If the updates add additional features and seldom fail then customers generally like them
It's when the updates either don't add any new features, or worse, remove existing features (even if they add other new features), then users complain
This isn't limited to firmware/kernel updates.
The KDE and GNOME '.0' updates are perfect examples of updates that remove some things that existing users notice and therefor people are unhappy with them, even though the developers add a lot of new features as well.