Apple Ships Mysterious macOS 11.5.2 Update | Hacker News Reader

Apple Ships Mysterious macOS 11.5.2 Update

tidbits.com

55 pointslatchkey24 comments

Patent trolls - I suspect they either settled with or removed a patent infringment. Non Disclosure Agreement prevents them from releasing any information.

Should Apple be forced to publish content of updates to users? or should the users even be aware of what is updated? Apple most likely thinks the updates should even be automatic, the users don't have to care.

On another related subject, I believe Apple should be fined to impose such a huge internet traffic for... nothing: each iOS or here macOS minor update weighs hundreds of megabytes, sometimes even gigabytes, and those updates are pushed every few weeks, which given the number of iOS (and to a lower extent macOS) devices creates a huge traffic around the world, for not much. It is not environmentally friendly and it adds tension to internet infrastructure, for not much.

The Apple updates are aggressively cached at CDNs around the world. Relatively little of that traffic is actually going back to Apple’s servers.

Video streaming services like NetFlix and YouTube also do aggressive caching of content around the world, but their traffic is still many orders of magnitude larger than the amount of traffic required for OS and package updates.

> * Apple should be fined to impose such a huge internet traffic for... nothing: each iOS or here macOS minor update weighs hundreds of megabytes, sometimes even gigabytes*

Most YouTube videos and Netflix movies I watch use more bandwidth than Apple‘s updates. Do you want to fine them too?

The major difference is that YouTube and Netflix movies are things you request for.

I request security. I deliberately choose devices and platforms that receive prompt, frequent security updates. Nearly every iOS and macOS update seems to be filled with security patches.

Should users be able to choose whether to accept changes and new features? Probably. Should they be able to opt out of security updates? Not on internet-connected devices.

> I believe Apple should be fined to impose such a huge internet traffic for... nothing:

The internet is built to be used...?

Do you understand how the internet works? Apple has to pay for the bandwidth they're using...

I’m curious to know why these updates have to be so large. There must be some clever way to send only the parts that need to updated, based on the users current version, no?

They do somewhat do that.

2.93GB is for the delta update from 11.5.1.

The full version, which doesn’t try to include only the parts that are needed, is 11.6GB.

My understanding, however, is that it’s done on a per-file basis, and any update to a system library invalidates the dyld shared cache… which is a 2gB file all by itself.

It's quaint to think back on the Tiger days when the final 10.4.11 combo update weighed in at a "whopping" 180MB: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL170

Isn't that cache generated locally though, making it irrelevant to update size?

It was in previous macOS versions but from Big Sur I believe much of the file's contents no longer exist locally as separate files

But do you need to ship that?

Ginormous update sizes are definitely a regression. There has been some reporting on this recently and I can't remember the details, but I believe it is due to a wanting a combination of: cryptographically verifiable updates; atomic updates (avoid the risk of a partial update); and shipping the dyld shared cache directly.

These aren't insurmountable limitations, but it seems like Apple chose the path of implementing these in a simple way (at the expense of bandwidth and storage). One would assume they would want to then go ahead and figure out how to implement this with a slimmer delta update, but who knows.

There _is_ a way to do it like that. In fact I swear MacOS used to actually do it that way. Microsoft definitely does.

Yeah Apple used to use bsdiff by cperciva.

A touch more data at: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/p2hdkn/macos_big_sur...

> In 11.5.1 using the Caps Lock key to switch between English and Chinese IME is super laggy. I’m now installing this update and see if it’s fixed.

> Yep, this issue is fixed in 11.5.2.

Is there any available link that shows what actually was fixed?

They scan all your files for CP and copyright infrigement (oh, sorry, that's Microsoft) and send your IP to FBI.

No idea why you are downvoted -- it's only a matter of time.

Maybe because speculation passed off as fact is not wanted here?

It's NOT speculation -- for sure Apple is on that trajectory. Wow, where have you BEEN the past week. Not on HN surely.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com