Comments on: Uh, whatever, Apple.

By: Keilaron

Keilaron — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 16:13:16 +0000

That’s a good point! I don’t think any auto-update system provides a summary of what it’s done, which is rather unfortunate. If anything, they say something like “Your browser is now MORE SECURE!!11!!1!”.
Yeah, okay.

By: Val

Val — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:45:53 +0000

Hmm well for Vista, you just have to right click the update and pick view details. It tells you a bit and then I think there’s a link for extensive info.

Of course, if you’re someone who auto gets the updates in the background, that won’t matter. :)

By: Keilaron

Keilaron — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:56:32 +0000

In that case, I’d wager there wasn’t much of a problem if you didn’t notice any ill effects ;) Of course, that depends on how long you kept it that way.

I’m not sure about Vista, but for XP you have to click their link, hope that it’s still functional (some cease to work for some reason, and you have to manually look up the KB article using the ID that is in the “description” of the patch), and sometimes have to figure out what the hell they’re saying in the resulting bulletin.
Fx and TB do tell you, but it’s similar; You have to click on the link, scroll do where there’s a link about the security fixes, and you get a list of what’s been fixed. You then have to read the bulletins (which are generally easy to understand, though just as vague as the Microsoft ones half the time) to know what’s been fixed… but they only are particularly verbose about the security fixes.

By: Val

Val — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:15:30 +0000

You know what? Haha, I don’t even remember! I had to reformat the laptop not long ago and forgot all about it. I just uninstalled it. I don’t think there’s any ill effects though, it didn’t even freak with me uninstalling it (didn’t keep asking are you sure, but you really want this, etc.)

But you’re right of course, most don’t tell you. Vista kinda tells you — if you actually look, that is. It will say security update or whatever and you can get more info. But things like Firefox and Thunderbird, I don’t think they tell you what the update is??

By: Keilaron

Keilaron — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:32:53 +0000

Val: Sadly, a fair amount of updaters don’t really tell you what the issue is or, if they do, don’t bother to summarize it (And you usually have to click a link or two, get to the security bulletin, wade through the cruft, and then digest the Big Words to get to some simple conclusion like “Oh, if you visit a site with a malformed image, it might crash your browser.”. Why can’t they just SAY that?).
I have to admit, though, that I don’t use Apple software so I don’t know how it’ll react to the updater being un-installed (likely nothing since it appeared to be completely separate from the apps as well as the core, but still). Did you notice any ill effects?

By: Val

Val — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:59:23 +0000

Keilaron — yes, iTunes and Quicktime, but not Safari.
I don’t always update right away, either, but I never bothered to uninstall the updater, I figured it was core and had to stay. I’ll give that a try, thanks. (Also, I don’t think the updater tells you what kind of updates it wants to make, just to which programs, so I can’t know if they are security issues or not.)