While the control issue does have some relevance, I think that Omaha is definitely a step in the right direction. I typically put off updating any of my products, simply because they notify me about it instead of just doing the update in the background. I always want the new versions, especially since so many of my browser/OS updates are security updates, but because I'm always notified about it when I either start the application, or when I close it, I never want to do it and spend extra time waiting while it does the update process when I had something in mind I wanted to do.
Making it open source is definitely the right direction. If it gets modified so that there is a control panel of sorts so that you an control the updates I think it will be considerably better for people.If it is set up as it is now (Updating at some time of low computer usage), with options that can be changed to only update through a specific connection, to only update when the computer has been idle for X amount of time, and similar times.
Look at the recent Conficker worm. There are estimates that over 10 million computers were infected with it (and are now having that annoying fake antivirus software downloaded onto it), because they hadn't installed a security update that was published in October. If they would just push the update after 1-2 months (Assuming that no major problems have been reported) to all Windows computers, much of the spread and potential damage would have been avoided. Since you use a Mac, you might not be used to this kind of problem. Windows always has some sort of a security hole, which is constantly being exploited. Anyone in IT can tell you how much of their time would be saved if Microsoft would stop nagging users about the security updates and just install them after they've been verified as stable. At the end of March we lost quite a bit of time having to scan all of the machines, and then going out and removing it from the one that had been infected, all because a higher up had heard about Conficker and was worried about what might happen on 4/1.
Making it open source is definitely the right direction. If it gets modified so that there is a control panel of sorts so that you an control the updates I think it will be considerably better for people.If it is set up as it is now (Updating at some time of low computer usage), with options that can be changed to only update through a specific connection, to only update when the computer has been idle for X amount of time, and similar times.
Look at the recent Conficker worm. There are estimates that over 10 million computers were infected with it (and are now having that annoying fake antivirus software downloaded onto it), because they hadn't installed a security update that was published in October. If they would just push the update after 1-2 months (Assuming that no major problems have been reported) to all Windows computers, much of the spread and potential damage would have been avoided. Since you use a Mac, you might not be used to this kind of problem. Windows always has some sort of a security hole, which is constantly being exploited. Anyone in IT can tell you how much of their time would be saved if Microsoft would stop nagging users about the security updates and just install them after they've been verified as stable. At the end of March we lost quite a bit of time having to scan all of the machines, and then going out and removing it from the one that had been infected, all because a higher up had heard about Conficker and was worried about what might happen on 4/1.