Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first time, I don't love it

Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by ryukafalz on Tuesday June 02, 2020 @06:02PM (#23396903)

> The OS and apps can't tell if you're eligible for an update because they don't know if your hardware/drivers will run the new version, because you won't tell them what hardware/drivers you're running now.

Why do you need to give Microsoft a bunch of details about your hardware for this? Why can’t Microsoft publish info about which hardware/drivers are supported in the new update, and then your machine determines whether or not it’s compatible?

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Re:Seven years later, I bought a new MacBook. For the first ... by modernerd on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @07:06AM (#23402078)

Windows uses delta/differential updates for monthly “quality” updates[1] because it uses less bandwidth than big-blob updates.

For diffed updates to work efficiently Windows first works out what hardware/software you have. Then it can either:

1. Send info about the system to an update server and let the server decide what updates it needs.

2. Download a big manifest of all available updates (as you describe) and calculate locally what updates it needs.

Either way, Windows then has to make a request for updates specific to the system, at which point you reveal info about your software and hardware that you were attempting to hide in (2) anyway.

For the semi-annual feature updates, the process is more like you describe where there's a compatibility check then a large download (~3-6GB) containing all new features, even if your system won't be able to make use of all of them.

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/update/p...

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