My previous experience with Windows (~3 years ago) was that every single update took ~2 hours to complete, and they were asking to update weekly.

I used to game weekly with my friends, and because of the above problem, I would have to turn on my computer the night before and start the update so I would be able to reliably play a game the following day - otherwise, there was an extremely good chance that they would start gaming at 8pm and I wouldn't be able to join until roughly 10pm due to the Windows updates.

At the time, this was Windows 10. I eventually just switch to an old Xbox (ironically, still Microsoft), which was far more reliable (although XBox updates take forever too), because we could cross-play Apex Legends. But that is an 8 year old XBox One and it finally has crapped out on me.

I'm currently finishing up getting parts for a new PC build, which will have Windows 11, and I really dread it. I wish Apex was for Linux because I just want to have a Linux-based gaming environment.

--

Anyway - all this to say... macOS major updates might be slow, but they happen so infrequently, that it's not nearly a big deal. Minor security patches are almost never that slow for me, especially compared to Windows.

> My previous experience with Windows (~3 years ago) was that every single update took ~2 hours to complete, and they were asking to update weekly.

Unless you manually seek preview updates, Windows gets updates once per month, on Patch Tuesday (a twenty-year tradition now).

Two hours for "every single update" sounds implausible for Windows 10 because Microsoft has implemented changes to minimize the "offline phase" of the updates to mere minutes - even on HDDs.

Which brings to my last point. If updates were taking long, then your OS was most certainly installed on a HDD. Everyone knows HDDs are slow as hell.

Seriously, what was the point of replying with complaints about Windows on slow hardware and comparing it to mac OS on fast hardware? It almost feels dishonest.

And for the record, Ventura is installing on the Mac as I type this on my Windows machine. The 22H2 update for Windows 11 had an offline phase of under 10 minutes and I have a non-NMVe SSD here. The Mac has already been down for about 15 and it's not even done yet.

If you don’t use windows for your daily driver, then you absolutely get into this situation. Even on NVMe, rarely is a windows 10 update (still running it here) less than an hour. Then there’s connection speed. Even on a gig line you won’t get gig speeds. And again, if you’re not on it everyday then you may have to update multiple drivers and other windows updates.

> Unless you manually seek preview updates, Windows gets updates once per month, on Patch Tuesday (a twenty-year tradition now).

That's weird, there have been multiple occasions when my gaming desktop (Win10 Pro) installed updates for multiple consecutive shutdowns and I definitely haven't opted into any additional update channels. I don't use it all that often, so those were spaced out over two weeks maybe, but definitely less than a month. They tend to take quite a while for me, too, I'd say 20-ish minutes at the least? Typical minor macOS updates take less time for me (2020 Intel 13" MBP; desktop does have a NVMe SSD and is a bit older than the Macbook). At least with Windows Pro you can postpone them like on macOS, I've used Home for a bit and forced reboots mid-game are just crazy frustrating. No idea about Windows 11, my desktop apparently can't run it, which is weird, too; I thought backward compatibility was a big thing with Windows. Same with a few Windows XP era games, apparently I have to buy remastered versions, can't get the originals to run anymore.

That's kind of a theme with me and Windows; I start out expecting things to be as good or better as on macOS (their user base is massive, surely they'll polish everything really nicely), but then reality is kinda underwhelming and frustrating. If I hibernate my PC, it invariably turns itself back on at 2 AM and won't go back to sleep even if configured to. It won't do WOL no matter what I try, scanning via a HP all-in-one device requires a HP cloud account, funnels me into an ink subscription, upload scans to their cloud and then crashes mid-scan (on macOS, that "just works" via the built-in Printers and Scanners app), the bundled Office app doesn't actually have the standalone apps (need to download the "real" Office installer for those, which they tell you nowhere at all; why don't they just bundle them like the iWork apps?), ... so at this point I've simply accepted that Windows is a bit like Linux in that as a non-expert user you have to live with a couple of weird and broken things at all times, but you can save money on hardware and can get setups Apple doesn't sell (like a comparatively inexpensive gaming desktop, though my desktop wasn't exactly cheap either). If I could have modded PC games on a more console-like platform, I'd probably move my gaming there.

This is very well written.

This whole "tribalism" nonsense over companies is just insane. If you like windows, great. If you like MacOS, great.

I don't get why people feel a personal attachment to things like which OS they use. What really confuses me is when they become unpaid advocates for their company of choice?

Personally, I've never been a big fan of Microsoft and used Ubuntu/Mint for many years. Recently i moved to MacOS.

None of this has caused me to develop some sort of personal attachment with what OS I use. I'm not going to spend my time doing as the OP did - write a dishonest review to flog my OS of choice.

PS. I do have a windows laptop which i haven't used in months. I used it last week and it did take a while to upgrade as there were many missing updates. I also upgraded my pc from Monterey to Ventura. Both took around the same time so i really dont get the OP's point?

This is not tribalism. I’m detailing a history of why I stopped using Windows, because the updates were frustratingly annoying.

If it wasn’t every week, it certainly felt like it - perhaps it was every other week. But it’s not dishonest to claim that Windows updates took up far more time than macOS updates. If I update my Mac twice a year, but Windows has to update bi-weekly (or monthly, as the person responded to me claimed is the only possible way), that is still several hours more time dedicated to Windows updates overall.

Additionally I can go far longer without updating my Mac - I’m not sure if there was a setting for this on Windows, but their updates seemed more-or-less forced.

—-

It’s interesting you believe someone to have had a negative experience with Windows to be a dishonest experience.

> This is not tribalism.

Sure it is.. this whole "i'm an apple user and you are a windows user" is tribalism.

Try spending some time on any discussion boards and read the blatant misinformation floating around.

> It’s interesting you believe someone to have had a negative experience with Windows to be a dishonest experience.

I stopped using windows personally around the Windows NT days, mostly because the negative experiences so i absolutely can believe the negative experiences.

Anyhow..

MacOS isn't updated as infrequently as you state:

# ProductID Version Build Post Date Title

1 061-26578 10.14.5 18F2059 2019-10-14 macOS Mojave

2 061-26589 10.14.6 18G103 2019-10-14 macOS Mojave

3 041-91758 10.13.6 17G66 2019-10-19 macOS High Sierra

4 041-88800 10.14.4 18E2034 2019-10-23 macOS Mojave

5 041-90855 10.13.5 17F66a 2019-10-23 Install macOS High Sierra Beta

6 061-86291 10.15.3 19D2064 2020-03-23 macOS Catalina

7 001-04366 10.15.4 19E2269 2020-05-04 macOS Catalina

8 001-15219 10.15.5 19F2200 2020-06-15 macOS Catalina

9 001-36735 10.15.6 19G2006 2020-08-06 macOS Catalina

10 001-36801 10.15.6 19G2021 2020-08-12 macOS Catalina

11 001-51042 10.15.7 19H2 2020-09-24 macOS Catalina

12 001-57224 10.15.7 19H4 2020-10-27 macOS Catalina

13 001-68446 10.15.7 19H15 2020-11-11 macOS Catalina

14 071-78704 11.5.2 20G95 2021-08-18 macOS Big Sur

15 002-23589 11.6.1 20G224 2021-12-01 macOS Big Sur

16 002-42341 11.6.2 20G314 2022-01-14 macOS Big Sur

17 002-57023 11.6.3 20G415 2022-01-26 macOS Big Sur

18 002-65695 11.6.4 20G417 2022-02-17 macOS Big Sur

19 002-77154 11.6.5 20G527 2022-04-11 macOS Big Sur

20 012-08272 11.6.6 20G624 2022-05-24 macOS Big Sur

21 012-42714 12.5 21G72 2022-07-28 macOS Monterey

22 012-40387 11.6.8 20G730 2022-07-28 macOS Big Sur

23 012-51693 12.5.1 21G83 2022-08-24 macOS Monterey

24 012-40494 12.6 21G115 2022-09-20 macOS Monterey

25 012-38280 11.7 20G817 2022-09-20 macOS Big Sur

26 012-92138 13.0 22A380 2022-10-24 macOS Ventura

27 012-90254 12.6.1 21G217 2022-10-24 macOS Monterey

28 012-90253 11.7.1 20G918 2022-10-24 macOS Big Sur

And as someone who hasn't used windows in literally MONTHS.. you can postpone their updates...

I also had this issue. You can easily solve the problem by disabling the Windows update service in Services.msc.

I heard Apex runs pretty good on Linux via Proton

ProtonDB has it listed as "GOLD", so yep:

https://www.protondb.com/app/1172470

Ooooh! I haven't checked on Proton in some time but this is exciting news! I'm going to check this out, thanks!

Hi guys, talking about MacOsVentura and ApexLegends: Is it native playable with Metal3? I'm updating with Ventura now; I look to play Apex on Macbook Pro16 since 12months been having some lose with Geforce (cloud); is bootcamp useable now with Apple chip? Let me know if either bootcamp or Ventura can provide key for this ; seson 15 coming soon and havent played the 14 t all only got the BP. In game pseudo Jiemx lvl 500+(2400 reset)

Update MacOsV started 10mins ago, 20minutes more

also what you think of Apex mod scripts legits; is it of use? anyone up to scripts for stocks markets or what thread for it (on trading view?

I'll be honest, I couldn't parse most of what you said, but I can at least confirm that there is no Bootcamp on Apple silicon, Apple didn't port it. So if you depend on Bootcamp for gaming, I fear you're out of luck on recent Macbooks.

Did you have an SSD on your PC ~3 years ago? I never found it to be that bad or for it to take that long!

I kicked off the Ventura update today on the M1 Pro, went out to get lunch, it had finished by the time I got back.

I've been on the 'insider preview' track on Windows 10 and 11 for around 18 months. You get big updates maybe 2-4 times per month and they do take around 20 minutes to install.

Stick on the regular updates track, make sure you get an SSD, and your new Windows 11 experience will be fine just fine :) Check out WSL too, it is pretty good. I'm split on Linux vs Windows vs MacOS for development, it's all a game of tradeoffs. The trick is to have a few computers!

Because on newer Macs, it’s rewriting the whole OS partition with a new firmware image, much like iOS and IPSW files.

Windows, on the other hand, generally does incremental upgrades.

That can't be the whole story.

If we assume the drive can write 500MB/s (conservative), and an OS install takes up 50GB of space (conservative), it should take less than 2 minutes to write the partition. Where does the other 58 minutes go?

At much of it, the OS and even applications actually seem to be running. I remember a macOS update with the full-screen progress bar, where a few minutes in, a browser tab suddenly started playing music, with no way to turn it off...

I wondered the same about Linux installers. I'm installing some kind of debian minimal which will take 300 MB on disk. It should be installed in a fraction of the second. Instead it takes minutes. All installer should do is: dd pre-assembled Ext3 filesystem from ISO to disk; extend filesystem to the desired size; write some configs like fstab. It could be really fast.

My guess is that nobody really took the time to optimize it. Installation is only one-time procedure and even it if takes a hour, who cares.

thatd work if it wasnt for (some) settings of course. but even then, image and then update /etc and friends and done but here we are

What you describe is the cloud image. You can dd it to your hard drive and it should work as is (initial password will be displayed on first boot).

As for Debian, the slowness comes mostly for fsync calls I think. You should be able to use eatmydata to avoid this. See: https://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Quicker_Debian_insta...

Yeah, I know, my point is that ordinary installer should do the same with ordinary installer UI rather than trying to install every deb package over and over again, running its pre/post scripts, etc. What's the point? It should be deterministic anyway.

I jumped on the upgrade bandwagon quickly this morning and the entire upgrade took about 15 minutes on my M1 MBP 13".

Presumably, you're experiencing the same download issues my work MBP is experiencing. It's been downloading for over an hour and is just barely past 50%. My Internet bandwidth is 10G real-world and un-busy, so presumably Apple's CDN is getting hit good.

EFI updates are sometimes included with new versions of macOS.

Other 58 minutes is collecting telemetry

> on newer Macs, it’s rewriting the whole OS partition with a new firmware image

TIL

Apple switched to a read-only system volume beginning with macOS Catalina, released 3 years ago.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210650

That doesn't imply it should be slow; that should imply it should be fast.

At least, given that macOS is using a copy-on-write filesystem such that you can share blocks between multiple volumes/snapshots — which it is; and that the OS base-image is a sealed "everyone has the same cryptographic checksum" volume — which it is; and that Apple are using a binary-diff-based "create aside" OS-image update process, like ChromiumOS/CoreOS — which they are. They should only have to write out disk pages for the changes, and then just link the existing pages in to form the rest of the extents. Like a `btrfs receive`.

But for some reason, despite all that fancy tech, it's still slow; and the install process still requires rebooting into a separate Recovery OS to do parts of the installation. Which, given the "create aside" part especially, is just ridiculous. You should be able to just run the installer in the background as you're using your device, and eventually be told "when you reboot, it'll be into the new OS."

"when you reboot, it'll be into the new OS." Oh man, wouldn't that be amazing!

NixOS then lives in the future, as that is exactly what it does!

Pff, FreeBSD and Illumos/Solaris have BE's (boot environments) since years

Can you give your system’s declarative configuration to another machine and boot into an equivalent one? :D

Yes.

With FreeBSD I can 'send' entire BE to other system and boot it there - which I often do.

Just use:

    # zfs send <ZFS-BE-DATASET@snap> | ssh <IP> zfs recv <ZFS-BE-DATASET>

I also sometimes installed FreeBSD/GhostBSD system in a VM and then 'send' it to physical hardware.

Hope that helps.

This isn't really a viable excuse. Silverblue is also immutable and updates are applied in under 10 seconds prior to reboot (which is never affected by updates).

Coming from Windows and Linux, macOS had been a very unpleasant experience for me. It's full of papercuts.

> Coming from Windows and Linux, macOS had been a very unpleasant experience for me. It's full of papercuts.

The same could be said to the opposite transition, from macOS to Linux and/or Windows. All of these OSs are mature and old enough to have thousands of papercuts different from the thousands of papercuts of the other OSs, the impression is mostly based on what you are used to.

I used to be staunchly anti-Apple/Mac up to 2010-ish, nowadays I simply can't work and feel productive with a Windows machine. Linux can be a bit more pleasant until I get to the edges of the Linux-on-desktop UX and the experience crumbles.

Windows is definitely the most unpleasant experience I've ever had on desktop OSs, and I was a user all the way from Win3.11 to Windows 7 (latest iterations only on a gaming computer though).

Windows' updates got much less granular since Windows 10. It used to be that updates were delivered in individual packages that can be installed and uninstalled independently (within reason).

Nowadays more and more updates come in a "rollup" package which is a bundle of many updates and it's take it or leave it. Even worse, some of the bigger feature updates are actually full OS reinstalls under the hood.

It's not how old the Mac is, but rather whether its running macOS Catalina or newer when Apple switched to a separate read-only system volume:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210650

Wait until you buy a NOS Windows PC for the first time. I had a T495 take nearly two hours to run all updates in. About 20 minutes of that was it fannying around working out what to do.

My MBP took 10 mins to update earlier. That's fine.

There doesn't seem to be a good reason for the slowness, but a reasonably good technical write-up on the update mechanism is available at [0]. The time spent rebooting does seem excessive, especially when using image-based updates.

[0] https://eclecticlight.co/2022/03/19/explainer-macos-updaters...

Windows does frequent incremental updates and makes them pretty painless, but has a bad habit of just letting the installation files pile up and fill your storage. If you or your PC supplier have the habit of having a small-medium boot disk (or partition) for just your OS and applications this can yield unwelcome surprises.

Windows updates when you don't want it to and does that often. Tons of horror stories out there. macOS updates much less frequently and never "surprises" you (at least it hasn't done to me)

This is only about 5-10 minutes on modern hardware. Historically a lot of developers saw it as slow because it moved the contents of /usr/local in a naive loop which meant that systems using something like Homebrew spent 90% of the total time moving a million files one by one.

Last time I checked the logs after an update, what I understood had happened was that the installer was installing the new files one by one, and logging each one of them. Which is a lot of files. I've no idea if this is still done this way, but I suspect it's part of the reason for the slowness.

updates are fast but downloading takes longer to complete