It seems unlikely that any PC manufacturer (Apple, Dell, HP etc) would force their users to open up their machines and flick the WP switch on the hard drive controller to install a firmware update.

Motherboards used to have physical write-protection jumpers for the BIOS flash, and that was something no malware could ever bypass. This was also in the days when BIOS updates were quite rare, so opening up the case to do it seems a very reasonable action to take. I have only updated the BIOS twice on two machines, in over a decade; "don't fix it if it ain't broke" is how I tend to approach updates in general.

For HDD firmware, I think it's something that should not be updatable at all through regular software; instead it's something manufacturers should be getting right before shipping product. I've owned disks from over two decades ago, and not once have I needed to update any firmware on them.

Somehow I feel that this "update culture" has just lead to more problems due to propagating an attitude of "it can always be updated later", where shipping devices with imperfect firmware becomes almost acceptable and it can sometimes become a case of fixing one bug and introducing others.

Yup. I loathe th update culture - every wifi router I've bought in the past decade has been barely useable before updating its firmware to current. Regular WiFi crashes requiring re-setting the router should not be the default state.

"update culture"

Don't forget feature bloat & the increased attack surface they inevitably create.

> It seems unlikely that any PC manufacturer (Apple, Dell, HP etc) would force their users to open up their machines and flick the WP switch on the hard drive controller to install a firmware update.

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1283

"Locate the programmer's button on the side of the iMac, to the right of the reset button. Press and hold in the programmer's button. You may need to use a pen or a straightened paper clip."

> iMac G3

Which they stopped making around 2003. Further the button was accessible from the outside.

How often have you honestly installed a firmware update on an HDD ever? I think I've done it maybe twice in my lifetime. Both times required jumping through crazy hoops creating boot floppies.

Apple would likely just ask you to bring it into the Apple store.

Apple pushes out HDD firmware updates more often than you think.

Can you link to some examples?

I can:

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201966

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1378

Here's one from Lenovo:

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/migr-62282

With suitable search terms you'll find similar updates from other OEMs.

They could wire it to a key on the keyboard, so you have to hold down 'Esc' to flash a firmware update, for example.

Unless you've got a direct electrical connection between the Esc key and that pin, you've unfortunately introduced a way for software to do the same thing as holding Esc.