Introducing Unified Update Platform

And a million different popups. The main problem I see with this is that some programs (e.g. Razer Synapse) can't be arsed to have an external process do the patching; demanding a reboot. Combine that with the Windows update reboot nag and you have hell on Earth.

Aside: you do have access to BITS[1], which is the download manager that Windows Update uses. According to an MSDN mag article I read years ago it tries to be as unobtrusive as possible (e.g. backing off if you are using your connection).

[1]: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3...

There's nothing worse than turning on a machine you've not used for a few weeks and being slammed with update notifications. Updates should be transparent and automatic by default in my opinion as regular users have zero interest in maintenance updates.

Something like that for iOS would be nice too. Less intrusive update reminders and not having to go through all of the nagging for apple services everytime Apple pushes a security patch!

It's not the rebooting that takes time, it's the "Configuring updates for your Computer" stuff. It'll sit there on shutdown and/or startup like this for... who knows how long. There's no way to know if it's making progress, so you're left trying to guess if the update process has hung. (And this is a far too common occurrence)

However, regular reboots to install updates is only fixing the symptoms instead of the underlying problem. The proper solution is to put security first when writing software. The entire design needs to be developed for security from the very beginning, not added on as a "feature" afterwords.

Additionally, it would also be a good idea to design software components to have minimal interdependence (loose coupling). This should allows not only easier testing, but also easier replacement. Fewer reboots are needed with when you can replace components individually. (it can also limit restarts to only one subsystem)

The right answer, in my opinion, is to force reboots by default but to allow the option to disable it.

That's likely a pipe dream, as apps do a bunch of complicated things - but it seems like a merger of security and UX. I'm not saying it's possible.. just that it seems like the best compromise.

"Reboot to apply important security updates and to get rid of this message"

Have an overlay of red letters that doesn't impede you to do anything but is kind of an eye sore. Maybe a window that can be moved but can't be hidden. People will reboot to remove that message (but never when they're in the middle of something).

It the moment it's the other way around, in your face when you don't want it and then disappears altogether.

I don't know about other people, but the only time I update is when its mandatory or I magically managed to close out all my work and have no state I care about. I suspect a lot of OS X users are on out of date builds of the current latest version. For the big feature updates they are pretty good about harassing users and do nice things like download the new OS without asking.

LMAO

No seriously. This could be straight out of a comedy piece.

You know what really turns my hair gray about this, I mean aside from losing the state of all my open apps, is that when I actually do want to shutdown a Windows computer it almost always seems to not shutdown because some open program is blocking shutdown with a dialogue box asking if I want to save my work or if I really want to quit.

Another peer of mine lost his networking stack functionality when his update pushed through.

The update/telemetry/user friendliness situation has not been fantastic, even for some of us internal engs.

And the Office/Silverlight mix always drove me crazy - it's something you have to separately turn on (and depending on the OS version/kind, you have to click through an additional EULA to activate), so they already had the plumbing in place to accept non-OS update complete with an EULA page and "activation" of that feature. I know there are a lot of issues that have to be addressed to successfully implement this. There are those legal ones -- like the ones they encountered that caused them to differentiate "Windows Update" and "Microsoft Update", as well as adding another attack vector (now the drive-by installs only need to install a new repository and they can deploy malware through updates)[1], as well as probably tens or so that I am not clever enough to think of.

[0] Though a quick search for just about anything in the WinStore indicates that Microsoft's standards are really low -- the spam disguised as software in the is a big problem.

[1] There's ways around this, though, with existing features already built into Windows. Using a model similar to Intellicode with an internet connection required to verify trust and CRL (you need it to download the update, any way, after all), backed up by a bit more hands-on verification on Microsoft's side (along with a higher fee to pay for that) would cover third-party repositories and for "Internal Enterprise" MSUs -- built by IT staff and deployed via SCCM -- the requirements could be "accept only if it originates from the enterprise CA that the domain trusts" (not other, external, CAs).