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Comment by TheAceOfHearts | Hacker News Reader

Nowadays I just run `brew update; brew upgrade` and everything gets updated, including casks.

For us technology slinging types, homebrew is indeed great. Sparkle updates are indeed fantastic for the average user however. I think I'd be interested in learning how many average users install software outside of the Mac App Store these days.

> I'd be interested in learning how many average users install software outside of the Mac App Store these days.

I'd hazard a guess that Chrome alone would put that figure near 100%

I think you underestimate how many people use Safari.

Nowhere near as how many people use Chrome obviously, even on Mac.

Data from analytics.usa.gov [1] reveals that Chrome leads browser usage at 48%, closely followed by Safari at 35.7%, highlighting the competitive proximity of Safari to Chrome. Definitely much higher share than I thought.

[1] https://analytics.usa.gov/

Those would almost entirely be from iPhones where all browsers are technically Safari

Not for long. IFF you are geographically located in the EU and using an iPhone (not iPad), you may one day have the option to use an alternative browser engine. You know, once browser vendors get around to making a version of their app that conforms to Apple's asinine requirements.

The whole malicious compliance shebang. EU mandates browser choice, so Apple implements new technological measures to ensure that browser choice will still not be offered outside the EU

“Safari” doesn’t mean “Safari Desktop”. We’re talking about the Mac here.

Homebrew has statistics. They're high for the usual suspects, very low for everything else.

Real question; do you expect most, half, or even a quarter of MacOS users are going to be installing things through brew?

Even 1%

You might want to cleanup and call the doctor just in case. :-)

  brew update; brew upgrade; brew cleanup; brew doctor

And no need for `brew update` unless you've turned automatic updates off.

It has a timeframe, though, so while it does automatically update every so often, it’s not every time you run `upgrade` or `install`, so running the `brew update` makes sure your OCD matches your needs.

Similar, just without the `doctor`. That one I only run it like once a month. For the other one, I got my alias, haha:

  buuc

I always do:

brew update && brew upgrade && brew cleanup && brew autoremove

What about brew upgrade --cask for apps?

Exactly. It is so simple to do `brew install figma` or whatever App you want. Most bigger apps have ready casks to install. Then I have a startup job that does `brew bundle dump --file=- > $ICLOUD/Brewfile`. That way I get a backup list of all software installed with brew so it is simple to install again if I migrate to a new machine (without restoring a Time Machine backup).

Edit: Obviously for users not familiar with command line programs brew isn't that "easy". But for command line people this setup is quite nice.

Raycast has an excellent extension to manage brew installs and upgrades without any cli on macs

Notably, many cask formulae use Sparkle as the livecheck mechanism that is used to find updates to casks.

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