Why do update at-startup-background-update-services exist?

Question

I think one of the main causes of winrot are the sheer number of services that run at startup (and don't shut down) that phone home every x seconds to see if there is a new version of some piece of software.

Me personally, I disable every single one of them because they seem utterly useless to me. Most of the software packages that use these things, have an option to check for updates whenever you launch the program itself too. This looks way more efficient to me.

I was asking myself what the reason is for companies like Adobe and Apple to create such services that bog clients' computers down and at the same time increase the burden on their own update servers for what looks to me as very little return value for neither of them.

My client requests such a service, but I don't see any reason for it. I want to make sure I'm not missing a piece of the puzzle so I can come back with an educated opinion on why this is should or shouldn't be a desired functionality.

Answer 1

It's usually a desire by management to get brand recognition. It goes something like this:

Oh no. If our program just does its job, the user will never see that it's there, and they'll never find out who we are, and what a great company we are.

We need an icon in the tray; we need a shortcut on the desktop, and in the quick launch toolbar, and at the top level of the Start menu. If we could add a control panel applet, and an item on the right-click menu in Windows Explorer, and an icon in Internet Explorer, that'd be fantastic.

Of course, since our program's so important, the user's going to be using it a lot. Let's add a "speed boost" program that runs at startup, that makes sure that all of our binaries and dependencies are pre-loaded in the cache.

Oh, and we'll need an automated update program, to make sure that all of these components are as wham-bam-great as we can make them.

And can you put a splash screen on that as well?

Can you tell I'm bitter?

Answer 2

Roger's spot on.

Plus, once an application has developed to the point where it already has all the features you could expect it to cover for its intended purpose, the vendor is stuck. They need to keep banging out exciting new versions, so scope bloat creeps in. Instead of doing one thing well and getting out of the way, we must do everything related to it. We must always be in the user's face; they must never be allowed to use software that isn't ours; they must always be interacting with our brand. And of course we must take care to always start an updater task in the background, because we added a completely unnecessary internet-facing browser plugin/toolbar/ActiveX thing that will surely turn out to have security holes.

Acquisitive software is a huge problem that is steadily degrading the user experience on Windows. And it's an arms race: Microsoft hide old application surface interfaces (deprecating the classic start menu, removing quick launch, hiding system tray icons, auto-removing inactive Desktop icons) as they become so full of acquisitive-software junk that they're basically unusable, whilst introducing new ones that "will be better". But how long until applications start "helpfully" adding themselves to the Start menu's MRU list (because you're definitely going to want to use our great software a lot!) and pinning themselves to the Windows 7 dock?

Linux is doing better here because the distros own access to the user and aren't going to put up with any of this crap. Not something Microsoft can get away with though unfortunately.

Bonus Did You Know Fun Fact: Once upon a time, Nero was a nice, elegant CD-burning tool.