I don't buy that anymore. In theory, it makes sense, but, the idea that it is ok to force users to update has been used to justify so much crap. Just off the t

I don't buy that anymore. In theory, it makes sense, but, the idea that it is ok to force users to update has been used to justify so much crap. Just off the top of my head, I've seen so many "home users" get burned. My grandmother's copy of Skype on her PPC OSX Leopard stopped working, so I had to nullroute ui.skype.com, and revert the update with Time Machine, and it started working again. When they said it was a "critical" update, they were lying. It worked just fine when I reverted it and disabled the updater. The update was purely there to deny service, and remove all functionality. Or my grandfather's Kindle updated itself to disable encryption. Don't even get me started on the "helpful" updates for the Kindle. My grandparents recognized it for the scam it is. And I'm pretty sure that "transparently" installing updates is not for convenience, it's because if you explicitly told users what you were doing, a lot of them would want to say no. If you simply had a dialog box detailing exactly what the update had just done, people would not be happy. So instead, your software landscape is just one where stuff shifts around and disappears at night, and you have to pray that the next update won't break something.