Okay, I may be setting myself up for some backlash here but I just have to ask. Is it just me? Or have Apple software updates gotten progressively worse? Maybe my memory is failing but I remember years back when Apple software updates were relatively smooth, quick, and painless. Before macOS, I never seemed to dread an OS X update. I always felt it downloaded and installed with efficiency.
Last night I was asked to go to my 80-year old mother’s home to troubleshoot her iMac. I’m not going to get into what the issue was but I decided our best course of action was to wipe the disk and reinstall macOS.
Wiping the disk on a Mac is still ultra easy using disk utility, I still love that. Reinstalling macOS on the other hand… excruciatingly slow and the time left indicator is blatantly false. I spent a total of 3.75 hours at mom’s house reinstalling macOS Sierra and then upgrading to macOS High Sierra. I will knock a half-hour off because I also had to reset a bunch of mom’s passwords for her because she couldn’t remember them.
Now, I spend a lot of time reviewing Windows PC’s from Lenovo, Dell, HP, Acer, Samsung, and more. Every time I get a new Windows PC, the first order of business is wiping the drive, reinstall Windows and applying any updates. In the past, it was a pain in the butt to do this on a Windows PC. Now, I find this process takes about 45-minutes. So I have to ask… why does it take an iTunes update 45-minutes to complete?
It’s not only macOS that seems to have gotten progressively worse at updates. Apple software across devices have seemed to just take forever to download and apply. iOS isn’t nearly as bad as macOS but watchOS has got to be the worst. Hours to apply a major watchOS update to my Apple Watch is just crazy.
So I ask you. Has your Apple software update experience gotten progressively worse over the past few years? Do you feel the amount of time these OS updates take is over the top? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.
