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How to Get Around One of the Most Annoying macOS (non) Features

2018 February 20
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One of the most annoying features of macOS is the persistent notification of available software updates. Sure, software updates are important, especially security updates. But if you’ve ever seen this annoying, persistent, error-prone pop-up from macOS, you may feel that there has to be a better way. There is.

Too easy to click an undesired choice.

That pop-up message is, in fact, driven by a setting in the Mac App Store application. That’s found, of course, under the Apple Menu > App Store… (See Apple’s tech note: “How to update the software on your Mac.

When you select the App Store…, you may be tempted to think of what you see as a built-in macOS function. But it’s really just an application. And applications have their preferences.

After you launch the App Store…, take a look at App Store > Preferences, and you’ll see this.

Mac App Store Preferences.

If you check the box, “Automatically check for updates” that will lead to those periodic notifications. But if you leave it unchecked, it’ll be up to you, from time to time, to check for available updates. That’s especially helpful if you want to maintain a fixed configuration for, say, 32-bit app compatibility down the road. But it also means you’ll have to monitor and pay special attention to important security updates.

A Better Way

Apple has a vested interest in helping its customers keep their software up-to-date. Updates are released for good reasons, not the least of which are the security improvements that are typically baked in.

However, it seems to me that the automatic notice, shown in the first figure above, could be improved dramatically.

What I’d like to see, instead, is a simple box that says, “Time up review software updates.” With Yes and No buttons. If you click No, it goes away. Done. If you click Yes, you get a much bigger window. It would have a list of available updates, much like the Mac App Store’s “Updates” tab.

However, there would be two extra fields for each entry.

  1. A label for urgency: {Security Critical, Important, Routine}
  2. Remind me again in “X” days. A user defined number.

That way, the user can gracefully get on with urgent work without worrying about clicking the wrong field in the current pop-up, software updates are still monitored, and the user can define when to be pestered again for each entry. I can imagine that if a user defers a “Security Critical” update for more than a day or two, the pestering ramps up to some level Apple would define.

In any case, the current annoying and potentially confusing method doesn’t seem to fit in with both the capabilities of macOS and the daily needs of most users. It’s time to fix that in macOS 10.14.

Source link: https://www.macobserver.com/tips/how-to/get-around-macos-annoyance/

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