My youngest daughter returns from university with the MacBook she's been using there for three years. The desktop looks like a particularly messy student bedroom, cluttered with the computer equivalent of cups of septic coffee dregs and encrusted baked-beans-on-toast plates.
This isn't particularly surprising. But what does shock me a little is when she turns the machine on and I see she hasn't updated the software in the entire time she's owned it. It seems to be exactly as it was in 2007.
Oddly, it still worked OK — wherein may lie a lesson we will consider in a moment. But neglecting to update your software for three years is counterintuitive to me.
I suspect that if my daughter's laptop had been a PC, it would be pretty sick after all that time without its drip-feed of Windows security and other updates. Although their popularity is growing exponentially, Apple Macs are still too insignificant in number to be targeted by viruses and similar nasties — and yet I would still be uneasy about relying on one that hadn't had its shots since birth.
I feel positively uncomfortable — disturbed, even — if all my software isn't up to date. I check constantly to see if my Mac has any updates and am almost breathless with excitement as the soothing balm of fresh, safe, improved, speeded-up versions of my familiar programmes seep into my system.
Downloading software updates is partly a work-avoidance tactic, because it takes a few moments and can be categorised as more important than work.
But being scrupulous about keeping software bright eyed and bushy tailed is more emotional, more OCD-ish, than that: it just, well, feels good. Indeed, it is not unlike a minor drug dependence and I have begun calling it cyberchondria — a term already used by some to define searching the web to find rare and interesting diseases you may be lucky enough to have, but I think my usage is better, so there.
How important all the updates we are encouraged to gobble up actually are is not easy to gauge. If you bother to read the detail of what you — if you are a fellow cyberchondriac, that is — are so anxiously imbibing, it's rarely specific, referring simply to 'recently exposed vulnerabilities' and what have you. And, although I and fellow sufferers feel safely inoculated after a dose of update, the fact that my daughter's Mac was perfectly fine and sprightly after three years of neglect does make me wonder if the improvements offered are a bit marginal.
Most updates, however, don't in my experience offer anything as reassuring or interesting as increased performance or lessened susceptibility to attack.
More often than not, they are an improved driver for a printer you don't own and never will or added Finnish language support for a function you didn't even know you had. Yet even these wholly placebo digital drugs, we willingly chug down; you never know when Finnish language support may be a lifesaver, we seem to reason subconsciously.
These, of course, are all free upgrades. But there's also the question of paid-for upgrades. I spent £25 a while ago buying the new, supposedly improved version of a programme I know well and use daily. Getting the upgrade to work took several hours of sweat and frustration and endless phone calls to customer support people around the world. The result? The 'new' software works exactly the same as the old.
Cyberchondria is spreading beyond computers now, as well. I bought a Citroën C4 four years ago, an incredibly techie, electronics-stuffed vehicle which has been very good - but for a weird clunking and jerkiness from the gearbox that appeared in its third year.
Towards the end of the warranty period, I took it to Citroën for attention. "No problem," they said, "it just needs a software upgrade". This they did, and the jerkiness stopped. For a week. The car has since been back several times for further supposed upgrades. Every time, it's OK for a while and I drive away convinced that, this time, the problem will be dealt with. I suspect what it really needs is a new gearbox, but at least the upgrades make me feel better for a bit.
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