While I agree with this part, the software updates are proprietary and Stellantis doesn't want the hassle of someone getting a corrupt download messing up a bunch of radios causing more warranty work. I get that.
I understand he's trying to help, but perhaps his computer has a virus or malware without his knowledge. It's the main reason I won't download a posted file from an unknown source.
Well that's exactly it, there was a time in the RA4 days when we could go to to the UConnect website and download the updates ourselves. Then they started pushing OTAs that never really worked well through end of RA4, UC4 and still don't completely work on UC5. If they don't want to people looking for other sources, they need to make them available in a timely manner.
Prime example would the T25.48 update that broke a bunch options. Once the fix in T25.51 started shipping, there were still people that weren't able to get the update. There are a lot of things they need to fix, starting with doing proper testing, regression testing, and validation. T25.48 was a shining example of complete lack testing and release methodology. In fact, a few forum members and I had the update on our radios about four months prior to the OTA being pushed to the MY22s. We encountered all the issues posted here and had them resolved in about half a day with a few minor BCM tweaks but that's not an option for 99.9% of the people. So what was Uconnect doing in that time? We were 3/3 on surround view issues and 2/3 on the menus disappearing so it's not like those issues were rare occurrences.
If they are going to be lax with testing/validation and they don't plan on fixing the OTA issues (going on 7-8 years now, not holding my breath), then they should at least make it easy to get the updates once they're available. Getting them ourselves would be great but even the dealers being able to download them on day one instead of having to jump through hoops would be a massive improvement. I really don't expect to see any meaningful changes in their processes any time soon as they have had these issues for years and nothing has changed. Maybe one day, who knows.