Except that this doesn't really happen anymore unless the person's running an old version of Windows. IE updates with Windows Update, so it's just as "automatic" as Windows Updates.
I think they meant feature updates, not security updates. And those come not very frequently, but agreed, even then, they are automatic (unless some moron disabled Windows Update).
I thought the "install new versions automatically" checkbox simply meant that new Internet Explorer updates were installed along with automatic Windows updates, where before they were optional.
If so, aside from enterprise, there's (sadly)a significant fraction of home users that turn off automatic Windows updates because they regard them as a hassle.
There's a massive difference between the Firefox auto-update (you're not launching until I'm installed then you're good) and the IE update (I'm going to make you reboot your PC, or nag you until you leave your PC idle for 15 minutes and I'll reboot losing your work for you. Oh yeah im tied into Windows Update so your PC as a whole might have random issues after reboot.)
Then you set the updates from automatic to manual and install them when or if you ever feel like it.
Most people never update their Windows PCs and they end up using a PC with bugs and performance issues that have long been fixed and security holes you could drive a truck through, I'm glad automatic updates are now turned on by default and that you also have to option to opt out.
One of my family Windows was updated automatically(or deceptively automatically) and caused a panic, I shut it down forcefully to get it back, so far it did not auto-upgrade yet.
>but it doesn't change the fact that most users opt to simply disable automatic updates in one fashion or another
Most people disable auto updates? Do you have a reference for that or is that just your personal anecdote? Most people and PCs I've been auto update. Normal users don't even care to take the time to find out if they can be disabled.
You can only force users so much. Installing updates and restarting is a default and people who go out of their way to prevent it deserve to take some responsibility, it's their machine after all, not Microsoft's nor yours. If Windows forced everyone to update and restart automatically without a way to turn it off, a lot of people will raise hell over it. Some people don't like even browsers autoupdating under them.
Okay, clearly I made an unpopular comment. But I'll keep playing devil's advocate here. Yes, automatically updating software has long caused computers to become nonfunctional on occasion. This is not a first time, and in fact I haven't seen anyone complain about Windows 10 making their computer nonfunctional I've just seen complaints about it making it different. I'm sure someone has had problems with the Windows 10 update and that you can find an example. But I can also find examples of people with Service Pack updates (or even smaller ones) causing problems, for example.
If you were really only interested in the cloud software case (which I assume you singled out because you new the general case to obviously go against your argument), then yes, I still claim this happens in a very important sense. When gmail updated its interface, my mom stopped receiving some emails. Of course, they were hidden in different categories and she really was receiving them, but if she silently misses important emails... in what sense is the computer not nonfunctional? That's like 50% of what she does with it. Or in a more general sense, my parents' previous computer was slowly bogged down by a million iTunes updates that made it more and more of a system hog that made most of the rest of the computer unbearably slow.
My argument is that this is a matter of degree. Degree is significant, but people are acting as if this forced update is in a class of its own instead of being just the latest in a long (and growing) line of automatic updates that the consumer has less and less control over. Fight back against it if you wish, but don't pretend most software these days isn't doing (or wishing it could be doing) approximately this already.
None of this excuses the fact that they make it appear opt-out in manners that trick the consumer in to "opting in". That's just plain deception.
The issue is that we users don't know what they'll bring in an update. And mind you it's auto updated without warning, you have to basically rename couple .exe files, disable some tasks in the Task Scheduler and Services on Windows to stop the auto update. This combined with the notion you don't know what changed is asinine.
The default in Windows is to auto update and you have no choice without jumping through hoops or working under a corporate group policy. So at least in terms of Windows, the answer to your question is yes - most people automatically download OS updates.
I don't even use Windows, yet I still notice them when being at a game jam or a similar event. There's always somebody who complains about his Windows that started updating, with the best case being a guy waiting for his turn to connect his laptop and give a presentation, only to notice that it started updating meanwhile :D
True, but there is an important difference between Chrome background updates and Windows Updates: Windows Updates are easy to disable, and, in our experience, frequently are disabled by users for various reasons.
Users find that they hate trying to reboot (or start up) one day and then wait for 30 minutes while their computer does nothing more than display a "Now installing update 3 (of 30)..." screen. (This is especially obnoxious on big Windows Server installations where this process can take a server down for an entire weekend.) Or they hate being nagged all the time that there are updates available. Or they hate having their computer insist every five to ten minutes that it needs to be restarted now. Or they're gun-shy about it because an update once changed the layout of Windows Live Mail and left them completely confused about why it was suddenly so different even though they hadn't changed anything.
In one fun case, we had a corporate client disable automatic updates for their entire research lab because one night Windows update decided it needed to automatically reboot every single system there. They were running overnight experiments and came in the next morning to find that all of the night's data was missing or corrupted, costing them a day on a tight schedule.
Microsoft does software updates in a very, very wrong way, and that means that a rather large number of people think it's better to just ignore the updates.
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