I upgraded. I'm in the habit now of always selecting "custom setup" rather than the "recommended" option for non-technical users, because otherwise the thing might install some unwanted program or toolbar somewhere or something that will be a pain to get rid of. And that's exactly what was going to happen with the Firefox update wizard: install a Bing or something toolbar. And that was it. No technical options or anything in the custom setup route, just the ability to prevent extra shit on the screen. Still use Opera mostly.
I'm on Firefox 5 now. Don't see too much difference from 4 besides maybe a slight speed increase. I like Chrome a lot. I'll switch to it once adblock is perfected on it like it is on FF.
Before, you mentioned downgrading to an old version. You can't do this on the App Store. You can refuse to upgrade but if you reinstall the app or get a new device you are forced anyway... so at this point you are delaying the inevitable. Plus, in my experience an awful lot of web-connected apps stop working if you don't upgrade for a couple of versions (stuff like games usually works fine still). This is Apples (pun!) and Oranges. This was a downright despicable tactic that Apple tried to use, and it wasn't an update at all, it was just installing a brand new application. We've been over this ground all over though, if a company is going to be shady like this, I wouldn't trust them to provide good release notes. I'd stop using their product (and FYI I did stop using the Quicktime plugin when Apple force-bundled it with iTunes.. in that case there was no option to skip iTunes in the upgrade installer, and there was no other version of Quicktime available to install from the Apple website). So hey, I had a nice update prompt with some details about the changes, but I couldn't use the old version of Quicktime (apple movie trailer site was forcing me to upgrade), and I had no options about the new one. It's sort've a false sense of security to think that because there are patch notes, the patch notes are always accurate, and that undesirable changes or bundled products will be optional via a little checkbox. I totally understand the idea that a consumer would want to opt out of bundled crap. You know what's even better though? Not bundling that shit in the first place and making me "notice" and opt out. Since having manual updates doesn't actually protect you from this, I think the issue of bundling garbage with your installs / upgrades is really a separate discussion. One of the major problems in browser security is a slow update cycle. That's a big part of my point. When a security flaw is discovered, the developer needs to react fast to fix it, and I also think they have an obligation to patch it ASAP, not wait a few weeks until they get a nice sizable chunk of fixes to roll out, and then hope the user will be willing to stop their browsing and install security updates that they don't understand. I think you really do have an obligation to the user to protect their security, without requiring them to say "ok, I guess I'll stop watching YouTube and click through all these prompts".
Inaccurate patch notes are a pain in the butt. I wish Apple would require more detailed patch descriptions than "Various bug fixes."
The brand new application was bundled with an update. Had that update been silent and nonconsensual, whole different ballgame. Sorry, gotta stop you there, can't help it. It's "sort have"? For publishers to provide accurate changelogs -- for a while longer yet, at least -- is a means of establishing trust with users like me. Not entirely. As I touched on up there, transparency builds trust. Transparency is demonstrated through consensual updates -- and keep in mind that "you have to update your <x> if you want to use the <y> that's been updated on our end" still involves user consent. Not as much user consent as, "it doesn't really matter if you update <x> or not, we're just throwing this out there for ya." The user can -- as you indicate you yourself did -- opt out of using both client-side <x> and server-side <y>. Okay, I can see that. For updates as time-sensitive as security fixes, okay, I'm all on board with automatic updates. But still not silent ones. Especially because news of viruses won't be silent. Even if it's done in the background without asking my permission, I want to be informed about the updates, because if I just heard about the new version of Stuxnet that makes your balls explode when you use Internet Explorer, I want to know if and when Internet Explorer or my AV app has been updated to be resistant to that new threat. Don't leave me hangin' on that. And again, it should be totally at the individual user's discretion. You can turn update notifications on if you want them -- turn them off if you don't.
The Open Source EEE I got back in 2008 came with Firefox as its default browser. It works and is stable--and never updates. The main reason I mention this is because one of the sites I visit no longer displays well and last night YouTube got all pissy that my browser was old and shitty. Badgered me that I need a newer browser. Fuck you. Luckily they have a low bandwidth version of the site as well and that worked fine.
Once I used Firefox 5, I have now become a Chrome user. FF5 was just one frustration right after another for me. I finally made the "permanent" (as permanent as a web browser can be) switch to Chrome. FF5 was just too slow, bloated, unstable and annoying to continue using.
You are trying to equate immoral / bad behavior with automatic updates. They aren't the same. Furthermore, having a changelist or a prompt does absolutely nothing to protect you from bad or malicious updates. Almost none of the change lists you get with application updates are even remotely comprehensive. And again, they could really write whatever they want here and there's more or less no way for you to know about any of the more insidious things that could come in an update. Also, a very good (and hopefully convincing) blog post about why seamless updates are a Good Thing (tm): http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-infinite-version.html
Well, it's not so much that I'm trying to equate them -- but if an automatic update is broken, as was pointed out in one of the comments in the blog post you linked to, then there's no hearing about the broken update first and then opting out. You got it, whether you wanted it or not, no waiting for community news that a subsequent update became available to supersede the broken one. You're just SOL until that happens. I'm not really looking for comprehensive. I can't speak for all users, but I have a high degree of confidence in saying that most people will want at least the option of knowing about functionally important changes that are being made to their system and software. Except by way of the user community, which has been traditionally how such news has been made available. Contrasting what the publisher says against what the community reports is where trust is built. If an update does what the publisher says, and nothing the publisher doesn't say, the community comes to trust the publisher. With an update cycle as fast as Chrome's, I agree. Seamless differential updates are a very good thing. Some features, though -- at least, I would have to imagine -- are going to require updates sufficiently extensive that a changelog should still be an option, if only to inform users that their app can do something entirely new. As a wildly cartoonish example, if Google adds the ability for Chrome to navigate web pages by reading your thoughts, that's something a user might need or want to know about through a changelog when that update is made available.
On one hand you are saying "I trust the change notes because I can trust the company because they have given me good patches before", on the other hand you are saying "I can't trust an automatic update, even if they gave a lot of good patches before". It doesn't follow. The method of pushing the update really doesn't matter, and is still a totally separate concern from good or bad changes. A responsible developer will roll back any bad changes that go out, and can even do so automatically without you ever receiving them. The idea that you are always going to know about bad updates before hand is wrong. The idea that the community still can't point out bad updates about a product that updates automatically is also wrong. Obviously if a auto-updating app starts pushing bad updates, it's bad! No one is arguing that it's OK to push out broken updates or bundle crapware. I am saying, however, that manual updates don't prevent this. Furthermore, just because a company puts out manual updates doesn't mean they couldn't all of a sudden push out a tricky automatic one if they felt like it. Your defense of manual updating / objection to automatic updates really only seems to hold water when you simultaneously trust the companies release notes, AND don't trust that they won't give you some shady stuff. To me that doesn't make sense. You still always have the option to uninstall and go to a competitor if the update isn't something you like. When iTunes bundled Safari, I didn't get tricked, but I still uninstalled iTunes. Even if I can decline the update, I don't want to give my business to shady companies... I'm not sure why you'd want to keep using the software of a malicious / immoral developer, as long as it's an old version. Also, so far I've tried to stick to individual reasons for not wanting automatic updates, but there are also a lot of reasons why it's good for everyone if your stuff stays up to date. I could give a long description on the merits of advancing standards and compatibility with those standards, but I think all I need to do to convince you is say "IE6". Broken down old browsers are not only bad for the user and the developer who has to maintain them, it's a retardant for the progress of the whole internet.
My objection isn't to automatic updates. Like I said, you convinced me on that, at least for certain products. My objection is to silent updates. I paid about a grand for a collection of hardware and software. I don't think it's at all unreasonable that I be kept in the loop regarding changes to the software environment. For those who can't be bothered to understand what those changes mean, fine, make such notifications optional. But don't keep them from users who would understand them. These are our machines, not the software publishers'. We have a right to know what software publishers are putting on our machines.
