This "miscellaneous change" caught my eye last night when checking out the notes for 5.5 Beta 1. "Plugins and themes can now be updated by uploading a ZIP file." It makes sense to me and definitely seems like a long overdue feature.

It'll be interesting to see how well automatic theme and plugin updates work out for the community. It sounds risky to advise people to 'set it and forget it.' Will 'plugin and theme updates' still be a key feature for maintenance plans?