Not necessarily..
Whenever I start a new browser window, it shows me a big splash screen with a prominent 'Tableteer' button. I imagine most users will sooner rather than later click this button. It says 'Get support' and other things above the button, after all.

On this page it immediately tells me that I have an old software version, and that I need to upgrade. There's also a link there to 'Remind me again when the software's available'. This would have taken care of the earlier SDHC corruption problem, eventually. It would also take care of the boot problem, although there's a potential catch 22 there of course..

On the same page there's a list of 'Featured downloads', and it changes all the time. There's also a presentation of a couple of applications, today I see Xournal and Maemo Mapper, with nice pictures.

In short, users won't be cut off from upgrades or great applications even if they've never heard of ITT, or if they do but choose to ignore it.