Software Update, which is part of Mac OS X System Preferences, is a tool for keeping your Mac OS software up-to-date. It uses your Internet connection to compare what’s installed on your computer to what’s current. If new software is available — and it seems like it always is — it is listed in the Software Update window. Installing updates is as simple as turning on a check box, typing your administrator password, and clicking a few buttons.
If you’ve been using Mac OS X for any length of time, you should know all that. But here are a few things you might not know.
First of all, you can set up Software Update to automatically check for updates on a Daily (overkill), Weekly (just right), or Monthly (not often enough) basis. You do that in the main Software Update window, in the Update Software tab. Just turn on the Check for Update check box and choose a frequency option. If you don’t mind your computer downloading stuff without telling you, you can also turn on the Download important updates in the background check box. (Personally, that option is a bit too Microsoftish for me.)
Want to know what you’ve installed? Click the Installed Updates tab. Here’s what it looks like for my eMac test mule. Not much there, is there. That’s because I cheat — I’ll explain in a moment.
When you check for updates, the list of new software may include some items that are checked off. But you can uncheck them and check others. Want to know what a piece of software does? Click it to display a description in the bottom half of the window. This tells me that iChat 2.1 enables me to talk to AOL Instant Messenger for Windows users. I don’t think that’s something I really need to waste 4.9 MB of bandwidth on right now (or anytime soon, I think).
Take a moment to look at the least known feature of Software Update: the Update menu. These commands are what makes Software Update really useful:
• Ignore Update tells Software Update to stop bugging you about an update you don’t care about.
• Download only downloads checked updates without installing them.
• Install isn’t anything special. It’s the same as clicking the Install X Items button in the Software Update window.
• Install and Keep Package is my favorite. How many of you downloaded the 50+ MB Mac OS X 10.3.3 update? How many of you did it for more than one Mac? I didn’t. This is my cheat. I use the Install and Keep package command to download and install all updates without deleting the updater package. Then I copy the updater package to each computer that needs the update and run it. One download, four updates. When you’re relying on a cable modem connection, bandwidth counts!
One more thing about Software Update. Don’t set it up to automatically check for updates on a computer that is supposed to automatically restart itself. I did this on my Web server and didn’t realize it (the automatically check option is turned on by default in Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.3). Trouble is, the shut down command was cancelled because my computer was waiting for me to tell it what to do about the list of updates. As a result, my Web server (which had already quit as part of the shut down command) was down from midnight on Sunday morning to 7:00 AM on Monday.
I hate when that happens.
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