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Macs don't reboot without you taking an action if you have automatic update installation disabled. You have to click a button to apply the updates after which it will reboot. But it tells you this in the dialog where you agree to apply the updates. Windows just applies them and reboots when you're not actively using the machine.

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I wasn't responding to that, I was responding to the part about "OS needs to reboot to install updates" being a part of life - it definitely ain't just a Windows thing.

Anyway, I'm glad that Windows restarts for me when I'm sleeping and I wish my Macs would do the same. It's pretty easy to avoid having it restart at the wrong time - you just go into the Settings and tell Windows what your active hours are. They let you enter a time range of up to 18 hours.

The problem is that windows will at some point start ignoring your active hours. This seems to happen if you put it to sleep after you're done working, so it's always sleeping/hibernating while outside of the active hours. This understandably pisses people off.

My PCs wake up and perform the updates. Maybe that's the problem with laptops when they're not plugged in or something but I have not experienced it.

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