Hacker News Reader

Comment by aquanext | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, honestly, I'll believe it when I see when it comes to faster updates on Windows. Whenever I have to update macOS even on a machine that's way, way behind, it's super simple and straightforward. On Windows, there's always hours of pain and installing endless updates over and over. Windows Update never seems to finish updating. Right after I finish installing everything, boom, it's found more updates. It's just absolutely horrifying and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

View on HN

> Right after I finish installing everything, boom, it's found more updates.

I've always thought that's because the newest ones are dependent on some of the second-newest ones, so it couldn't install them before the dependencies were installed. And the reason it throws those at you immediately, "boom", is that it hasn't really "found more updates" after installing the first set; it knew about these ones too, from looking through the list it made for the first update, and just held them back for a second round.

Just my speculation, though, so could be totally fucking wrong.

On Windows an admin can selectivly apply individual updates, which isn't possible on macOS, I think. The core algorithm that calculates the dependencies is horribly slow. They are working around that with update rollups and cumulative updates since Windows 10. There are multiple layers of snapshotting going on during updates (VSS + Transactional NTFS).

Then for example "Update telemetry" scans all applications on the system and only gives you the option to upgrade to Windows 11 if it doesn't find anything incompatible. On Apple you just get the option to upgrade and stuff just stops working afterwards.

Microsoft's done away with "individual updates". The current update for Windows 10 is "October 12, 2021 Update" and aside from a few exceptions such as CPU microcode updates, it bundles every previous update.

Which certainly is easier to coordinate as a company. Part of the reason Apple does entire OS patches as that it allows every aspect of the system to have a consistent view of each other part, so API (private or public) are all in sync between all the apps and components. It also means full QA passes are for a consistent set of versions as unexpected bugs can impact far away parts.

> On Apple you just get the option to upgrade and stuff just stops working afterwards.

Granted, they host an "incompatible apps list" which their installers are bundled with + download updates if they can. I have no idea what it's for and what it's doing, never found a thing on my systems.

That process solves for the problem of only wanting some updates. The new way you get all or nothing. The situation that you bemoan is exceedingly rare by comparison to updating in general. The point is probably moot though in light of the changes to Windows update over the years. There are plenty of reasons to hate on Windows, I think update is one of the few things that works reasonably well. The contents of those updates is another story.

Because you're still using Windows 7

Reply on news.ycombinator.com