Saturday, July 21, 2007
How software updates should work (Part 2)…
In yesterday’s post, I mentioned Firefox as an example of an application that auto-updates itself in a simple and elegant manner, and highlighted some of the things that other software vendors could learn from Mozilla’s example.
Today, let’s look at one of my favorite aspects of modern Linux/BSD distributions - full system updates - and consider how Microsoft could potentially work with ISVs to build a similar mechanism for Windows in the future.
The screenshot on the right shows the Update Manager window from my Ubuntu setup. Notice how it offers to update Firefox and Gimp, both of which are “third-party” applications in the sense that they are not strictly parts of the operating system. In fact, any application that’s installed from Ubuntu’s vast software repository can be automatically updated in the same way. It’s a wonderfully convenient system that ensures that everything on your computer stays up-to-date, down from the OS kernel all the way up to high-level applications like web browsers and image editors.
Windows Marketplace - Evolved:
So how could something like this work on the Windows side? Here’s my idea. Many of you have probably heard of the Windows Marketplace, a Microsoft site that showcases thousands of third-party Windows applications from big and small ISVs. Microsoft could launch a campaign to revamp the Marketplace into a true software repository with the help of prominent software partners. Incentive programs could be set up to encourage smaller ISVs to also get onboard.
Consumers would be able to install third-party software quickly and easily from this repository via a companion utility. Commercial applications would be available for purchase through the Digital Locker and would be installed using the same system. An update utility similar to Windows Update (with BITS support) would then ensure that all these applications are always kept up-to-date.
There’s no doubt that implementing something like this would be a huge undertaking, and there are bound to be roadblocks along the way, but wouldn’t the end-result be great?
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3 Responses to “How software updates should work (Part 2)…”
- Trackback on Jul 19th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Isn’t Ubuntu able to do this because it builds and packages all the apps into their own universal package repository or something?
Would be nice to have third-party software updates provided through the OS update system, myself and Jan-Willem were talking about this a while ago wrt Apple Software Update (ASU) and how cool it would be if third-party developers could register an app with ASU either on installation or directly with Apple. Then the ASU program would also check for updates to your installed third-party applications.
This would also be really good for some development houses if it was registered directly with the OS vendor as then they might be able to akamize it or something thereby taking the bandwidth loading off the developer.
PS shouldn’t firefox be updating itself instead of cheating and letting something else do it
*runs*
FireFox lets you know a new version is available, but won’t download a new version if the OS it is running on is not one of the many pre-packaged software compiles they have available.
A repository of apps is great, problem is they get outdated too fast. That is why the ports tree is nice, now it is as simple as updating an Makefile, no need to have someone else pre-compile the software, who may want a different flag set than you.
What Geoff said is really something I hope Apple will implement within their OS, as that would be one of the coolest features ever, hell Steve Jobs could show it off on stage, and get all the Linux people mad since their package manager has been doing it all along :P (Ignoring the fact that this is from a third party developers site and that Apple is not hosting the software in a repo :P)