not politics. But software is not a casino slot machine either, updates are not intended for extreme profit maximisation. And certainly not on the basis of dubious, hidden, controversial or even unlawful telemetry.
Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback.