[gshulegaard]

Mobile apps autoupdate by default, there's a difference between that and being forced to auto update. Mobile apps are also usually sandboxed heavily (more so on iOS than Android as I understand it...but I am not a mobile dev).

In my mind, auto updating was not one of the most attractive features of Chrome. In fact, auto updating for Chrome was one of the reasons I and some others I know stayed away from it for so long.

Web apps aren't binary blobs that users have to download and implicitly trust to not do nefarious things to their system. In fact, most browsers sandbox web pages to a large degree. Not to mention it's an entirely different architecture...with its own challenges.

Operating Systems run on hardware ostensibly owned by individuals (although this is constantly being diminished by corporate practices). But average Joe running Win 8 is not a security risk for MS...it is a security risk for average Joe. Backwards support is a huge cost for software companies in general...so I think the auto updating is not so much about protecting you or I, it's about protecting Microsoft's bottom line. And using nefarious tactics to force and trick people into upgrading just underscores this point. It's taking (some) control of "your" system away from you and giving it to Microsoft. Not to mention that OS's are very close to hardware (about as close to hardware as software can be).

Basically...there are tons of reasons why OS's are not mobile apps, desktops apps (like browsers), etc. and shouldn't just be auto-updated with whatever Microsoft decides to send down to your machine on a whim.