When it comes to consumers, there are several different groups of people: Innovators, Early Adopters, Late Adopters, and Laggards. There are people who can’t stand seeing that red “1” notification badge on the Settings app of their iPhone when it needs an update and people who have a red “15,786” notification badge on their Email app. Those who can’t stand seeing those notification badges on their iPhone would be considered as either Innovators or Early Adopters, with the person who has 15,786 notifications for unread emails would probably typically be your Laggards with the Late Adopters somewhere in-between.
The reason I say this, as technology advances, more and more companies are pushing toward the automatic update of software. Just on the 11th of November, Microsoft pushed out a patch that seems to be breaking Outlook for users when they receive an HTML message via email. These are those emails that are meant to look pretty and are sent out by millions of people and companies every day. While the intentions of Microsoft are good, the implementation caused many to be wondering why they could no longer open an email without their Outlook crashing – causing frustration for many.
So as these companies push more and more toward automatic updates, it makes consumers wonder whether they will be able to properly test their software before they push it to the millions of users of their product. Many technically adept people may be able to remove the updates that are an issue, but that leaves many who may not have the knowledge or ability stranded until the company pushes out another update that fixes the issue. In the meantime, those users are stuck with using a workaround or unable to function.
In conclusion, if you are one of those early adopters, I hope you know how to remove a problematic update or that you have the patience of a saint.
