My wife wasn't allowed to go for a post-lunch nap yesterday. Our smarthome wouldn't let her...
OK! OK! It wasn't as bad as all that. I built an Internet-connected electric blanket so I can yell at the Alexa to pre-warm the bed. One of the IoT switches needed a firmware update. All over and done with in a few minutes.
But I can't help wondering how much time we lose to software updates. Every time I turn on my games console, I have to wait for another interminable update. It's practically a trope.
Haven’t turned my PlayStation on for about two months, can’t wait for 80 hours of updates 🙃
— Lucy 👽 (@Lucycaulfield) December 29, 2019
A Rockwell painting of a family on Xmas morning gathered around an Xbox update download screen
— BUNKRE (@BUNKRE) December 25, 2019
*checks watch*
Don't worry kids, your Xmas console will have finished it's updates in the next few hours
After dinner you can stick the discs in and wait another hour for it to install then another few hours for the patches to download
Go to bed and play on boxing day#PS4 #Xbox— john mack (@jonnymack74) December 25, 2019
There's got to be a better way to do this. Software updates are - usually - important. But why are they so large and cumbersome?
What bothers me most about this is that there looks to be a webcam icon associated with the internet connected bed... ( OK, OK, I assume it is just actually an artistic impression of a thermostat, but it's an easy mistake to make)
Firmware of a bed. Change of mattress?
I wonder if it's the case that it'd take more effort on the developer/company side to design more streamlined updatable software and they wouldn't see the direct benefit?
So they're not as bothered, given that it's the user's time spent waiting for an update to be applied, rather than their time spent coding a better way of delivering updates.
Related though, I always find I'm more willing to spend time updating if I know it's making an improvement or adds functionality. I like getting a new feature to play with. Maybe always having a recognisable new feature as part of an update so you're more willing to put in the time to do it is something. Use the carrot rather than the stick...