Stupid Updates

It seems like every time I look at an electronic device, it has to do some sort of update. I came into work on Tuesday and started one of the Microsoft Office products only to discover it had a number of updates to download. Having 2 mobile phones makes the problem worse as one of them always seem to have some pending application update. Then last night I decided to set up my PS4 on my sailboat. It had been off since I brought it out in November. Not only did I need to update the system software, but every game I had played in the past 6 months had an updated that needed to download. I burned through 9 gigabytes of data in one evening.

This has me evaluating all of my electronic devices that are connected to the Internet. I don't keep a lot of apps on my phones unless I really use them. Periodically I go through and delete programs I haven't used in several months. When I turned on my PlayStation 4, I thought I deleted all of the game files I didn't think I would play. I probably should have deleted more of them. I also am sure not to install software on my computer unless I really need it.

All of this downloading and updating seems like I am keeping up with the latest features and sometimes that is true. Security updates are very important and should be installed as quickly as they appear. Unfortunately some of the updates don't really effect me. Most of the updates for the PS4 dealt with online play features and I don't really do a lot of that currently. Furthermore, Apple has a tendency to remove functionality in the name of simplicity. But what if I am using that feature?

Finally I question the size of all these downloads. Retrieving 9 gigabytes of data in one evening seems a bit excessive. My experience with bug fixes is that you should just have to send an update to a library and those can be very small. Maybe I just have a bunch of games that needed new content and there is no way to make that tiny. I will have to go through and see if I notice any difference. My guess is I won't.