My petty gripe: forced software updates just make everything worse | Patrick Lum

Would we tolerate anything else that got worse over time, not as a result of normal wear and tear but because the manufacturer suddenly decided it should?

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I was pulling out of our driveway one holiday, about to embark on an epic multi-hour trip, when I realised something was off. It wasn’t a major problem, no punctured tyre or busted door handle, simply that my maps app wouldn’t connect to my phone’s music player any more. An “update” during the night had stolen the function away, robbing me of the ability to change my music and track where I was on the map at the same time.

It’s things like this that make automatic updates the mundane bane of my existence. The promise of forced software patches is that they improve the software and apps we use every day; make them more convenient, maintain our security and so on. But what actually happens most of the time is that updates just change perfectly fine tech – now it sucks.