Software updates that need me to ‘restart later’

There is a particular dialog box that I have come to think of as a tiny bureaucrat living in my laptop. It appears when I am mid-sentence. It wants to restart. It offers two choices: Restart Now, which is a lie because nothing is saved, and Remind Me Later, which is also a lie because “later” turns out to mean “in eleven minutes, during the call”.

I have never once wanted the update at the moment it was offered. Not once in my life. I would love an option that says “when I close the lid tonight, do your thing, and if it goes badly, leave a note”. That is how every other service in my life works. The plumber does not interrupt dinner to ask whether now is a good time to replace a washer.

The worst part is the progress bar. It goes to 97 percent in forty seconds and then sits there contemplating its choices for nine minutes while I stare at a logo. Whoever drew that bar knew. They knew and they drew it anyway.