HEY!! DUMMIES!!

[rone]

Since Apple seems to be wholly unable these days to go two weeks without putting out another dot version of iTunes, would it absolutely kill them to issue an upgrade installer as well as a full installer?

Comments

[haineux.livejournal.com]

Fully understood.

Here are two obvious problems that affect ALL software updates, not just Apple's:

1) Developing, Building, and Testing a "delta" installer is almost as much work as a "full on replace" installer. Indeed, I'd say it's harder. So either schedule, budget, or quality must be compromised to handle the extra work.

2) A "delta" installer is considered less reliable than a "full on replace" installer. After all, what happens when you, the nice customer, have some bitrot in a file that isn't replaced, but which causes the updated program to crash?

No excuses here. Apple should produce more delta installers. But when the question comes up, "Why don't they?", well, there's some reasons.

There's the old adage, "Gasoline is cheaper than sweat." In this case, bandwidth is cheaper than engineering/QA. In any case, it's CERTAINLY faster.

The real answer is: "HEY APPLE, STOP HAVING A NEW RELEASE EVERY 2 FEMTOSECONDS, YA MAROONS." Sheesh.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the real answer, but i suspect that one has deeper roots. I wonder what the release notes for 6.0.1 say.

[xdice.livejournal.com]

As I recall, some boilerplate blurb about stability or something.

*shrug* I never seem to have the issues that they use as a justification for the minor release updates, but Software Update on the Mac Mini installs 'em anyway.