[jonhmchan]

That's very true. Though, given the volume of apps and the frequency of updates, I doubt it creates nearly as big of a battery suck than constant background running apps do (I'm looking at you Facebook).

Another point is that unless updates are being pushed constantly, I don't see why it would suddenly kill battery life more so than if they were pulled - it is just the timing of when to do updates (over time or "update all" as a batch - I doubt people actually distribute their updates according to battery usage).