In reply to Jesse Petersen.

The point isn't just safety, it's also "what does this update break?". Besides wordpress core updates, there are themes and plugins and they all can break too. Automatic updates allow any third party to submit something that just won't work for your installation, and as long as that change passes the basic WP checks, you get an automatic update and as a result, an automatically broken website.

This is VERY common when dealing with themes. Some designers have no problems completely changing the content of a theme and keeping the same name, which means if you updated, you get their new design, even if it's entirely incompatible with your site. I have seen themes with broken headers, missing CSS code, and themes that were unable to render a single page after an "update".

I can't take hundreds of chances for every update that comes up. The failure rate is just high enough to mean that almost every update will break something.

Oh, and not to worry, I have decent scripts and methods to do server based automatic updates - when I am ready to do them.

It points out perhaps another issue, the difference between core security updates, and "we added a flashy thingie sidebar widget" theme updates.