The problem with not having solid infrastructure for updates is security issues. Of course, there is a class of software where this is not a problem, but determining whether software falls into that category is pretty difficult given the structure of modern OS and the propensity for things like static linking. You have 3 choices: * leave software vulnerable. * track security vulnerabilities is all your software and its dependencies and manually update. * Bite the bullet and have robust auto-update infrastructure.

I’d argue the bigger problem is that implementing robust, dependable and user configurable auto updates with easy rollbacks etc. is a complex problem, so every piece of software ends up implementing its own shitty variant that sacrifices user control and doesn’t distinguish between necessity and churn.