Update me softly

Back in the days when I used to write on the Apple Discussions Forums under the pseudonym of Mimi — I know, I know —, the Mac OS X Installer was a rather sorry mess. Today, it's a fine piece of updating goodness, save for one particular weakness: it does not automatically download and install updates on a freshly initialized Mac.

Those of us who held Mac OS X's hand as it was taking its first steps into this big, bright world remember the many horror stories that used to accompany every major release: hosed computers, screens blue, black or gray and long beeps were, at the time, common ills. Luckily, none of it was grave, and a re-install — with no loss of data — was usually all one needed to do to solve it all in one fell swoop. Little, however, did most users know.

Strangely enough, it took Apple four years or so to realize none of these issues were Mac OS X's fault per se but instead stemmed from many small and cumulative faux-pas in the installation experience. By adding simple tweaks to the process, without even changing the overall experience, they have solved most of these once-common issues.

We now have automated DVD verification, we have a migration assistant and, most importantly, we have plenty of little safeguards here and there that check for potential issues before updating the system. Sure, I wish more emphasis were placed on Erase and Installs instead of updates, but that's my old-fashioned streak.

My biggest regret is that the Mac OS X installer now does networking, meaning any Mac booted from the install CD becomes a potentially vulnerable networked machine, missing out on weeks, if not months of security patches. I guess, however, that normal folks do not worry about such issues, and that the actual window for infection is minimal.

Compared to the end-user experience when installing Windows XP or Vista or even Linux, both of which I have installed both recently and many times over the years, the Mac OS X installer is in a class of its own. There's no weird text to see running across the screen, there are no unexplained waits, no return to deprecated color schemes or screen resolutions. It's a full Mac OS X experience from the get-go.

Yet, Ubuntu and other Linux distros have one thing over the Mac OS X installer: if they find a network connection — and they're no better at it than Mac OS X —, they download and install updates as part of the initial process. This means that as soon as you bring your machine up, it's up-to-date and ready to go or to receive the latest third-party software.

Sure, Mac OS X will rely on Software Update to do this job after the installation, and a fresh Mac won't stay un-patched for long. Nevertheless, that is one extra step, that users can too easily delay or dismiss, creating a window for trouble by allowing users to install third-party applications on an outdated system — or connect external hard drives or enable FileVault or mount network shares…

Downloading packages over a network without warning the user is a big no-no. One could, nevertheless, imagine an extra screen at the end of the installation process, before the offer to reboot is displayed, that would suggest the user pre-update the installation.

For all my love of auto-updates, however, I would never advocate doing things the Linux way and making the downloads mandatory. Indeed, knowing one can install a full, working OS without access to the Internet is a comforting thought.