I'm not sure how wanting to avoid reboots makes one sound ignorant. We've come a long way since the bad old days when you had to reboot virtually every time you installed or reconfigured anything. I agree with Yegge when he says "Systems should never reboot."
As for asking the developers to write better software in the first place, it's quite reasonable. It's extremely difficult (maybe even impossible) to catch all the bugs and vulnerabilities in a complex piece of software before publishing it, but having to update as frequently as we're usually expected indicates a lack of proper care for security issues in the first place. And that is what the author is complaining about. In a way, it's just like it often happens with videogames: release in time to catch an important date and then ship patches.
I just can't take one seriously if they think that using a firewall will protect them from security flaws in applications.
Not in applications, but operating system. Windows Automatic Update becomes quite unnecessary if you're behind a firewall.
Sure, a single point of updates would be nice, but when asking that reboots not be necessary, or that people just write better software in the first place he's just making himself look ignorant.
Companies don't put auto-update functionality in for fun - they're there because there _are_ security issues that need to be patched.