Granted it's nontrivial to implement, but when up2date is obtaining an
updated package list, the UI is blocked.  Without some external indication
of network activity (modem lights or something), the behavior is externally
indistinguishable from an app hang for as long as it takes to download the
package list.  Over a modem, that's 15-30sec, too long for a UI to stick.
Obviously a percentage-complete download progress indicator would be ideal,
but just a back-and-forth progress ticker thing would do, esp. if the
operation is made abortable from the UI, and could be done readily by
forking a download process.