Why is the new viewer a "mandator update"?

[Curious Hazelnut]

I start up the Second Life viewer and get a dialog box telling me "There is a required update for your Second Life installation." I understand there are lots of good reasons for such things (most notably exploits to hack my computer, my SL account, or the SL servers). But why don't they explain a tiny bit more about what makes this one mandatory?

I skimmed the release notes but didn't see anything obviously justifying a "mandatory" update.

[Cerise Sorbet]

The updates will almost always be "required" if you are more than two versions behind. That is because, with a few exceptions, those versions are no longer supported.

See the Supported Viewers wiki page to see what LL is supporting at the moment. The yellow "active viewers" box includes the exceptions, old version that should not (for now) cause a mandatory update.

If there is some old but unsupported version that you really, really want to keep using, see the Viewer Parameters wiki page. If you set a custom --channel string on the command line, you can bypass the update check.

[Curious Hazelnut]

thanks Cerise, but I've actually been keeping up with the upates. So, I don't imagine it was that. I just prefer to download it after I log-in and install it when I'm done in SL. At most I was maybe 1 version behind, I think.

[Cerise Sorbet]

I was on 3.4.4 and did not get prompted to update today, checking after you started this thread. I did since update manually, though.

[Curious Hazelnut]

Well, it does seam more stable. So, I can't call this a complaint about the viewer.