Hacker News Reader

Comment by patrickmclaren | Hacker News Reader

Off-topic rant: I used to live in a remote area, with very little connectivity. Upgrading tech used to involve traveling to a retailer, and buying the latest version off the shelf.

More recently, it involes traveling to a solid internet connection, downloading incremental updates and distributing them on location.

In Australia, satellite internet was subsidized in the 2000s (and easily eligible). Now, although still subsidized to some extent, you're on your own if you're on a supported line but your telco doesn't have the capacity.

It's a damn nightmare when large software is distributed in this manner for people with insufficient network access.

Note, this experience is from a small family business point of view, without dedicated tech support.

View on HN

Well, this is part of why Microsoft has Service Packs. These consolidate existing updates as well as adding new features.

Indeed! The frequency of Service Packs post-Windows 10 will be key for remote users. I haven't looked into this recently, I wonder how easy it is for end-users to roll their own.

I came to the conclusion last year that Australia will be left behind as developers make assumptions about fast connections. I think it was around the time of the Win8 to 8.1 upgrade which was about 2GB and not immediately available as an ISO/disc - it failed repeatedly overnight and consumed 50+% of my download quota for that month.

Australians: vote for a government who will build 21st century infrastructure. It's going to get ugly when we run out of shit to dig up and sell to China.

If you all can be 'squeaky wheels', microsoft et al will see that for relatively little overhead, they could have a lot of Austrialian people buying physical media.

I can only imagine how OSX users cope with the giant OS updates and patches that get bundled. I thought that people here in the UK on ordinary broadband must get frustrated, but your experience puts it into perspective. It also makes me think more carefully about being "network-happy" in applications.

Those stupid Xcode updates are bigger than the OS updates, 5-6GB in size. At this point I'm thinking their infrastructure team is simply incompetent - downloads slow to a crawl, no incremental updates, and if the install fails sometimes it's back to zero.

I have noticed that about downloads and upgrades. The "system updates" app within App Store is poor. It is a webpage that fails to refresh when it's doing something, leaving you guessing when something is happening (that rotatey "progress" indication that is entirely indeterminate is no help either)

What on earth is wrong with a progress bar and text drawn on the screen instead, like Snow Leopard??

You can download WSUS updates "offline" and send them via tape or other media to remote locations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com