Update Checks Should Be More Honest

It’s annoyingly common for software updaters these days to open with a “You’re up to date!” message, maaaaybe add “last checked on XYZ date” or “x minutes ago,” and then call out to the update servers to find out.

Aside from the fact that it’s lying to start with, there’s an obvious and extremely frequent failure mode:

1. Device starts up or wakes up from sleep mode.
2. Updater checks for updates, doesn’t find any because the network hasn’t connected yet.*
3. WiFi connects.
4. Updater says “You’re up to date! Last checked 1 minute ago!”

I get this so often on all sorts of devices that it’s ridiculous. Windows and SteamOS I think are the ones I notice the most.

Some super-simple fixes:

• Instead of “You’re up to date” or equivalent, show “Checking for updates” until you’ve gotten an answer.
• If the update check fails, don’t change the last-checked timestamp! If a critical security fix dropped yesterday, it’s much more useful to show “You’re current as of 5 days ago” instead of pretending that the offline check 2 minutes ago actually worked!

“Does this program need to be updated?” and “Can an update be downloaded right this second?” are different questions. When the answers are the same, great! But when the answers are different, it’s important to know which question was asked.