Would You Like to Update Now?

I’ve got updates on the brain.  Not only have I been working to push out the largest update to our product in the past two years, but I’ve been bombarded with updates from all angles.  Windows, my phone, televisions, wrist watches, the FBI wants me to update my router, video games I play, websites I browse, my thermostat.  My thermostat needed an update.  I’m just waiting for my electric toothbrush to ask for my wifi password so that it can update as well.

I wonder what these updates are really providing me.  If you ever bother to read the “Patch Notes” it’s rarely informative.  As I write this, I’m checking my phone for the last few app updates that I never even noticed were updated and find that the notes say (and I quote): “General fixes and stability improvements”, “Here we’ve got the usual bug fixes and performance improvements”, and my favorite “Bug fixes and enhancements.” Sometimes a notable bug goes away with one of these updates, but just as often two new bugs appear.  Last week an update to our operating system removed the ability to remotely connect to our client’s system and simultaneously removed our developer’s intellisense (the auto-complete feature for programming languages).  How do we stay productive when we are under the mallet in a big game of software bug whack-a-mole?

A Software Update used to be a big deal – an honor reserved for only electronics and software that could accept updates and were worth updating.  Everything else?  What you bought is what you got.  Back in the 80s, game developers would spend countless hours pounding away at their precious source code, trying to find any bugs, because once that game was transferred to the cartridge, it was frozen in time forever.  Today, if you stay up all night to be the first in line to buy that brand new, best-selling video game, by the time you race home and load it in the game console, there is already an update waiting for you.  This is so common it has a name, the “Day One Patch.”  This says something about the state of software, that we are already patching it before it’s even released.

Don’t get me wrong, even though I might not sound like it, I love updates.  Sure, it’s an abusive relationship, but the progress and the new features are exciting, empowering and can even improve product-safety as seen in the recent Tesla brake update.  We have to learn to adapt our business to this model, so that we can take advantage of the quick updates and not be crippled by them.  It certainly seems that all major software developers are embracing this agile development strategy, with quick iterations of software releases, and less control on update application.