To be fair, a printed boarding pass also didn’t update when the gate changed.

No, but when you have a device in your hands, with an app provided by the company you're dealing with, and they specifically request permissions to send you notifications, you start to rely on it.

An unreliable boarding pass in Apple Wallet is worse than a paper boarding pass.

With the paper one I know I need to check the screens etc. With the Apple the app implies that you no longer have to do this.

And you get used to it. You stop doing the things you did before. That muscle memory disappears. Not dissimilar to driving with GPS, or programming with AI.

But you also don't expect it to.

Actually, it is updated more currently usually. Apple wallet will not update for me with the current gate. By the time I show up to the airport 2 hours before the flight and get a paper pass on the other hand usually the gate is already set. But apple wallet still won't always reflect that update to the gate. Whereas my printed pass does. As well as the good old fashioned boards of flights, which are pretty easy to gleam considering they are alphabetized.

This is my experience most flights to be honest. LAX doesn't assign gates until the last minute so apple wallet is usually wrong. Google search for the flight number always works of course.