> Somehow the industry got by for decades without intimately knowing what version every single user of the software was running.

I don't think the scale nor the features of modern software is comparable to what we used to have.

Back in the days you didn't have such a diverse numbers of versions/machines combinations, software were much simpler, much less updates, &c.

We also survived just fine without cars, electricity, central heating, processed meat, &c. this isn't a valid argument