I resist updates because so often they are driven not by the need to incrementally improve a product in terms of features and design, but by some "high up the chain" decision to turn a perfectly good product info a "platform", or a tool for ensnaring you ever deeper into the wider platform. See: iTunes, Skype.

These updates are particularly maddening, as they usually involve slick and chirpy new design accompanied by the maddening confusion of trying to figure out if the features you liked are dead or just obfuscated, and the feeling of disempowerment as your previously reliable software starts coercing you into all sorts of stuff you never asked for. It's a rather Orwellian feeling.

I'm not looking forward to trying to figure out what agenda this Gmail overhaul is going to try to push on me.