[georgemcbay]

Agreed completely. I joked that the U in "Wii U" stood for "update" because the amount of forced modal updates required to every part of the system was almost comical when the system was new.

I've also got the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4 and all are basically the same... if I haven't turned it on in a couple weeks it is nearly guaranteed I'll have to sit through a couple-hundred megabyte update or two (for the OS/firmware and probably whatever game I am playing too) and fritter away 10-15 minutes before I can do what I wanted to do in the first place.

Even the systems that try to make this less bad by downloading updates in the background while in low-power mode tend to be pretty clumsy about the whole thing, so even though the download part is already done for me I still probably have to sit through a 5+ minute 'install' (after agreeing to a EULA, and maybe a TOS change or two) requiring 2 restarts.

bleh.

[derefr]

You'd think somebody would learn from Microsoft's long, hard struggle with Windows Update, and make consoles do the same thing Windows now does: download the update in the background at low priority while the console is on, then install it when you shut the console off. (And, for added effect, make the console actually look and sound like it has powered off while the updates are still installing. Windows 8 does this.)

[ekianjo]

> then install it when you shut the console off.

I seriously hate that on my laptop. I want to switch off and be on my way and suddenly Windows tells me it needs to install an update before shutting off. Seriously wtf! This is the kind of things that drives me to Linux, where I know that when I click Shut down, the system will be off in 20 seconds.

[nightski]

Why not just close the lid & put it to sleep? You really shut down every time you move somewhere with your laptop?

[Twirrim]

That's really bad from a security perspective. It's possible to retrieve all sorts of data from a machine that has been 'slept', especially things like the decryption key for the HDD. Various ports on the outside of the laptop, like USB, have DMA for performance reasons.

[nightski]

Wouldn't all these issues be present anyways if the thief simply turned on the machine?

[sexmonad]

No. If I shut down my laptop, my hard drive is encrypted and keys are no longer in RAM (modulo a cold-boot attack, but that is only really useful for <30 minutes after shutdown without preparation).

[ekianjo]

Boot Bios password. You ever heard of this ?

[anon4]

Well, the shut down button shows if it will install updates. If you don't want to, choose restart, then do a hardware shutdown during POST.

[ekianjo]

That's not what I expect from a OS in the 21st century. I want to be able to do things my way without having to circumvent the system.

[rapind]

I think OSX has been doing this since Leopard, but instead of forcing the update during shutdown, you can apply it whenever you want (it's already downloaded unless you turned auto updates off). I much prefer this route. Forcing the update on a restart or shutdown ends up being more annoying than you think.

[jiggy2011]

I think the problem with that approach is that if you want to play online then everyone needs to be running the same client version.

[sterlingross]

I went over my ISP bandwidth cap twice before I realized OSX was doing this in the background. For people with limited bandwidth allowances, this isn't a good option.

[im3w1l]

> look and sound like it has powered off while the updates are still installing

What happens if the user unplugs in this state?

[nightski]

It says not to while it's doing it in large lettering. You'd likely corrupt the installation. How much that would affect the user would probably depend on the update.

[sterlingross]

That is really good to know, thank you. I've been thinking of getting a console, but I have limited bandwidth via a satellite connection. Constant updates as you described would eat my allowance up really fast.