[Sparkle] Sparkle Prefpane Interface

[Martin Redington]

Autoupdates with no opportunity for the user to stop them is the
windows way, not the mac way. I can't think of any mac app that works
that way, and SU certainly doesn't.

The windows world is full of complaints about this kind of thing, mostly by MS.

I rarely allow updates of any app, including from people I really
trust, like omni, and especially not from SU, until I am ready to do
so (i.e. not in the middle of anything critical). My machine is a
production system (for me), and I really don't want anything messed
about with without my explicit consent.

The mac way would be to never auto-update, unless the user has
explicitly asked for that, The default should be to ask before
updating anything.


> I don't think it has to be nearly that complicated. If there are updates,
> install the updates. Maybe there can be an option for that, yeah. But
> really, let's think about it. What are the situations in which a user would
> not want an update installed? Some new version with a restricted license
> agreement? Maybe he wants to keep an old version installed because he knows
> new versions suck. Really, the user wouldn't be able to figure out either of
> those things from a dialog with release notes. If he cares enough to stop an
> app updating (and I doubt even 1% of users ever will), he can go to the
> prefpane and tell it so.
>
> I know it feels a little draconian to be dictating to users "hey we're going
> to go ahead and update now," but isn't that the Mac way? Do The Right Thing
> for 99% of users, and push aside the rest to improve the experience for the
> majority?
>
> This has the advantage of not bothering the user with options for which the
> default's almost always right (think branch prediction!), but the
> disadvantage is that now the user doesn't know when things are updated and
> doesn't get shown release notes. I want to think about that more.