Forced software updates just make everything worse | Hacker News Reader

Forced software updates just make everything worse

theguardian.com

47 pointsdrankl12 comments

It is quite annoying that functionality just changes on products I buy. I hate applying updates because rarely are they an improvement. Sometimes it's just reduced functionality

https://www.sammyfans.com/2025/04/16/samsung-explains-why-bl...

Or sometimes it's destructive. Postman update removes all your stuff if you refuse to create account

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37792690

Another aspect of force updates is much more interesting: the updates don't have to provide value to the user anymore. No need to convince people that you fixed something, improved something and that it'll make users experience better. No more nasty accountability.

Whatever the engineers, PMs, UX have for a pet project? Now you can shove it down users throats, no need to worry. Every initiative is a success, every launch a 100% one :)

I particularly hate UI changes. There seems to be a constant trend in phone software to "improve" UI while disregarding the value of consistency and familiarity. Sure UI can be improved but if it's not a massive improvement the negatives of relearning the UI and retraining muscles memory far outweigh the positives. Same applies to features too, though often due to the UI changes that come with those features (Android Chrome's bullshit tab groups pushed me to Firefox).

And it's not like "hey in 6 months we're going to be implementing this change, so get ready in case it affects your workflow" it's sprung on you with no warning and no options, and often isn't even clearly communicated after the fact.

On Debian, you can choose to only have automatic security updates. So nontechnical people can just use it and never have any system-relates support requests.

> my maps app wouldn’t connect to my phone’s music player any more

Sorry a bit of a detail but I don’t understand this. What does it means for a maps app to connect to a phone’s music player?

Are we talking about 2 apps on the same phone? 2 apps on 2 phones? I use map apps on my phone all the time, while listening to music, but I’ve never “connected” the two.

Just a guess, but Google Maps has (had?) an integration with Spotify that adds basic playback controls below the map view during navigation. It's meant to keep you from needing to switch apps while driving.

The ability to update whenever I feel like it and not whenever Windows felt like it, is one of the nicest things about Linux these days. Sure, you can disable automatic updates on Windows, but it's clunky and never stuck for me. After some major update, that setting is reset, and you're back to automatic updates. The system is dishonest and hostile to you from the start.

Meanwhile, Mint's update manager has a tickbox which just disables automatic updates, and let's you schedule them if you want that. And if you just tick that box, it'll never get unticked, and you can go about your life, even opting to not update certain packages if you don't want them. It's your computer, so do what you want. No 'I'm altering the deal' shenanigans or coming back to your PC with it at the login screen and a 'we decided you need more AI in your life' full screen message since an update was pushed while you were gone.

I get why this happened. Microsoft started to force automatic updates since Grandma and everybody else would just end up never manually updating their PC, and thus got pwned. So they took the sledgehammer approach instead and started forcing updates from that happening. But the fact that updates constantly mess with the UI and even end up removing features, it's not like people don't have good reasons to be mad. If it were only security updates that were forced, I doubt that the cultural phenomenon of 'fuck updates' would even exist.

Two main reasons i see:

- poor testing between front and backend so that ppl don't know what versions of apps can work on that versions of apis, so forcing updates, "just to be safe"

- security slop - forcing the update of apps because they have an insecure library, like curl, so inane policy forces them to update...

You forgot the main one: it's just less work for the engineers and everyone else so they'll prefer such approach.

- increase "engagement"

- add after-sales revenue streams

Anakin Skywalker if he chose a different profession:

"I am altering the app. Pray I don't alter it any further."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com