Mac users who pay close attention to software updates may have noticed something strange in recent years: macOS updates have increased dramatically.
When should you REALLY update Mac OS?
On iOS and older macOS versions, software updates arrived at a few hundred megabytes each, perhaps even smaller for basic fixes. But since Big Sur, you’re lucky to get anything less than 2-3 GB each, even if the update itself only takes up a few megabytes. This wastes data and time and, when you add it all up, a significant amount of power. So why are they so big? It’s mostly a matter of reliability.
“With Big Sur, Apple not only changed the system volume so that macOS now boots from a sealed snapshot of the system, but it also changed the way macOS is updated,” Mac expert Dr. Howard Oakley told Lifewire via email.
“While this is often touted as a security improvement, there is a much larger reason for these changes that should be an improvement for every Mac user: updates and system integrity should now be almost completely reliable.”
