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Comment by bredren | Hacker News Reader

> What this month has demonstrated, reiterated and rubbed in until the wounds bleed again, is how massive and debilitating updating Big Sur has become.

This is over the top. Most users are not noticing 3gb vs 1gb difference per download or the delta between what was and what is for short updates.

They are just glad it’s getting done without messing with it.

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Seriously - my wife is on MacOS - and has never mentioned to me that her wounds have been rubbed until they bleed (??). Where does this type of language come from? If a MacOS update is so bad for you that you need medical treatment I don't know what to tell you.

'Not everyone is happy with the latest version of macOS' doesn't get clicks because I don't think there's a single OS update that everyone likes.

For a good many users, internet bandwidth doesn't grow on them trees. There's quite a bit of world outside of continental US, and even continental US got them so-called rural areas, last I heard.

Those sure as hell gonna notice.

I appreciate your point that not everyone has great internet but let’s also keep in mind that services like Netflix consume about 1GB/hr SD and 3GB/hour HD, and Netflix has over 200 million customers world wide. 1GB just isn’t what it used to be.

Do you think that 200 million Netflix users comprises the same set of people that are bandwidth constrained? I don't see how that's relevant to the point whatsoever.

I was just putting 1GB into context for 2021. My point is there is a substantial number of people that are perfectly fine using 1GB/hr for just one of the things they do online. So the requirement of a few GB every few months is not likely to even register for an even larger segment of the population, regardless of platform.

Of course there are those that this will matter to. And for those perhaps Apple, a premium brand, is not the best solution. But of course they will need to define “best” for their own context.

Edit: And of course there are contexts where the long upgrade time can matter a lot, like a help desk. They won’t care about the data but they may care about upgrade latency. Again I just don’t think the Magnitude of data is going to be an issue for Apple’s target demographic.

> And for those perhaps Apple, a premium brand, is not the best solution.

It's not a question of paying for better internet. There are places in the US where the best internet you can get has a 10GB/Month cap.

Well maybe then the problem is with the ISPs and the unusable service they provide. Maybe their customers deserve better. I'm sure macOS updates are not the only thing that will benefit from the proper internet connection. If you think about it – Apple is building for the future, not optimising for the past. On HN posts about crappy ISPs are a regular occasion, but in this case the blame shifts on Apple for some reason. I agree, small delta updates would be the best, and I'm sure they'll get there, but let's be honest — 1, 2 or 3GBs is not a big difference with a proper connection.

How likely is it that Mac users are in that bandwidth-constrained population either, though?

A lot of people I know were using macs partly because you can still force them to only update at the library, Something you haven't been able to do with Windows for a long time.

In the beginning of the pandemic, my living situation changed, and my family was dependent on mobile LTE for our internet connection due to being in a semi-rural area.

A 1 GB security update would find me at the public library parking lot with a pile of devices in my car, updating all of them on their WiFi some weekend morning.

There are still millions and millions of people in this world who need to change their physical behavior to work around issues of internet scarcity on a regular basis.

Funny because when I read the article I thought "he's in the US on a metered expensive connection".

1 Gb... 3 Gb... not much of a difference for my internet pipe.

Many people outside of US don't know what "data cap" means. So, for them bandwidth do grows on them trees.

I can assure you that the entire population of Australia is intimately familiar with the concept.

As are most of people on this planet. GP's insinuation that most people aren't limited by datacaps is false.

I'm in Australia and unlimited on our amazing NBN.

I agree. My wife and I are facing the transition to a fixed income. We'll move to less expensive digs soon, in a rural area.

We're both on Macs & iPhones. I'm worried about data charges for MacOS & iOS updates. No clear solution ATM.

Enable Sharing > Content Caching on one of your Macs if you have more than one.

Just saw your reply. Thank you, this will help.

You all haven't noticed it takes 45 minutes of downtime to update macOS? It's not just the download, but there's a lot of time spent post-reboot actually applying that much data.

If they haven't noticed by now, they'll notice soon that even minor updates like 12.2.2 takes 40+ minutes to install, no matter the download size difference.

They won’t because they don’t take 40+ minutes on a normal system and most people are going to start the morning with the “your Mac was restarted to install an update” message and no idea how long it took.

I just did this update and it took roughly 15 minutes after I hit 'reboot now' till I was able to login and resume my work. All of the download and preparation work happened in the background without interrupting my work.

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