Software Updates
I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to software updates, be it for my smartphone, laptop, gadget, or any other tech/smart device. Back in the 90s, the only software updates I ever paid any attention to were either NVIDIA or ATi’s graphic card drivers, so I could squeeze out a few more frames per second or get a few more points in 3DMarks, or Windows XP drivers that came with a frequency of once in a blue moon. Understand that back then, any virus that made it onto the news was like a zombie apocalypse just outside your front door, for most people we didn’t know all that much about them and just whacked on Adaware, Nortons AV or McAfee AV and updated its database from time to time, in fair would contract this latest badass virus apparently being spread around.
Nowadays, software developers are constantly finding new ways to optimize their software, patching bugs, and writing new features into their software. In doing so, every other day a software update pops up and you’re left with either 1 of 2 choices: let it update and not really know what the hell the difference it will be, or press cancel only to find that the software will stop working a weeks down the line at which point you will need to use Google to find out how to manually update the software. One of the worst culprits most by Adobe’s Flashplayer. In a time when HTML5 has not fully taken over the interwebs, most online video content still rely on Flashplayer. If you think about it, when Adobe first released Flashplayer, it must have been the worst piece of code in history, its just full of holes, bugs and exploits that to this date there’s been a million updates for it. Don’t update it? You’re left with blank black space on your browser as the videos will not play.
When I first got my Xiaomi Yi IP Camera, during setup a little message popped up informing me that there was a new firmware available, and I updated without a seconds thought. The result was the camera did not work afterwards. This wasn’t because I had borked the download and installation of the firmware, it was because the new firmware restricted the camera to only be used within China……
The Facebook app on your smartphone is another piece of software that gets updated the most often. Its gotten to the point that if you ever read the contents before you updated, they can’t be bothered informing you what the update is about. We are all guilty of updating the Facebook app, just in case we get the latest and greatest feature they finally sneakily roll out. I can remember posting about Live Videos on Facebook at the turn of the year, and it wasn’t until a few updates later that I realized I finally had that function.
What about the benefits? Firmware updates for cameras tend to be great, adding many new features such as more auto focus points and conserving a little battery life. Gaming updates are good as they tend to add new gaming content and fix bugs that ruin gameplay. And the geek in me particularly like updates for routers as they normally result in better connections and speeds.
I just updated the TripAdvisor app on my smartphone, an app I probably last used 4 months ago and have never used more than 3 times. I just wanted to get rid of the annoying notifications you get informing you that there’s an update.
