updater

I really want to like both these companies: they make some stunning products but they certainly make it difficult. The main gripe I have is with the almost constant updating required. Barely a week goes by without being prompted to download and install a new incremental version of iTunes, Quicktime, Safari, Acrobat or, as I write this, a 320MB download containing incremental updates to Photoshop and “Extendscript” whatever that is.

I wouldn’t mind nearly so much if these were patches but in the case of Acrobat and the Apple suite, the downloads are so huge that they are clearly complete reinstalls. Rarely is any reason given as to why I should download these new versions and, through a process of attrition whereby they keep prompting you until you actually do download the version, I suppose it works.

This is one of those areas that Microsoft does better: except that, by default, it downloads and installs updates in the background. But at least with Microsoft it’s easy enough to choose to only install those downloads you specify whereas it seems to me that every time I launch an Adobe or Apple product (having disabled the system tray applications that would otherwise check every time I start my computer) I get offered a replacement application of sometimes many hundreds of megabytes.

Isn’t it time that big corporations showed a bit more respect for the bandwidth they’re consuming? After all many users are on metered connections. These same corporations somehow got by before broadband by releasing updates to a more sensible schedule and prompting users to visit a website to do so.

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