Tis nobler to upgrade or not to upgrade? That is a question!

It is upgraded season, a funny time of year when you have to make a couple of decisions. The first is logical, do you use the product enough that upgrading is worth it. The other decision you have to make is when. Assuming of course, that you decide to upgrade the product when the upgrade happens becomes a little more critical. Let’s focus on the first question should I upgrade or not first. I have a process for what I upgrade and what I don’t. For example, there are products that I use every single day. Those are the products that I look at the offered upgrade to see if, in fact, it is something of value.

Neto, a disk burning product I have been using for more than 20 years now, is one I upgrade when the option presents itself. I also upgrade a couple of Corel programs automatically. One of them is Painter, and I have been using it since Fractal released it more than 20 years ago. I also upgrade the Cakewalk Sonar product, but that is a long-standing solution. I am a huge fan of creating music for my enjoyment. All of these and a few others are products that I upgrade all the time. There are other products that I upgrade on occasion, in fact, I miss releases because the release doesn’t add anything to how I use the program.

That got me thinking, in particular about the concept of how people use software and what they need from the software they are using. If you had asked ten years ago what did I use more computer or cellular phone, I would have easily and quickly answered computer. If you asked me five years ago, the transition to using both equally had already begun, and I would have said I use both about the same. Now, I use my cell phone far more than my computer. I often write my blogs on my iPad. The reason to end with this thought is simple now; I don’t think about upgrading applications on my iPad and iPhone, I just do it. I do think about upgrading applications on my PC. If things work, I don’t often automatically upgrade. I probably would have automatically upgraded many years ago, but now I think about it for awhile.

The reality of iOS 11 is here. That is why I am thinking about upgrades. I got four emails yesterday from add-ons I use, warning me that the add-on may not work with iOS 11. It is just one of those things I hadn’t thought about with the iPhone and iPad. Interesting position to be in. I am going to upgrade and wait for fixes for the two products I use, that won’t work the same. For the two that won’t work at all until there is a fix, I am just going to wait.