Connected Condiments: When Will It Have Gone Too Far?
Andy Ihnatko is letting off steam as only he can, with an extended analogy about how he was just trying to make a ham-and-cheese sandwich but got distracted by an Internet-related error with the mustard. It’s silly, of course, but his larger point is that we’ve created a world built on so many dependencies that it’s amazing that anything works at all. We’ve all been there; the question is how we get back.
Don't activate the internet connection ever - if possible.
The problem long predates IoT devices. Acrobat Reader's update notices are legendarily constant and inconvenient.
Don't get me wrong: I like the convenience of being notified when an update is available. I don't like the fact that update checks invariably happen when you first launch the app and are trying to actually do something—and apps never seem to check for updates before loading your work, meaning you wait for your documents to load, start working, and then ten seconds after you get started, an update notice comes up.
Even worse, you have apps that can't self-manage the update installation process. Some make you manually download the installer to update. Others make you manually quit and relaunch the app being updated (I'm looking at you, Microsoft Office). This is not progress.