Imagining a world in which you could charge a supplier for the time it takes you to regularly update their software
On most of my Apple devices I'm applying updates to either iOS or MacOS on a regular basis. Very roughly, it's probably taking away an hour a month - I'm not including the elapsed time for the update (you just schedule this so you get yourself a cup of coffee or something), but there's a bit of planning involved, some level of interaction during the process, and then the need to fix up anything afterwards that got mangled by the update.
I don't currently run Windows, but I used to have to do that as well. And web browsers and applications. And that used to take forever, although current hardware helps (particularly the move away from spinning rust).
And then there's the constant stream of updates at the installed apps. Not all of which you can ignore - some games have regular mandatory updates and if you don't apply them the game won't even start.
If you charge for the time involved at commercial rates, you could easily justify $100 per month or $1000 per year. It's a significant drain on time and productivity, a burden being pushed from suppliers onto end users. Multiply that by the entire user base and you're looking at it having a significant impact on the economy of the planet.
And that's when things go smoothly. Sometimes systems go and apply updates at inconvenient times - I once had Windows update suddenly decide to update my work laptop just as I was shutting it down to go to the airport. Or just before an important meeting. If the update interferes with a critical business function, then costs can skyrocket very easily.
So you could avoid the manual interaction and associated costs, but then you end up giving users no way to prevent bad updates or to schedule them appropriately. Of course, if the things were adequately tested beforehand, or minimised, then there would be much less of a problem, but the update model seems to be to replace the whole shebang and not bother with testing. (Or worry about compatibility.)
It's not just time (or sanity), there's a very real cost in bandwidth. With phone or tablet images being measured in gigabytes, you can very easily blow your usage cap. (Even on broadband - if you're on metered domestic broadband then the usage cap might be 25GB/month, which is fine for email and general browsing, but OS and app updates for a family could easily hit that limit.)
The problem extends beyond computers (or things like phones that people do now think of as computers). My TV and BluRay player have a habit of updating themselves. (And one's significant other gets really annoyed if the thing decides to spend 10 minutes updating itself just as her favourite soap opera is about to start.)
As more and more devices are connected to the network, and update over the network, the problem's only going to get worse. While some updates are going to be necessary due to newly found bugs and security issues, there does seem to be a philosophy of not getting things right in the first place but shipping half-baked and buggy software, relying on being able to update it later.
Any realistic estimate of the actual cost involved in expecting all your end users to maintain the shoddy software that you ship is so high that the industry could never be expected to foot even a small fraction of the bill. Which is unfortunate, because a financial penalty would focus the mind and maybe lead to a much better update process.
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