[dmurray]

> I'd be very surprised if you told me back then that we're all OK with apps calling home to check for updates regularly.

I think we'd have thought of that as a great development. "In the future, you'll automatically get bug fixes and new features in your programs as they're released." What's not to like? After all, you already trust the developer (the programs were not typically open source).

The justified distrust we have now for software vendors shipping "features" that benefit them rather than us came much later.

[tambourine_man]

Trust changes. Software owners do as well. It was also common back in the day to keep running old versions of your apps for whatever reason. It’s much harder and sometimes not possible these days.