Comment 6 for bug 1346355

1. If someone never shuts down or restarts unless explicitly prompted, absolutely that changes "where it is accomplished"; for them, it is only ever accomplished in places that aren't the power-cog. Furthermore, if they are the only user of their computer, and whenever they need System Settings they use the Launcher (where it is included by default), the power-cog may be something they never use at all, and have no comprehension of.

2. Status icons are sometimes okay for communicating long-lasting things, but more important or urgent things usually require something bigger. For example, when the battery is getting moderately low, the battery status icon goes red; but when the battery is critically low, you get a dialog. When you are connected to Wi-Fi, the network menu icon shows this; but when you need to enter your Wi-Fi password, you get a dialog. And the sound status icon shows the current volume, but if you press a key to change the volume, confirmation is shown in a notification bubble. These examples illustrate that a status icon is not "the normal Ubuntu method of communicating information"; it is just one method among several. Web popups are a red herring: people don't hate popups when Google Docs uses them, just when advertisements use them. And if you decline to restart after installing updates that need it, Software Updater will remind you again in a day or a week (depending on whether they're security updates), just as it would if you hadn't installed them at all.

I do not doubt your parents' experience, I say only that it is an outlier. Improving the branding of Software Updater is bug 510212.