I don’t completely understand why people compare this to Windows 10 as if that’s a bad thing. If you have any kind of history in the computing industry (or indeed didn’t live under a rock over the Windows 95 through Windows 7 era) you’d recall how users didn’t update their systems, and thus missed out on security updates. The platform was rampant with virulent malware. Having a system which encourages people to stay up-to-date is a good thing.
Why no toggle? Because we want to ensure people are up to date, that there’s no machines out there running outdated and insecure software. Sure, we could put a big fat switch in there which turns off updates, and that would please you and a few other users.
Meanwhile what we have seen happen is bloggers write articles listing “10 things to do after installing Ubuntu” and one would be “Turn off updates”, “Just click this button”. Users will blindly copy and paste the instructions, turn off updates, and thus be less secure. This is not hypothetical, it happens. They don’t understand the implications of their actions. There are millions more of those people than there are of you. We try to cater to the widest possible audience we can, so we try and do the best for the majority, which is, automatic updates, not easily turned off.