Slashdot Mirror
Apple Releases - Doing Less, Faster, Is Better?
"I can't remember how long Microsoft took to release W2K service pack 1, but I know there is still no service pack 2. Even Linux kernel (stable) releases are not commonly in the 2-3 week range. So is Apple doing the right thing to get SOMETHING out there? Or are they disenfranchising their user base by coming out with too little too fast?"
An embellishment to the above: as long as there are tools to tailor the upgrades of a system to the user's specific desires, who cares how often providers update their own packages? Such an updater would check the upstream package catalog and apply multiple criterion on each updated package which would determine if that update is applied. I would suggest that the two basic criterion one would apply for updates would be severity and duration. Couple this with forced inclusion and exclusion lists and an administrator would be able to configure the system to apply only those packages that they need upgraded at the appropriate time, and quite possibly without the need of administrator intervention (depending, of course, on how much the administrator trusts the upstream).
With such a system in place, who cares how often Apple, Red Hat, Debian, Microsoft or <insert vendor here> updates their software packages? You'll have what you need, as often as you need it.
How difficult would it be to adapt the existing updating systems to serve this purpose? Is someone close to putting this into place, now?
This may be the dumbest article ever posted to Slashdot. No one is forcing the users to update. They can do it manually on their own time, whenever they wish to. I don't know why anyone wouldn't think of this as being a good thing. Give me a break, this is a non-story.
As a pre-Public Beta nerd, I must say that it's been nothing but smooth sailing from one update to another. Prolly mostly lucky, though... one thing i feel happy about is that if the user runs the update _much_ less than the default setting, he still gets _everything_ he missed (at his discression, of course)... so the update process is quite painless, even for the folks who's updates are few and far between....
Except that when Microsoft adds a couple new one it's plan is to eliminate competition from the other companies who have been traditionally been selling their products. If MS ships a version that does most everything about as well as the competition bundled with the OS, must people won't look to someone else to write a slightly better version. The distros are shipping others software, usually not righting their own. The software being shipped is also free in most cases, so noone is losing out here.
...)
:)
So? So what if microsoft ships their own software instead of some other guy's freeware. The point is, nobody's making money off of it. The whole criticism of MS is that they're shoving existing commercial products out of the marketplace by funding free apps with money they earn selling Windows (which still turns huge profits). I don't know if it's good or bad. But the difference with linux is very, very small. Are you going to complain to linus and red hat because his kernel and their distro are shoving commercial unix makers out of the market? It's a fact of life. Nobody's forcing people to keep using the bundled tools, and microsoft is about the only OS maker out there who don't bundle that many tools with their OS currently. Which we critisize, so it's a bit hypocritical when you say it's wrong that they start bundling stuff.
Too me the big difference is that I look at Windows with it's 400 meg install and then look at a 400 meg RedHat install, and compare the functionality. With most Linux distro's I get a majority of the tools I need for my daily use. I get a gui, development tools, word proccessing, internet, and multimedia players. From their I may have to do updates if I want more recent versions and a few extra apps, but most stuff is there. With Windows I still would have to install Office, Ms Dev Studio, WinAmp, and all of the little tools that I may want.
You only need gcc in linux if you intend to compile your own software, and very few regular users actually do that with the recent distro's. I personally don't even do that on my debian servers, because I prefer to stick with the debian package collection. The only thing you really need gcc for is the kernel, which in windows is distributed in binary instead of source form (especially all the binary drivers). I ran Windows for years (in fact, I still run it on my desktop) and I never needed MS dev studio to add functionality to the system. I only needed it when I wanted to fool around writing my own apps (and ofcourse I didn't use it then, but turned to the vastly superior Delphi).
A 400 meg windows install does give you a lot of functionality, but it's not that obvious. You have word processing (wordpad), you have internet (explorer, ftp, telnet), you have a multimedia player, you even have SMB file- and printersharing. It's all bundled. You don't need winamp, unless mediaplayer doesn't satisfy you. The only EXTRA stuff you need to install in Windows are mostly things that don't come preinstalled with linux either (office, high-end games, icq,
I'm not a microsoft fan. In fact, I hate their guts and I hope they rot in hell. But I still try to remain a bit impartial. Windows is not THAT much more bloated than linux AS A DESKTOP. Espescially when you compare it to a linux running KDE or GNOME. Windows doesn't come in lightweight versions though, whereas linux does. So linux is much more suited as a server OS, no matter what MS claims.
Oh, one more thing: Debian rules
I wonder who started this, but everyone likes to complain about it. Windows and Linux do not burn cd's as part of the OS, it's called an "application" program. Any real person who actually cares about this knows it's a new version of Toast that's needed, not "a new OS". Yeah, Toast 5 (never made by Apple, made by Adaptec, now Roxio) doesn't work native in OSX yet, so you have to boot in the System9 portion of OSX. Big Fucking Deal.
But, it's far too much fun for people to keep harping on this non-point, isn't it? Why do the editors keep letting troll comments into the stories themselves?
Ummm, they do. If you're running Win98 or Win2k just go to Start->Windows Update. Does everything for you and tells you what updates are available for your system. I don't understand what people are getting all high and mighty about. I don't like MS much but Win2k is a decent desktop OS and Windows Update is certainly pretty easy to use to stay up to date on patches. There's also the critical update notification thing but that's annoying. :-)
Well, I'm really glad that Whistler can burn CDs on an early beta.
Yep I can't burn CDs on my OS X, yet.
However...how many things has Microsoft not fixed with Windows 95/98/Me/NT4 in the past 6 years that are still bitting installed systems in the ass?
Things like...Microsoft IIS hole gives System-level access.
It's been out for almost 6 years...and it's not fixed?
MS OS releases have been so fun of features that get fully killed before they ship in the past it's not funny. Apple was upfront enough to annouce that they could either have CD burning in OS X or they could have Disk Burner and iTunes burn to non-Apple CD-Rs and RWs. How much support does MS offer to old OSes? Not a hell of a lot.
Where is SP7 for NT4? Oh wait, there isn't one. Where is USB support for NT4? Oh wait, there isn't going to be any.
And the list goes on and on.
My 3 OS X boxes aren't...Shakey.
In fact I have two iMacs (333 and a 400) that are used 8-12 hours a day and only have been rebooted for the updates.
The updates are nice though. I wouldn't call them too often or too infrequent.
well... the complaint is sorta too little too fast...
I guess what some would rather have is a montly "bugfixes" patch monthly rather than a "bugfix" patch weekly.
Inconceivable!
Remember? The phrase "release early, release often" is very often linked open source software. Since when is it bad to release bug fixes, performace enhancements and new functions two times a month?
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
Well, to be honest... Microsoft does provide many different mechanism to check for updates.
However you have valid criticism in that you have to check man different locations to find those updates.
There is the standard windowsupdate web site.
Then there is the hotfix check tool for IIS.
Then there is officeupdate web site.
Oh, and the occasional security hotfix which isn't specific for IIS.
Yes, it'd be very nice if every patch was on windows udpate all in one place.
Of course then the anti-Microsoft crowd would complain because Microsoft would be integrating new "Auto-Update" functionality and stifling competition with Apple.
I don't know about anyone else here, but ever since the epson printer update to osx, my printer hasn't worked at all. It can see it, but nothing gets processed further than the queue. Works fine in OS9. go figure.
You can choose manually, and never get updates if you like. Or automatically, with sub choices of daily, weekly, and monthly. No three month choice though. You could try that with cron, but I think the updater might get pissy if it fires up with no GUI user around (when it finds an update it requires an admin password to install it).
I'll note that I have mine set to daily and have never seen it do an update by itself. It may only check on login (I tend to log in and stay that way, it's my laptop after all!). I'm pretty sure it had a whole 72 hours between 10.0.3's release and when I ran the updater manually.
They seem to bundle a bunch of fixes together, and they have really vague descriptions. 10.0.3 only fixes "making sure you see all files in the Finder in really really big directories", but people have said it has sound fixes and SCSI stuff. It was less then 5M to download.
The first one was pretty big, and included bug fixes, and "new" features like ssh and sshd (which were in the Public Beta, but Uncle Sam didn't get paperwork in time to go on the CD). It also had a lot of printer issues (like support for a lot of modern low cost ink jets). It may have been as large as 14M, it took a while to load over the 144Kbit DSL. 10.0.2 was smaller, and had some fixes plus partial CD-writer support.
Apple may not be that bad, but they aren't releasing the tiny little fine grained patches you seem to want.
It doesn't beep after every word, it beeps when you have corrected or ignored (but not "Find Next"ed over) all the words. It is useful because if you are fixing up a slashdot post (the spell checker is available from all Coco text editing widgets, including the web browser I use) with somebody else's misspelled text, you want to leave those words alone. The beep reminds you that you have gotten a full pass even if there is still underlined misspelled words left.
(at least I want to leave the quoted text uncorrected -- I don't like to muck with someone else's words, plus it may make me look subtly smarter by having the only correctly spelled half of the argument....)
Other people's canned "actions" (aka macros). There is a pretty good one for reducing the Canon EOS-D30 high ISO noise that needs PhotoShop six (or at least it claims it does - I don't have PS6)
That's why I actually kind of like the software subscription model, pay for support, bug fixes, and continuous updates. No big push to add cool sounding features to get people to upgrade, or making it look different, or make it have a non backwards compatible file format. No big push to get the product out on time, even if that means more bugs.
I'm not thrilled with the idea of the software no longer working if you fail to make a payment though.
I have. My sound seems a little flaky, like the spell checker doesn't beep when it has corrected the last word. Other people have reported worse. However there are few of them, so I'm guessing it is mostly good.
I think Apple really needs an "undo update".
However I'm use to the fast small release cycle, and I like it.
Thus Apple is recognizing that the folks running MacOS X right now aren't the the usual it-came-in-it crowd. These folks have gone out and paid US$120 for Mac OS X and installed it before any "business case" could be made.
In reponse Apple is serving these early-adopters by releasing everything as it is developed. These folks want the very-latest & greatest, paid for it, and Apple will give them what they want; at least until the rest of their market begins to catch up.
What's been put out so far? Really nothing more then re-incorporating some material from the beta releases that weren't cleared in time for the Golden Master. A few bug-fixes, a minor update or two bringing things like MacOS X iTunes up to par with it's MacOS 9 cousin.
The important thing to realize is that these are 10.0n patches, minor minor things. For Wintel folks they'd be the little items that appear on the Windows Update pages or hidden in MS's tech bulletins. For *nix folks they're the little stuff that gets updated every week.
All of these are available to MacOS folks using the built-in Software Update service. Indeed different sets of updates are available to both the MacOS X & MacOS X folks at about comparable frequency.
The update service can be set to run on various simple schedules (days of week & time) as either prompted or unprompted installs. Of course it can also be run manually whenever the user wants to or not set and not used.
Presumably in July when Apple holds it's big rollout of installed MacOS X the frequency of updates will begin to slow. At that time most folks are hoping Apple's work on an updated packaging system will be ready to implement and as part of it a more sophisticated update service will be used.
As part of a next-gen update service some sort of major/minor change hierarchy is expected to be implemented as well as opening the updates to non-Apple packages (currently these have been mostly second-tiered to Apple's free-to-Mac's iDisk service.)
All of this will likely appear as part of the rumored MacOS 10.5 for the installed release. This will also coincide with a predicted across-the-board hardware refresh and at that time Apple will presumably begin their big MacOS X advertising push (notably quiet so far.)
So, back to the original question - is Apple releasing too many minor patches too often? Probably not considering who the MacOS X user base is right now and what they're likely looking for. Come July this will all begin to change and presumably then so will Apple's update-system.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I was wondering about that, too. I quite like it, though i'd prefer to have a lot more information about what is being updated.
I think there are two main reasons for this. Firstly, nobody is really denying that as release versions go, this is very betaish. i think apple must be quietly rather glad that the big names haven't arrived yet and only the dedicated are actually using the new system. A lot of what we're downloading is stuff that didn't get finished in time, like iTunes.
The rest of what's in those packages is mostly updates to open source projects - whatever ftpd we're using, and so on. OSX is a patchwork of different systems, and i think we're benefitting from the find-it-and-fix it approach of the oss ingredients while the apple systems go on in their stately way.
My only gripe is that they're still releasing monolithic updates in the old apple tradition. If you look at a page like the cobalt raq updates list, there are dozens - they're at least as frequent as the apple ones - but smaller, and they all include a list of their ingredients and the circumstances under which you might need to use them. Then every so often they release a big one that bundles them all together and make a big fuss about it.
Which strikes me as a very good system: tiny updates for the paranoid edge, and big friendly packages for the gui crowd. As it stands, the apple system makes it hard to know whether or not you should be concerned about a problem that you've read about, for example.
On the other hand, 10.0.0.1 included a bang-up-to-date installation of ssh and sshd, without making any fuss at all, and installed it at the push of a delicately tinted button. i remember it being a little more complicated than that on my redhat box...
There is no Windows 97. Confused people would report running "Windows 97" if they were running Windows 95/98 and had Office 97 installed.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
I think Apple is doing the right thing. Mac OS X is obviously in its infancy. Apple is not recommending that people install Mac OS X as their primary OS. At this point, the only people using it are early adopters who most likely don't mind frequent updates.
Now, if Mac OS X was mainstream - Apple's default operating system, then I would feel the update cycle is too quick. Joe Average User doesn't like constant updates, even if he isn't forced to install them. This tends to cause version confusion, a tech support nightmare. (Windows 97, anyone?)
There are a million little things that need to be smoothed out in OS X - I don't expect Apple to do it in a series of quarterly updates. Microsoft operates on a large Service Packs that change an unwieldly number of items. Of course, we've all hear horror stories about the service pack that brought down the server.
Personally, I'm waiting for Mac OS X 2 - or is that Mac OS XI?
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
I think the way to fix is to come up with a standard version identifier structure for Darwin modules, and, by extension, *BSD and Unix executables in general. This would also help tools like the BSD package system that really have nothing to rely on but the date or name of the file or some entry in the package system to figure out if it's up to date.
1. Updates frequently are great. You find a set of bugs, fix them, w/o having to wait for a monlithic update that could be hampered by one bug that cant be fixed.
2. Because of the way X handles its packages/frameworks, its very hard to break a program, id assume, since old calls of the same name are not overwritten, if a program makes a call to a specific version of that call, it will always be there. I think thats the gist of it, you can read more Here, at ars-technica
And Mr.Adams... So long, and thanks for all the fish, you will be missed...
"Stuff... In my home!? NEVER!" - Zim on Invader Zim
"I want the toilet seat!" - Little Dog on Two Stupid Dogs
They are not "forcing" you to update by any means. You can easily, in a two-click-away obvious panel called Software Update, set a schedule or have it only done manually. You can also have it prompt you before it actually does anything or just do it automagically. The updates have not been anything drastic to really cause breakage. They are, in my experience thusfar, been relatively minor compared to the degree of change that was made just in going from OS 9, OS X. They have all been improvements, however.
I must say I like coming home in the evening and finding that a new update has been put out there, every few weeks or so. No matter how small. They have all been cleanly and painlessly installed. So I would just as soon have them now than later.
Alot of the updates have included security related updates. Like 10.0.2 had a fix for the FTP globbing attack. Apple seems to be really paranoid about security. They know what comes with giving a person a unix distribution under the hood. I personally like seeing lots of updates, especially when they have to do with security. Cheers, Tomas
Cheers,
Tomas
===========
System wide CD-burning service which works just like file-copying is great.
But is it really necessary? 3rd party S/W companies will do it. And please try reading this article ( from Slashdot ).
Same issue, different view-Rivals Upset At Windows XP Features
Isn't it interesting? Same things are considered differently by Windows and Mac communities.
If Windows didn't ship with a web browser, how easy would it be for the average user to find and download another browser?
While it would no doubt be difficult it is also somewhat irrelevant.
When installing the MacOS (at least the last several versions through 9.x, I haven't tried X yet) you get a choice of Netscape or IE, although IE is the default these days. Something to do with MS investing in Apple.
And the user can choose to remove either or both Netscape or IE.
I expect the situation is similar for Linux, a true choice of browsers.
With Windows you also get a choice of browsers, but you must have IE installed.
Not what I would call a true choice.
Steve M
Remember that this is open source. So theoretically, if there are major fixes that need to be had, you (and friends?) can do them yourself. If there are minor tweaks, it's even easier and more likely. It's too bad people are treating Apple like the bad guy (albeit in a strange way) because THEY are providing fixes, rather than independents.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Don't let the shiny box fool you. This is the real beta test of the OS X. The previous test was more like an alpha.
:)
Since it's a beta, I want bugfixes fast and furious. As others have identified, the updates are totally under the users' control. Personally, I run home everyday and fire up the Update control panel to see if anything's new
My only gripe is that I wish Apple would document the updates better. The list of changes/fixes/known issues is too sparse to be useful. The more we know, the more we can help the developers!
Never refuse a breath mint.
I use MacOS X as my mostly main OS these days. I still shuttle into 9 from time to time, but X is starting to replace it for me. 10.0.0 was not good enough to be my main OS. On my G3/300 (160M RAM), X ran too slowly. By 10.0.3, it's reasonably snappy. It's not great, but it's usable. I'm really happy with their constant updates. They aren't profound, but the OS gets faster with every one, and little things keep getting fixed. I'd rather have it this way than one big update every six months. Updating is easy. I start the update, then I go and do something else on the computer, and a while later, I hit restart. Boom, updated. If you don't want to update, nothing forces you to. If you do want to update, it's simple.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I think that they are probably focusing on the issue of fixing one bug at a time and doing it right rather than trying to fix all the bugs at once and then doing it half assed like M$ would. I don't use OS X but would you rather have to download one huge patch every 6 months to a year (4-15Meg) or would you rather have 6 to 12 patches that were maybe smaller (1 - 2Megs). So how big are the patches? Are they small ones here and there that fix things without braking something else or are they like M$ where they fix lots of things add new features and then add more bugs at the same time?
Sorry I am not a big fan of M$ as they keep making there software 'easier' to use they make it more bloated and 'all in one' and then stuff it at you. Why is it that when you install Windows now a days you get IE and cannot get ride of it?
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Some of you might not be as ancient to remember this, but years ago Apple took over 6 months to patch the ping-of-death problem that would instantly take out Mac boxes on the internet. So, better the current way than the way they used to handle it.
Cheers,
Will we be seeing a quick succession of releases in the future? I don't think so. Here's why. Mac OS X 10.0 was released on 24 March. Mac OS 10.0.1 was released on 13 March, two weeks after the release, but it was six weeks after RTM, about time period you would expect such an update to occur. At the time of X's release, Steve Jobs promised that CD burning would be available by the end of April, and Apple released 10.0.2 on 1 May, three weeks after 10.0.1, in order to comply with Job's mandate, and to coincide with an Apple media event on that date. Why did Apple release 10.0.3 less than two weeks later? Apple's been good about obfuscating the reasons for the release, but the reason for 10.0.3 was to fix a serious bug that was introduced in 10.0.2! If you had a directory with a large number of files (> 1000 or so), then listing a directory would not work. Filenames might be repeated or missing. It was a stupid bug, obviously caused because the developers were under the gun to release 10.0.2 prematurely. Hopefully, Apple has learned its lesson, and won't make new releases without proper regression testing.
Updates can be configured to happen on whatever schedule the user chooses... daily, weekly, monthly, manually, whenever.
Most of the present day OSX users are power-users, though, so they're either doing it manually when they find out about updates, or they've got it set to check for updates daily.
"Keeping the updates flowing is one thing, but forcing users to update every 2-3 weeks? That might ... "
be a bit too much. I don't know much about OS X, but if the upgrades system can be configured to the users taste, and said configuration done in a user-friendly way, then maybe monthly updates might not be a bad thing
the software updates in OS X (and in 9.x as well) are done automatically by the system, tho the default configuration is to check the software updates servers periodically in the background, then ask the user which updates that are available he wants to download and install
the process is amazingly apple-like: painless and transparent, at most requiring a reboot (with system-level component updates. things like itunes are finished when the download uncompresses)
it's also user configurable to go ahead and get every update as it appears, or none at all - requiring the user to click a button to manually check for updates.
this is the kind of thing that a lot of systems are aiming for, including, among others, Red Hat's update agent, which i think falls farthest from the mark. not to criticize RH, but it's the only other example i have on my desk at the moment with which to compare. i know the W2k update agent works well anecdotally, but its little balloon popups are really annoying...
my point? did i have one?
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
This is one of the primary tenants of Extreme Programming. I find it strange how Slashdot can embrace that philosophy on one hand, and blast companies that practice it on the other.
At least Apple has the guts to admit their software isn't perfect and are doing something positive about it. Many other companies should learn from this.
--
Matt
Matt
First of all, I think you are assuming Mac OS X is a "stable" release. Despite what Apple marketing may say, it's not.
So, let's compare Apple's 2-3 week thing to say Debian Woody, or the BSD-current trees, or even a *stable* RedHat?
How about Gnome's updater thingy? Or Sun's patch distribution schedule of every two weeks?
What I'm saing is, this isn't new. The mantra of the Open Source/Linux/Slashdot community has always been "update often" so why is Apple ridiculed for it?
You certainy don't HAVE to update, no one is forcing you to. You just run the updater and if you like what you see, you click the checkbox and then click 'update'.
And since OS X is as shakey as it is... you'll always want to click 'update'.
I prefer a schedule where only major updates are done once every few months.
Yeah, and in the meantime your server is wide open to attackers. Most compromises of Windows systems occur because of the patch every few months mentality.
The fact is that good security requires the holes be plugged as soon as they are discovered.
Windows XP can.
Sounds nice, except it isn't a released product.
I just downloaded/installed 10.0.3 today. It was 15MB, + 1.1MB for Epson drivers, plus the iTunes update (5-6MB?). 10.0.2 was ~14MB... I remember because my DSL had just crapped out and I had to drive to work to install it as my dial-up account craps out after 5MB of simultaneous download (I feel sorry for people still on dial-up heh).
Just thought I'd point that out, as 1-2MB and 14-15MB is a pretty big difference.
I do have to say though, it's really worth doing the updates. I don't care if they come out with new ones every day... my system does run a little better after each patch. Kudos to the OSX team.
As for the Updater, the default is for it to check Apple's ftp for updates once a week. You can change that to daily, every couple weeks, monthly, never. I do it manually. Nobody is forced to do any updates, so there is no such thing as 'too many updates'.
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
It did some weird stuff to the sound on my PowerBook (Pismo) as well. I'm dual booting, and now when I boot into 9.1 it says the sound can't be adjusted because it's in use by another app. So now I have no sound in 9.1 at all. Sux.
:)
Another gripe I have is that I can't adjust the display brightness with the keyboard buttons until I open the Display Prefs. And I can't spin my hard disk down to conserve battery power like I could in 9.1. I guess they still have a long way to go with power management in OSX.
Ohh well, the fact that I can drop into a cozy shell environment whenever I want makes up for it.
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
It seems that the OS X package installer program doesn't allow this anymore (at least not that I could figure out.
Bummer.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
The original Mac OS was tweaked continiously for 17 years.
Yes, every time you installed an extension you were tweaking the OS. Cute little system.
Don't try that "protecting the children" shit you people use to keep the tits and bad words off my TV. --Seanbaby
Apple makes the updates really easy. You just click on the update button. It chugs along, downloading files. Then it's done. Nothing else. If you're really unlucky, you have to restart. That's it. If you guys are used to installing an update to Windows, it's much easier than that.
For those of you used to Microsoft's
updates, Apple's updates make the OS
run better and faster. This is a
good thing.
There's a difference. Windows isn't bloated for the footprint. You can footprint either at a few hundred meg (under 3 I believe). Windows is bloated because you are forced to install all of this stuff that takes up so much memory. W2k runs well under 128megs ram. And distros that usually come with 4 cd's (ala freebsd [yes, its an OS, not really a distro]), but as I sit here, cd1 has all the packages you CAN install and the os. 3 an 4 have extra ones that aren't standard and cd 2 has a live file system you can boot off of and use, like an emergency disc. So you see, windows is not bloated by footprint. its bloated by its memory usage. Almost like XFree86, except X is usually stable in its memory requierment :)
---
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Most complaints I've seen about Apple's frequent updates have been on the message boards at sites like MacCentral. The posters are Mac users who watch the news and download udates as soon as possible. The reason? Mac users are used to updates being released every few months. When a point-release comes out, it contains major bug fixes and performance enhancements, and newer software and hardware can sometimes require that update.
With Mac OS X, the updates have come more frequently because they're released more on a Unix schedule - a few components get updated, the kernel gets a few small fixes, and the update is made available for those who have been joshing for the small fixes in the update. Performance and stability is enhanced in each release, but it isn't the dramatic change Mac users have been used to.
Thus, the MacOS power users, the ones that check the news sites at least once a day for the latest and greatest, are having trouble adapting to the new model. They're expecting significant, noticeable improvements with each release. They haven't noticed that while the updates to OS 9 have come less frequently and been larger, the updates to components of OS 9 have been about as frequent as those to OS X - it's just that instead of getting an OS 9 point release to update TCP/IP, the system profiler, and game sprockets, those updates have been separate entries in the list of available updates. OS X's point releases have affected the same parts of the system, but have been wrapped into a single package. Since the same users who complain about the frequency of OS X's updates are the same ones who check the software update control panel and download every update, they just need to adjust to the new model to see that all Apple's done is bundle the updates they'd already been releasing frequently and bundled them with smaller fixes they usually wouldn't get until the next massive OS upgrade.
For my part, when I saw the frequent updates to OS X, I thought it was great - I'd already been a Linux user, so small, frequent updates are nothing new to me. But they are new to most people who have used Mac OS or Windows exclusively. The whines will stop with time, when they adjust to the "new" model.
Naked.
Wow, a Slashdot discussion that doesn't revolve around Linux!
In speaking of operating systems, for system maintenance, my opinion is that less is more. I prefer a schedule where only major updates are done once every few months. This allows for admins or users to do a re-installation and only need to worry about installing one central package (a Service Pack, for instance) instead of a group of smaller patches. It simplifies and streamlines the setup.
I think the way Microsoft releases updates and Service Packs through Windows Update is a good system. The major packages, as I've spoken, are released every several months. One big installation takes care of everything - updates to Internet Explorer, security patches, etc. In between those times, critical updates are made available as well, but then incorporated into the larger package update at a later point in time. If I need a smaller update, it's available, but eventually I can get it in a bigger, easier-to-install package. This seems to me to be a good solution.
Amazingly, the engine took this into account.
Update 10.0.1 -> 10.0.3 = 15MB Download
Update 10.0.2 -> 10.0.3 = something like 1.9MB
I don't remember the exact figures, but Software Update knew the difference and downloaded the appropriate files.
woof!
I had been asking myself the same question! :)
On the other hand, I suspect that the OSX interface is a heck of a lot friendlier than apt... albeit much less powerful (with respect to installing new software and removing software).
Let's recap.
The retail version, Mac OS X 10.0, was released on March 24. The 10.0.1 update followed about 1-2 weeks later. This was mainly bug fixes and minor performance enhancements. This update was anticipated. On May 1, 10.0.2 was posted. This brought CD burning in Tunes, a fix for a possible ftp daemon exploit, and some updates to the mail client. Again, not an unexpected update. Apple had announced this would be coming.
I suspect the point at which people were a bit suprised is when 10.0.3 showed up a few days ago. It had only been about a week since the last update. This was probably an unscheduled update. The main (and perhaps, only) purpose of this update was to fix a bug where HFS+ volumes would not list the entire contents of directories in certain situations with many (>300) files.
Here's some details that I think were missed:
o The 10.0.3 update incorporates everything in 10.0.2
o The updates are optional
o You can configure your machine to check for updates automatically or manually
o Apple eventually posts the updates as self-contained archives
It's not surprising that the Mac people would be surprised and perhaps distraught at the idea of frequent updates. It was not unusual for updates of Mac OS 8/9 (aka "Classic Mac OS") to break applications/extensions or cause them to behave erratically. This was largely due to the architecture. However, I don't think some poeple realize how drastically different the architecture is in Mac Os X.
Previously, Apple would let bugs (even some relatively serious ones) go unfixed in Mac OS 8/9 until the next scheduled update. This was probably due to the fact that the operating system was a mountain of procedural spagetti code dating back to 1984. Not only did this make things hard to fix, but putting out one fire might cause another to flare up.
Now that Apple is working with a reasonable software foundation, they can move updates out the door much more swiftly, and with less fear that they're going to tumble the house of cards. I think this is a good thing, especially when update addresses a filesystem bug. But the Mac community is not exactly known for embracing change with open arms...
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I'm also not sure when SP1 was released but SP2 *just* appeared today so the article intro is slightly incorrect. Also, remember that Microsoft do provide other updates than just service packs - that's what the whole "Windows Update" thing is for.
They don't have to force you. They just tweak the system to avoid giving you a choice. If a rival Office suite came in tomorrow with an install program that made *.doc files open with their suite, for your convenience, the next service pack of windows would come in with a new method for opening *.doc files that overrides any previous mime type, file extension, registry class, etc, etc, etc, just to fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Sure, you aren't being forced. Sheep like you aren't forced, they are led.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
It's no fuckin' troll, you idiont. Steve Jobs himself promised it on the OS level, so you obviously don't know what the hell you're talking about!
That 1 gig was with X, development tools, and LateX. You can definitly shrink it down pretty low if you don't need all that functionality.
Certainly they should be free to write/buy whatever software they want to, but I think that including it in the OS can be bad for users in the long run. It definitly is something that we have to look at carefully before we decide it's either a good thing or a bad thing.
Microsoft has a very powerful position as the defacto standard in home operating systems, and as such I think should have to play by different rules than others should have to.
How is Apple any different? Media Player => Quicktime + iTunes. Windows Movie Maker => Quicktime + iMovie. I'm sure there are other examples but I try not to get any Apple on me these days. Heck, even Sherlock replaces several Shareware and Commercial products which used to be around on MacOS.
Not defending Apple for doing it either
Right, now microsoft only sells major release number updates, and gives us the point releases for free via the web and/or service packs. Even from NT 3.51, though, the commercial-intent packages have given you point releases for free, in the form of NT service packs. Windows 9x really should have been much cheaper ($50?) since the "framework" it provides to you is really seriously limited. Then, paying for major revisions wouldn't have felt so ridiculous.
Microsofts update system is much better now, and NT's service pack and hotfix system has always been fairly good. My biggest complaint was with Windows 95 and to a lesser extent 98. How many revisions of 95 did Microsoft put out, I think it was 4 maybe 5. Out of those only the first edition could be purchased in stores, the rest had to be obtained through OEM's who were willing to illegally sell the cds without a new hard drive or motherboard, or with a new system. This mean no upgrade version, you paid the full $120 upgrade price for essentially bugfixes ontop of the OS you bought originally. To add insult to injury MS clearly posted on their website that only some of the bugfixes were available without the new version. 98 was a reasonable version to sell as a new version, although even then the $99 upgrade price was a bit steep for what didn't seem all that different. They really did a good job with the $50 upgrade with ME, even if I don't particularly like the new product.
As for NT and 2000, MS always seems to have done a much better job on it, look at the major releases. 3.5, 4.0, and 5.0 (2000) have all been pretty major changes to the OS and well worthy of the upgrade prices.
We* use distributions that come with literally thousands of programs. We complain when Microsoft adds a couple to their new OS/Distro.
Except that when Microsoft adds a couple new one it's plan is to eliminate competition from the other companies who have been traditionally been selling their products. If MS ships a version that does most everything about as well as the competition bundled with the OS, must people won't look to someone else to write a slightly better version. The distros are shipping others software, usually not righting their own. The software being shipped is also free in most cases, so noone is losing out here.
We call Windows bloated at 400MB, but when someone points out that distro X takes 7 CD's, we defend that distro
The 7 cds doesnt necesarrily reflect the installed size. Debian's package archive is about 4 gigs, yet it can happily be installed and used on a 1 gig hard drive, and the default install takes 50 megs. Redhat seems to take about 600 megs in it's default install, but it can be adjusted down to maybe 300 megs. Too me the big difference is that I look at Windows with it's 400 meg install and then look at a 400 meg RedHat install, and compare the functionality. With most Linux distro's I get a majority of the tools I need for my daily use. I get a gui, development tools, word proccessing, internet, and multimedia players. From their I may have to do updates if I want more recent versions and a few extra apps, but most stuff is there. With Windows I still would have to install Office, Ms Dev Studio, WinAmp, and all of the little tools that I may want.
We're happy to use software that updates several times a month, some update daily. When Apple releases two patches in one month, we say their forcing people to update against their will or something.
Agreed on this one, as long as the patches are free I say update them on a reular basis. I only have problems with the way Microsoft used to do updates, sell a new version of Windows. I for one usually update my debian systems every other day or so.
Vorbis is not "token" ... even the beta sound encoders at default encoding (~128k variable) sound much better than all the 128k MP3's I've heard.
... basically expanding an mp3 out to a wav, then re-encoding it (which can be an expensive operation on slower computers).
In addition, Vorbis has a *neat* feature that if you have a 256k OGG file (OGG ~= MP3), then you can stream a 128k file just by chopping each packet in half. This is "realtime downprocessing", and you *can't* do that with MP3's. To stream a 256k MP3 at 128k, you'd have to do something like: mpg123 blah.mp3 -o [stdout] | lame [stdin] -br128 | shoutcast
Don't be so quick to dismiss OGG just yet.
--Robert
I've noticed this disturbing trend on /.
People say "**** anyone?" and I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. What the hell is Windows97?
I think Apple really needs an "undo update".
/Library/Receipts
I haven't actually tried this with an update, as nothing's broken on mine, but if you go to:
on your OS X drive, you'll see receipts for the updates, which under OS X Server at least, you could doubleclick to uninstall the updates.
i don't read slashdot anymore.
What the fodge? Who moderated the parent of this? It's a -1, Troll dammit! Still, I allow myself to be trolled and continue typing ...
Actually, I believe that IE allows you to look at NS all you want - in fact, it lets you look at just about everything out there on the web, since *that* is what it was designed for.
I assume by 'that' you are referring to the majority of the web. You are correct that the web was designed for IE. IE's standards (coff, coff) are botched. I use Mozilla and as a content producer am extremely happy with its support of standard standards. A lot of websites display poorly in standards compliant user agents because they were designed around the flawed algorithms in IE.
It complies with mail standards just fine,
Which mail standards?
AND I can check Hotmail without having to use the web interface. Oh no, it's the tool of Satan!
You use Hotmail???
Well, no, actually, their addons don't limit anyone's choice.
You are a naive silly little boy. Go back to kindy. Have you ever talked to someone using a piece of trash? Do they want to change? No, because their piece of trash works just fine for them.
If I was to say to someone ... don't use MSThat, use This ... they would say: But why? MSThat already does what I want to do, and it is installed already!
MS has abused its position of being the desktop of choice for clones (such as yourself) and you get people who are too lazy to install a technically superior product because they already have something 'good enough'.
Go back under that rock again. If you missed the DOJ vs MS then you ... well ... just go back under that rock already!
Unless you feel that if you've already got MSN Messenger then it'd be an unholy act for you to install AIM as well.
Apple. Orange.
Totally different systems.
because it actually IS convenient to have all sorts of goodies already installed on the machine
Convenient for who? The consumer to have to take the extra step of removing WMP? It is convenient for the supplier to boast and say ... Well hey, 4101998 people installed our product
Bottom line is you don't know what you're talking about. Go home to Mummy and ask her to put that rock back on your head where it belongs and where it has been for the last five years.
I forgot to mention, if MS says it, people will do it.
When the installer says you should have IE, OE, Msgr, WMP, YATLA, ETC, etc they will install it and will never hear about any competitors. Will anyone who has WMP go searching for a media player? No, because they already have one that does the job (to some degree of success).
Want to try this out? Want to see how automated Windows users are?
Here's how ...
Stand near someone using a computer. When a dialog comes up and they dismiss it ask them what the dialog said.
I'll bet they just slammed space or enter as soon as it appeared and chose the default option and won't have a clue what was asked.
The bug fixes so far have fixed some rather significant problems, and added features that were essentially "missing" from OS X (as in, they'd been there in OS 9).
The thing to keep in mind is that OS X 10.0.x is still an "early adopters'" release, and early adopters have been screaming for these updates. I'm sure the 10.1 release in July will be more stable with respect to updates (as far as stability - with respect to SYSTEM stability, 10.0.x is solid so far.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
for example I replace ssh with a current version, say perhaps a development version, but it does not matter. What happens when apple revs ssh? do they stomp all over mine? what if my ssh is older will they rev it then, or if I have touched it do they ignore it? can I replace the stupid curses library safely with ncurses? or will the attempt to put back the older broken stuff? sendmail with postfix, or perl or tk etc... and as I see it one does want to do this, as they have a rather antiquated version of bsd they are pushing.
I really can't comprehend why some people are now comlpaining about updates every 2-3 weeks for an OS from a major company.. it would seem like a great blessing, instead of the nuiscance(sp?) that the artile betrays it to be.. Updates are of course not mandatory either, I guess i'd rather get frequent updates than none at all!! any thoughts?
it should be noted that 10.0.3 was only 15MB if you didn't install 10.0.1 and/or 10.0.2. software update seems to detect what you've installed, and if you haven't upgrade your last "n" patches, it rolls them all up into one. i had installed 10.0.2, so 10.0.3 was less than a 500kb update for me.
this is great of course: if you want to upgrade your box every few days with every little update you can. alternatively if you only want to upgrade every six months you can do that also as all of the previous patches that you missed will be rolled into one big update for you.
additionally these updates also include security fixes (ie ftpd was upgraded in 10.0.3) which is necessary for any serious unix-like system.
in the end the way Apple is doing their updates is exactly as it should be. it's elegant, it doesn't force you to do it if you don't want to and it keeps your software up-to-date with the latest security patches. the only potential issues i can find right now are that there's no clean way to uninstall a patch if there's a problem, and they don't provide a lot of information with each patch. i'm not sure about the technical issues regarding the former, but with any luck the latter will be improved upon soon with enough feedback (that Apple actually seems to be reading!!)
anyhow this story is very troll-like, but i've seen it a lot around the 'net: there's a lot of people out there who have never tried MacOS X and jump to conclusions all the time. it's like they're going out of their way to find every reason not to like it. oh well, their loss.
- j
You've been spoiled by the "oh, one more thing" that Steve Jobs does. Perhaps you miss the old days when a system update meant you could spend the weekend after an update was released to hunt for Easter eggs, play with new features, give speech recognition another try, etc.
Apple used to be big into monolithic updates because users expected it. The dot-oh release had some huge features -- 7.0 brought new multitasking management, new system folder structure, and plenty of user interface improvements. 8.0 brought the new Platinum look, PowerPC native almost everything and additional features. 9.0 brought multiple users, speech recognition improvements, and true Carbon support.
Then we waited for the inevitable dot-one release where users were absolved for all the sins from the dot-oh release. Eventually a dot-five release would roll around bring a few more feature, followed by a dot-six release meaning Mac users should get ready for the next dot-oh release in six months.
Minor releases came for new Macs to support new hardware, but any way you looked at it, the updates came once every 6-8 months.
Today's world is different. Apple is pushing periodic updates bringing incremental updates more often, with a large dot-one release planned for June.
In my opinion, that's the way to do it. If Apple knows of something that can be fixed, then they should do it as soon as it's been quality-tested, and not wait for a big monolithic release. This is particular true for security holes (Mac OS !0.1.3 brought an improved ftpd), but it's also nice for system performance and minor bugs. I'm glad to see Apple taking this approach.
I've used Mac OS X exclusively since its release, except to play the occasional DVD on plane or backup my system. It's not as far a long as Mac OS 9 with some things, but for others it's way beyond it. Each week brings an update from Apple or another carbon-compliant application, which means that I can strip the System Folder in the Classic environment for even more performance gains and stability for those apps still left in the Classic Environment. I'm glad that I didn't have to wait until June for the system to become really usable.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
If you used Software Update and had 10.0.2 already, 10.0.3 was only 1.6 MB. The 15 MB version includes the 10.0.2 fixes as well. -tsunake
...release early, and release often, which is a good thing, in my opinion.
After all, now that they are BSD, the 31337 g4y20r script kiddeez are gonna be huntin' and targettin' all the boxen OS X they can portscan.
BTW, now that the Apple OS is BSD, and M$ has already announced an active OS X/Carbonlib/Cocoa Office porting effort, anybody else glom on to the fact that:
since Darwin ~= OS X ~= BSD ~= *BSD,
we'll be able to say that Office runs on *BSD?
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
This has been my primary frustration with Apple's OS X updates. It's not easy finding out what the update actually does, i.e. what bugs it fixes, features it adds, etc. The best I've been able to find are extremely brief explanations with little or no informative detail. Even those involved a bit of digging to locate.
My suggestion to Apple would be to add a button to the Software Update app which would bring up a detailed description of the update. Something like this would be great for people who want to know what's happening with their machines. I'm not so much afraid that they're going to screw up something important as I am simply interested in what these updates are addressing.
On the other hand, this probably made the 10.0.3 a longer download than it needed to be, because it included all the .0.2 stuff as well.
They didn't make you dl the 15 MB updater. You could have used the Apple Software Update Preference and just downloaded the several hundred kb updater from 10.0.2 to 10.0.3...
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
...where so much changed between the "official" releases that I can't update my Ximian desktop anymore because of all of the failed dependencies. (Not a flame against Ximian, who I love, but that's the truth.)
I like Apple's method of providing regular, touching-in, fix-a-few-things updates. They're small, they work, they're quick, and they let me know there are still humans on the other side of the installer.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Well, yeah, I think that's the plan. Who's complaining, really? Take Outlook Express for example. As a mail client, it does everything I want it to. Maybe I'm just not that demanding, but if I was that demanding, I'd do something similar to what I'm about to talk about.
As a news client, OE was "good enough" to get me by, but since since "good enough" doesn't quite satisfy my needs, I moved onto Agent. Perhaps my needs will outgrow Agent one day and I'll be poking around for a new one.
If MS gives people the tools to get the job done, and get it done to the users' satisfaction, then the user will stick with that piece of software until such time as they're forced by the deficiencies of their current software package to look for a better alternative. The point is, this is not a bad thing! It's a bad thing if you're trying to hawk your mail client which is OE's equal, in which case the people will be a) happy with OE and therefore will never hear of you or b) looking for something better, in which case they'll skip over your OE clone. It is a good thing, however, when you consider that this will spur alternative mail client developers to aspire to something truly great so people who have outgrown what MS has handed them will have a clear alternative!
At least you're not claiming that IE is an evil product designed to filter out any competitors software that you might come across on the web, as another post in this thread seems to claim. :)
---
Actually, I believe that IE allows you to look at NS all you want - in fact, it lets you look at just about everything out there on the web, since *that* is what it was designed for.
Outlook Express, an email client, designed to prevent users from looking at many other third party, and standards compliant, email packages
You're starting to sound a a bit off... OE, an email client. That's it. No conspiracies. It complies with mail standards just fine, AND I can check Hotmail without having to use the web interface. Oh no, it's the tool of Satan!
MSN Messenger, an IM client designed to prevent users from using AOL IM, Windows Media Player, a streaming media player, designed to prevent users from looking at RealPlayer, or worse, non-proprietry formats such as MP3, and many others
Good god man, you're so far off your rocker you're beyond help by any modern psychiatric treatments and drugs. MSN Msgr, WMP, a IM client (and that's all, again, no conspiracy) and a Media Player that blows away anything else that's available (or, at least, it blows away the competition you suggested (Real... blech)).
The specific intent of Microsoft's 'add-ons' is to avoid choice
Well, no, actually, their addons don't limit anyone's choice. Unless you feel that if you've already got MSN Messenger then it'd be an unholy act for you to install AIM as well.
By forcing the users to install this software, it becomes inefficient and potentially destructive to the stability of the system, to install third party competitors
Nobody's forcing anything. The software simply comes as part of the OS. Nobody goes out, buys the OS, installs it, only to have the MS Gestapo knocking on their door five minutes later, carrying Uzi's and WMP/IE/MSNM CD's, demanding that the software they bring be put on the machine. If some brave soul decides to take the plunge and sully their machine with RealPlayer or ICQ or some other monstrosity that you advocate as the preferable alternative to the default MS programs for those tasks, these alternatives work just fine and dandy alongside the MS software.
h as Real and AOL, or because they encourage use of commodity protocols
Oh, bravo! Real and AOL, the pioneers of all things good in this MS-dominated world. Great example.
In short, there's no comparison. Microsoft is forcing you to install software you don't necessarily want, in order to cripple the competition.
Again, they're not forcing anything. They are including it for a) their market share (duh) and b) because it actually IS convenient to have all sorts of goodies already installed on the machine without having to hunt around and download'em once you get the machine.
Anyways, yeah, I know, I got trolled, but I'm sure there's some impressionable people out there who might take what you say seriously, and possibly even buy into some of it. It's not very healthy t spread your mentality around like some sort of disease.
---
I'm guessing that this is less of a business plan for Apple, than it is a way to keep users happy. Apple wants to let its users who lack CD burning and/or DVD to know that they're working on it. If Apple didn't release anything for a 1-2 month period, its users would get anxious, even if the coming update promised both CDR and DVD capabilities. Progammers can only work so fast, but Apple wants to let its users know that they ARE working.
On the otherhand, Apple 9.1 updates are painless, and everything works. Same with OS X. You can schedule these to run every now and then, or manually, and its painless, and everything works (so far)..........
--
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
IMHO:
No matter what the QA process there is now way to discover all problems with an update. By releasing them "bit by bit" they will reduce the what might be broken by a service pack style system.
windows 2000 service pack 2 was released, just not yet announced officially by MS. grab it here or here.
There are frequent releases because the development team is using extreme programming, of course!
maru
www.mp3.com/pixal
http://download.microsoft.com/download/win2000plat form/sp/sp2/nt5/en-us/w2ksp2.exe
But the Windows 2000 Service Pack page hasn't been updated yet.
Also available at http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail.php3?fid=9896 09341
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
non-proprietry formats such as MP3
MP3 is NOT non-proprietary; it's patented. The token non-proprietary free audio standard isn't MP3; it's Ogg Vorbis.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The part that blows my mind is the implication of force. :) Cliff says that Apple forces their users to install updates.
===
Even in an enterprise environment where you have 10,000 machines, I would still prefer that a person decides which updates should be installed and which shouldn't be, not some expert system as the article suggests. Obviously the installation of these updates has to be automated.
Such an updater would check the upstream package catalog and apply multiple criterion on each updated package which would determine if that update is applied.
It seems easy enough to do this by hand. Whenever I have spare time, I check to see if there are new updates. If there are, then I read the release notes to see if they do anything I care about. If they do, then I install the update.
I wouldn't use automatic updates in any circumstance, even if I had some super-smart filter.
lsbom /Library/Receipts/10.0.3Update.pkg/Contents/Resour ces/*.bom | less
Admittedly, you can't do this until after the package is installed. But it is a nice way to see what's just been upgraded, provided you can understand the pathnames.
I have been using OS X since day 1 and enjoy the updates, I have no problem downloading and installing them (other than loosing my uptime, heh).
The only two reasons I can see people complaining about frequent updates are:
1) When these updates are for minor things and not major fixes (such as adding DVD playback or system wide CD burning).
2) When these updates change/fix things and don't tell you what they are doing.
I haven't seen either of the three OS X updates break anything on my system, but I do personally wish they were a tad better documented.
Go shout at Roxio then. For the record 10.0.2 included the DiscRecording.framework neccessary for Discburner, but Finder 10.0 needs to be updated too.
They both use whatever description Apple chooses to give, there is no functional difference.
How is Apple any different? Media Player => Quicktime + iTunes. Windows Movie Maker => Quicktime + iMovie. I'm sure there are other examples but I try not to get any Apple on me these days. Heck, even Sherlock replaces several Shareware and Commercial products which used to be around on MacOS.
But that doesn't change the relative installed size factor. To get the functionality of Office on Linux (or Solaris for that matter) you still need to install (Star|Open)office. Sure, GCC comes with your linux distro, but you can install GCC on Windows (And use it to build Win32 appllications.) And DevStudio is equivalent to gcc, gdb, make, a very full-featured IDE (though it may not be to your tastes), online documentation, et cetera. It's a full suite of tools.
Now, I do agree that there are clear benefits to the open source all-in-one pay-only-for-the-media-and-distribution model; Mostly in cost. Windows, Plus the dev system (which I still contest you can replace with open source tools) plus office costs a hell of a lot more than a linux distribution which would replace all of that. I would even agree that, on a level playing field, it's "better". But it's still pretty much the same thing, monetary cost aside.
Right, now microsoft only sells major release number updates, and gives us the point releases for free via the web and/or service packs. Even from NT 3.51, though, the commercial-intent packages have given you point releases for free, in the form of NT service packs. Windows 9x really should have been much cheaper ($50?) since the "framework" it provides to you is really seriously limited. Then, paying for major revisions wouldn't have felt so ridiculous.
--
ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I know this conversation's time has come and gone while I was on vacation from vacation, but I feel a need to comment anyway.
As far as I'm aware, there were only five releases of Win95 by a significant stretch. First, Chicago Beta. Second, Windows 95. Then there was OSR1, OSR2 (AKA Windows B), OSR 2.1, and OSR 2.5. There was also an OSR3, but it never saw the light of day as a commercial product, instead becoming Win98 Beta.
IIRC, 2.1 and 2.5 were AGP and USB support, in different releases. I forget which was which. OSR3 was the first M$ Time-Limited beta I'm aware of; It time-limited itself right out of my life. 98 came out not too much later.
So there were, demonstrably, four releases of Windows 95. However, OSR1 was OEM only; If an OEM sold it to you, they were doing something they shouldn't have been doing for two reasons. First is their contract with mickeysoft, and second is the fact that it sucked. Those who waited for OSR2 did much better, although OSR2 had some very serious bugs, including a major filesystem bug that would crop up periodically with FAT32 filesystems. Namely, it would bluescreen, give you a FAT32 error, and eat the FAT. Thanks, Microsoft! I actually got to see this happen to a friend's computer which was sitting idle at the time.
--
ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...how a community that praises a "release early, release often" philosophy thinks that Apple's idea to relase many patches is bad.
I just updated to 6.5.12 this weekend on my three machines. My new (well, new to me) O2 came with the IRIX 6.5.0 CDs... I reinstalled 6.5, downloaded the 6.5.12 overlay, installed and was good to go. SGI's hardware may be lagging a bit these days, but at least their OS is top notch.
(*especially* after installing some of the goodies from http://freeware.sgi.com/index-by-alpha.html)
It's the OS that I deal with most of the time (heh, especially when my load average this morning is 0.00 0.00 0.00), so I'm quite greatful of this... I'm the sorta person that would rather have a damn near perfect OS than wizbang hardware.
NO ONE IS FORCING anyone to install these updates... Apple is doing the best job possible in providing their users more refinements as they become available, you need not install these upgrades as they come out... indeed, you can skip one or two and the latest one will update Mac OS X completely, just as if you had applied each previous update... shove off, FUDSTERS!
Many people enjoy updating their software. While I have not even installed OSX yet, it makes me happy there have been regular updates. MS may release 1 or 2 software upates per year and they release 10 or 20 SECURITY updates per year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
Im all in favor of the frequent updates, but one place where they can cause problems is when apple updates some of it's core 'features' which are actualy open source software. For example update 10.0.1 upgraded OS X's "Web Sharing service" (aka apache) from the 14 point release to #16. This is all good unless you happened to have upgraded to 19 yourself, in which case you were promptly downgraded. They might have fixed this problem with the more recent releases. because 10.0.2 didnt overwrite my instalation of SSH. only time will tell.
--aiee
Gee, that's interesing. SP2 on fileflash, but not on MS.
The reason this can be annoying is that the updates sometimes replace custom builds/newer versions. For example, 10.0.1 installed SSH 2.3, overwriting 2.5.1 which I had installed earlier. I'd much rather see "System 10.0.3 Update", "SSH 2.9", "ColorSync", as individual packages, rather than one single "10.0.3 Update".
An ignore update option would be useful as well. I kept seeing IE and MS Lookout updates included in my Updates list under 9, even though I had trashed both of them some time earlier. I guess they were included as they are now part of the system software, although I had never seen any netscape updates (which is also included with the OS)
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
Oh, good point on the Photoshop update. 5.5 and 6 are vastly different creatures. Luckily, I installed a full version of 6 on my machine, and it co-exists nicely with 5.5, so I can use whichever I want. Of course, that is rather costly when done the legal way (buying the full version) and not just the upgrade. I'd be screwed without having both right now. Although I do like the new text warping features in 6 :-) With ANY
new OS, people should expect updates to fix
the problems. No OS can be beta-tested enough..
it's releasing it into the wild and seeing havoc
it causes (read: Windows ME) to see what all is
really wrong. The problem is that when a Microsoft
product has a problem, it takes them too long to get fixes for them. When something is wrong in
Linux, you have a better chance of someoene coming
up with a fix when more people are working on it
(particularly security flaws) Not dealing with
MACs much, I don't know what their history for this really is, but this update thing seems par for the course to me.
What difference does it make? Just download the updates as you want/need them. OS X is really just Public Preview version 2 at this point anyway... There is a LOT of stuff that doesn't work right, and a lot of issues that need addressed, and I think Apple is doing a good job with fixing them as soon as possible. Keep in mind the scope of this project. They've written an ENTIRELY new OS, so there are BOUND to be issues. I'm STILL waiting for SP2 for Win2k. Where is it??? I'd be happy if they fixed SOME of the issues along the way, releasing minor updates instead of me having to wait for them to lump them all together and release SP2. I'm GLAD Apple is releasing every little patch and fix they do, as they do them. If you don't want to update so frequently, don't.
Windows 2000 SP2 Slips Out the Door By Nate Mook, BetaNews May 11th, 2001, 4:19 PM While an official announcement has yet to be made, the long-awaited second service pack for Windows 2000 is now available from Microsoft. As always, this latest service pack incorporates updates to improve security, application and hardware compatibility, Windows setup, and system stability. SP2 does not include any new features according to the software giant, simply fixes and updates. Expect more information shortly on the SP2 Web site, and here on BetaNews. Those wishing to download the 101MB update may do so via FileForum. http://fileforum.betanews.com/download.php3?fid=98 9609341
What have you been using as an OS lately? Windows 2k, Windows XP and Windows Update allow you to do this stuff already.
*Sigh*. All right, let me try to explain those "double standards" to you.
:)
We* use distributions that come with literally thousands of programs. We complain when Microsoft adds a couple to their new OS/Distro.
The problem with MicroSoft isn't that they add programs to their OS, it's that they add exactly one of every program to their OS.
For example, a standard Linux distro comes with several web browsers. Netscape is standard, as is Lynx and nowadays, Konqueror. Others (Mozilla, Amaya, Galeon, Links, etc.) may be included depending on the particular distro.
MS, on the other hand, includes exactly one browser. By itself, this lends an air of "officialness" to the browser which its competitors lack. It's the browser which came with Windows. If that were the whole problem, nobody would complain too much except for makers of other browsers. Of course in reality MS bundles their browser, then tries to get developers to make webpages which only work with their browser, ties the browser into the OS in ways which competitors are not allowed to, etc.
In other words, the complaint isn't "look at the number of programs included in Windows". The complaint is "MS is trying to stifle choice". It's hard to lack choice when your Linux distro comes with four browsers, twenty-three word processors and/or text editors, and so on. MS, on the other hand, often uses new applications as leverage to stifle competitors and to sell their other products and services.
We call Windows bloated at 400MB, but when someone points out that distro X takes 7 CD's, we defend that distro
Distros include a whole lot more applications than what Windows provides. If Apache, Zope, a billion games, multiple desktops and window managers, twenty-three word processors, etc. cause the distro to take up 7 CDs, that's not the same as the OS plus a Web Browser and a handful of utility programs taking up 400MB. 7 Cds may be a lot of code, and having that much software in one distro may well be a bad idea, but "bloat" implies that the core of the program is too big. 400MB of Windows is functional, but minimally so, whereas 400MB of Linux distro is a lot. Likewise, when was the last time you saw a single floppy version of the Windows OS? (Okay, perhaps DOS is the single-floppy version of Windows. Lacks some features, doesn't it?
We're happy to use software that updates several times a month, some update daily. When Apple releases two patches in one month, we say their forcing people to update against their will or something.
Actually, looking at the thread so far, I don't see a lot of complaints about this. In fact, I see a lot of people complimenting Apple for quickly fixing the bugs in an OS which is known to have shipped in a pretty buggy state.
If you've been an Apple user for any period of time, you're probably familiar with the fairly frequent updating Apple did of it's old OS. As soon as it became fairly easy to provide updates (i.e. Internet downloads), Apple started providing them pretty frequently, and it's even better about making the updates free than some other commercial OS providers I might name.
In the four years since I started graduate school, I've purchased MacOS's 8, 8.5, 9, and X, and downloaded major free updates like 8.1, 8.6, and 9.1, as well at least a dozen minor ones. In it's relatively short lifespan, 9.0 went through four minor updates (9.0.1 through 9.0.4) before becoming 9.1. And that's just the core OS; Apple frequently releases updates to separate components as they become available before bundling them into the next full OS update.
This is just more of the same. And since it's super friendly and idiot-proof (one click and a restart) but optional, there's no reason for them not to.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
I just wish they had applied that philosophy to OSX itself. Personally I'm waiting for gen 2 OSX without the 9.1 shell, you shouldn't need 128 meg of ram just to run the OS.
We call Windows bloated at 400MB, but when someone points out that distro X takes 7 CD's, we defend that distro
We're happy to use software that updates several times a month, some update daily. When Apple releases two patches in one month, we say their forcing people to update against their will or something.
*Yes, I know this doesn't apply to every single reader.
--
That said, I do think it's impressive that Apple is making an effort to get fixes out quickly. But the release early, release often mantra is not appropriate for everyone -- some environments really demand more stability.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
At least we are getting updates. I would hate if Apple held them all until some big event, like MacWorld.
Apple plans on getting all these updates out ASAP before the summer arrives. Although I have seen from my developer friend from Apple version 10.1. Let me say this, it's a major under the hood overhaul. Apple is trying to make 10.1 faster than their current pre-OS X softaware 9.1 which is faster than 10.0.3. Confusing? Yes. Why? I'm tired.
...because service pack 2 just got discovered yesterday. It does weigh in at 100 megs (it contains SP1 as well), but apparently it's worth it: only a few networking issues have been reported (things involving authentication with other servers on the LAN and such), and it gives a certain speed boost to many games (on Quake3, I ran a timedemo on a demo that never yielded above 43 frames per second before; with SP2 installed, the average was 49.2). If you have any Windows 2000 boxes running where you work or live, I recommend at least checking out SP2. It's ready to be downloaded (east coast west coast), though I haven't seen Microsoft's Win2K downloads page updated yet. The general concensus is that its benefits far outweigh its detriments.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I know that Mandrake already has a package updater that works quite well. The only problem is that you have to get the entire new RPM and not just an upgrade package in most cases. It will, however, go to a Mandrake mirror and check all installed packages for updates for you. It doesn't have the singular "update" button feature that you want, and it doesn't have an auto-update feature as far as I can tell, but these would be minor modifications to the existing system.
No, it just sends secret user info to MS every 5 minutes using the "critical update" as a brilliant rouse! :)
For example the last releases of Photoshop and Illustrator had a disastrous effect on my business. The artists couldn't deal with the sweeping changes made by Adobe.
:) - of course, Adobe has a much smaller market, so there must be a high cost (yeah, I realize you could counter by mentioning The Gimp here, but that wasn't made for a profit).
Hmmmm... why upgrade at all then? I really have trouble coming up with a task that requires Photoshop 6 over 5.5 - if the artists are used to 5.5, and you don't want to spend the cash to teach them 6, why did you fork over the $200/license to get 6? The only reason I can imagine is pressure from the artists themselves (reading reviews and then requesting the upgrade saying it would make their job easier or something).
As far as monolithic upgrades go, the companies need them in order to make their business model work. No one would buy a product just incrementally better than the original. This is why Microsoft releases few updates to their OS outside of stabalizing it. For Microsoft, this is especially true in their 9x/ME line of OS's because the entry cost is so cheap (well, relative to NT anyway). The monolithic update scheme is not specific to non-OS vendors. The reason that Apple, Sun, Linux vendors, etc can afford to present incremental upgrades is that they have none software-license-driven business models (hardware, hardware/services, and services respectively). Adobe and Microsoft don't have an alternate means of profiting off of Photoshop/Windows, so they must have either monolithic upgrades or a high cost. Microsoft uses one method for its 9x line, and another for NT. Adobe uses both
I set up a bondi (original) iMac at work with OS X back in March, and it has been on crunching SETI and doing other stuff 24/7 since then. It has never crashed, burped or hiccuped, and as a result I have never had to restart. The updates give me a reason to do so.
I don't understand why some people are so turned off to updates -- especially free ones. I do tech support for Mac software, and I was called by someone who had just purchased 1.0 of one of our software titles. The FREE 1.1 updater had come out a week earlier, and we hadn't updated the 1.0 we were selling on the web site because of various marketing reasons.
Anyway, this gentleman called me about a problem, and I told him that downloading the FREE update to 1.1 would solve it. Instead of saying "cool", his reaction was "WHAT!? I JUST PURCHASED THIS SOFTWARE!!!! I WOULDN'T HAVE BOUGHT IT IF I KNEW THAT I WAS PURCHASING AN OLDER PRODUCT!". My reaction was "Well sir, a lot software gets updated and improved; that is a fact of life. But if a company is going to provide you with updates for free, then you really have nothing to bitch about."
It is not like any of these updates are REQUIRED to use OS X -- the fact of the matter is that we live in a wired world and the core of OS X is open source. I like the approach that if SOMETHING gets fixed, a patch is made available immediately.
Long live OS X!
Some of us would rather have a patch that has been thoroughly tested, doesn't screw up the system, and doesn't cause regressions.
The only certainty is entropy.
Hmmmm... why upgrade at all then? I really have trouble coming up with a task that requires Photoshop 6 over 5.5 - if the artists are used to 5.5, and you don't want to spend the cash to teach them 6, why did you fork over the $200/license to get 6? The only reason I can imagine is pressure from the artists themselves (reading reviews and then requesting the upgrade saying it would make their job easier or something).
Three reasons:
1) The artists can't "wait" to get their hands on it. Think of this as upgrade fever. I'd rather they take a wait and see attitude but they don't. The new rev comes out, comes in via Hotline or from another source and spreads like a virus. And in the case of Illustrator 9 which moved it's file format to PDF based, it was a virus. Nothing would print, you couldn't change between 8 and 9 without a hassle, etc. All this was fixed in 9.01/2 but the damage had already been done.
2. There's always that "one feature" that truly will make life easier. I'll counter myself by saying it always comes at the cost of something else. To use the Illustrator example again the promise it had was "transparency" which all the artists have been "clammering" for for years. To get it the file format had to be the new and unproven PDF format. Adobe didn't bother saying "umm, hey guys, the entire file format is changed, proceed with caution." Instead they said "Now with Transparency!!!!"
3. Adobe doesn't "fix" software. They upgrade it. To get rid of old problems you have no choice but to uprade. You are very correct in saying there's no difference between 5.5 and 6.0. In the case of Photoshop there's no reason why 5.5, 5.0, 4.01, 3.5, 3.0, 2.5 or even 2.0 couldn't be in use today.
If the goal is to ship OS X with every machine Apple sells starting this summer, now is the time to get things straight. If that means "updates on Friday" then send them. Do it before it's flung unto the masses.
Personally, I'd rather have a bunch of close together updates then the monolithic updates that non-OS vendors force these days. For example the last releases of Photoshop and Illustrator had a disastrous effect on my business. The artists couldn't deal with the sweeping changes made by Adobe.
Finally, I imagine that it's easier for engineering and QA get their jobs done by shipping micro updates. Especially since there are so many different parts of this OS.
There is no such thing as updating too often. If I could, I'd download patches every few hours, right off the bug team's computers.
"Release early, release often." -- Linus Torvalds
I think it's important to note that these updates have been relatively small... I don't recall exactly, but all of them have been under 15MB. I think the one for 10.0.3 was only 3 or 4MB. This is a lot different than having 3 hefty updates already.
I think by the time OS X is bundled with new systems (MacWorld New York, I think), the updates will become less frequent. March 24th may have been a trifle early for the OS to come out, so in a sense, it is still 'under construction'.
These updates have been mostly things that I would think apple would have done otherwise before releasing the thing, such as optimize quartz, improve app stability, fix ftpd, and enable CD burning. (Not to mention fix a list view bug in the finder, 10.0.3)
I'd rather have lots of updates than not enough (as long as they don't break things!)
How many people complain that RedHat doesn't release update RPMs fast enough (though you can now grab them from RawHide) and they don't show up in RedCarpet in a timely manner?
So configure your client to update on a schedule you want and be glad when it DOES run that there are fixes to be had - you could be stuck with a buggy OS that never has the fixes released on a regular basis (*cough*Microsoft*cough*)
--
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Some may want monthly updates, but hey, i run apt-get dist-upgrade nightly! that is how i want it. then again, debian unstable gets changed a little faster than Mac OSX, but why not just make a nice Macy (mac like) updater that people can run when they want and download whatever has been updated during that time, like apt-get.
.03
Just my
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Oh, but it is available!
See here for yourself!
Jakob Breivik Grimstveit, jakob@grimstveit.net, www.grimstveit.net
Excuse me, can you spare an IRQ?
A 400mb windows install comes with nothing. Hell, my 2.2 potato install (300 megs) has KDE1, C/C++/Fortran/Java/Pascal compiler, a browser, X, shell, A photoshop equivalent, a print quality typesetting engine, NEDIT, and FTP server, an HTTP server and a telnet server. The same thing on a Windows box would take 2-3 gigabytes.
I like meat helmets.
I don't know much about Windows XP... which is why I don't write about it....
...
... and this is almost exactly how it works. No offense intended, dude, but at least look at it first before commenting in "the press" (You guys ARE press now, despite any protestations to the contrary. You're quoted all over the place.).
Keeping the updates flowing is one thing, but forcing users to update every 2-3 weeks? That might be a bit too much. I don't know much about OS X, but if the upgrades system can be configured to the users taste, and said configuration done in a user-friendly way, then maybe monthly updates might not be a bad thing
Grumpy BiOFH who loves the updates and hasn't had to recompile the damned kernel 20 times.
- I am made of meat.
I like the fact that Apple is releasing upbeats on a regular basis; it shows they are listening to feedback/ You don't have to update your system when the updates are posted; you can install them at your lesiure, which is cool. Mac OS X is a very a ambitious operating system and frequent tweaks are not unexpected. The original Mac OS was tweaked continiously for 17 years.
Who cares about the how often updates arive, you are not forced to update, and if they have fixes or new featured they should send them out to the people who bought the system instead of selling 10.1.0 for another 50 bucks.. btw, I still miss dvd support, so updates dont come fast enough ... ;-)
I run a personal website off OSX (PHP, MySQL, SSI, etc). OSX has remained perfectly stable. The software updates are great. I see random Joe posting here saying what OSX *SHOULD* do, without even knowing what it does do. Bottom line, if you don't use OSX don't bother posting.
So here's a typical update routine for my OSX box. Come back from class look at the screen it says OS 10.03 update available would you like to download now? This will require a reboot. So I say cool ok, it downloads applys and then optimizes the patch, I restart and the system is happy. It's as transparent to the end-user as it should be, easy to do, but still prompts and warns you about what it wants to do. I love the update utility, works much nicer then Windows Update utility, which may or may not require a reboot, never really know until it's too late. But still not quite as pimp as apt.
It took about 6 - 8 months for SP1 to be released.
SP2 was released today.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
You must *really* love the critical update in ME, it checks for updates *every five minutes*, so you will be immediately protected.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Windows XP can.
It would be quite trivial to do the same on Linux.
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Funny, isn't it? That I can burn CDs on my Whistler beta (early one, to boot) and using Whistler's CD-Burner, too.
And at the same time, Mac OS X can't, even though it's released?
--
Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
The G4 stays in X all the time since I mainly use it only for "work" (which entails several shell prompts and a tn3270 emu) and it does the job fine, it doesn't run slow and it doesn't crash. The iBook on the other hand is a different situation, I hardly ever boot out of OS9.1 for several reasons.
1) There's a marked difference between G3 and G4 proc performance, even though there's only a 34Mhz difference between the 2 machines. OSX runs hideously slow even when doing simple GUI tasks, and the updates have done little to nothing for this.
2) CD Burning. Give me a break... Apple touted that CD auth support would be coming "soon" after the initial release and that was one of the reasons I was willing to plunk down the money for the OS and stick it out from the get go, but iTunes for burning just doesn't cut it for me. It's a great MP3 (I can still say mp3 without being sued right?) and CD player, but I (and many others I know) really prefer Toast.
3) DVD's : 'nuff said.
4) Battery consumption isn't "slightly decreased" as per Apple's claim, in fact I find it to be "basically cut in half" but that just may be me.
Anyway, OSX is an awesome step forward for Apple, but there are many bugs to be worked out and features to be added before it's ready for the general public (which this has already been said, but I thought I'd put in my 2 cents)
On a side note, I've been keeping tabs on the MacAddict forums for some time now, and I keep seeing all these posts on "Where do I go to learn Unix" and "How do I do this in the Terminal". While these people really aren't supporting the Linux movement, they are reaching out for knowledge that's deeper than the content's of a Start or Apple menu, and I think that can only be a good thing for the future.
Cheers,
- Syn
Sounds great! I've never used Mandrake, but it sounds like I should. I've seen some update features on other Linux distros, but they haven't been as well-organized or as carefully considered as Apple's.
...these would be minor modifications to the existing system.
Mandrake folks: Do it! Don't hold back! Right now, OS X is way ahead of Linux for usability (sorry, but it's true). But a lot of the good work that Apple has done would not be such a stretch for Linux; much of it would require, as you say, only minor modifications. The Linux community should be studying OS X under a microscope and ripping off every one of Apple's insights. If Linux, which is faster, stabler, more efficient, and has a wider base of software than OS X, could also be as user friendly...well, I'll stop there before I get into rampant speculation.
If I can get a painless, nearly-transparent bug or security fix the moment it's ready for prime time just by clicking "update", I'm a happy camper. I'm puzzled by this assertion that every two weeks is too much.
An update scheme such as OS X's should meet the following criteria:
I'm using OS X as my primary OS, and so far, Apple has done an absolutely outstanding job with 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6. Only #3 is week -- the only explanation you see when an update is available is "OS X 10.0.3". You have to install the update then try to divine what's changed. If Apple fixes this problem, they'll have a killer mechanism that Linux distros would do well to study.
This is really a non-story. Just about everyone I've talked to loves the fact that OS X is being continually upgraded. No one is being forced at gunpoint to update, and people who use the OS all the time (such as myself) get improvements much sooner than waiting for some giant service pack. If someone really is annoyed, they could just wait until 10.1 comes out in July. No biggie.
=======
=======
P.S. Bite! You've been bitten by the Original AIDS Monkey! You have AIDS now!
this is a 1.0 release of OS X. apple didn't intend this for widespread use on mission-critical systems (who would do that anyway?) the major apps used for production work on the mac aren't ported yet. i'll keep using photoshop in os 9.1 until adobe finishes the rewrite for OS X.
so, therefore, why should frequent updates be a problem? this isn't like they're asking company IT departments to go around to every desktop mac and install an update every week. OS X is being installed by people who self-maintain their machines anyway.
when the big consumer push of OS X comes out this fall (and, subsequently, when Apple starts _shipping machines_ with OS X pre-installed) we'll see the update schedule drop off in frequency, lest for any critical issues that hopefully won't arise.
www.pixelectric.com
Luckily, the Updater will usually coalese many updates into a single download if those updates haven't downloaded the previously. When the updates have been downloaded and installed, then you only need to reboot once!
They made you download the 15MB file if you already had 10.0.2 installed and wanted to download a single update to install on all computers on your network. I think that this was kind of outrageous. They could at least provide two updates, an update for 10.0.2 and an update for 10.0.1 (the one they have up there already requires 10.0.1, not 10.0).
--
I don't care that much about the endless stream of updates. The reason the third update was released was because of a major bug preventing the display of files in folders with many files in them. I would be angrier if this wasn't corrected that that the correction came only a week after the update. I like the updates, but I think that Apple shouldn't have made people download a 15MB file for 10.0.3.
--
Don't you mean "moof"?
Debian's apt system is a great idea that Apple could use. Of course it wouldn't work like apt, but the general idea would still be there.
Apt will update all of the packages you currently have on your Linux system. It won't change the configuration files unless a change is needed, whereupon it will only change the part that _needs_ to be changed.
I know that Linux and Mac OS are pretty different, but a system similar to Debian's could be implemented for upgrades.
--
Remember before the internet this kind of updating was not possible. You could not get updates to everyone quickly.
You always had to buy boxes in the store.
Of course after the internet many companies still upgrade this way.. with big "service packs".
I remember the Ping of Death problem, it took Linux hours to fix while it took these companies months.
Maybe they could fix it just as fast. But they didn't want to release it until the next "Service Pack".
They have been working on the next version to work with the previous version. Of course now this little patch screws it all up. Some people will patch some will not, so you have to make sure your upgrade works with the non-patched and patched version. AHHHHH
OK. It's really simple. You are automaticalled alerted to an update that is available. You click on thebutton that says 'updat enow' or soemthign like that. You can also delay the alert messages to come up one a daily, weekly, monthly, etc.. It took me about 30 seconds to update to 10.0.1, 2 mon to update to 10.0.2 and 30 secs to update to 10.0.3. That's about as easy as it gets if you ask me. If you are wary of updating, wait and read macfixit to see if it breaks anything. Then update when you are ready. Also, update 10.0.3 included .10.0.2 if you didn't already upgrade 10 10.0.2. If you did, it only instlals 10.0.3.
Even yo momma could do it! It's a Mac!
JAG