Restart Will Be Required
In the famous “Get A Mac” series of commercials, the PC is mocked for locking up and needing the occasional reboot to get back on its feet. The Mac, in contrast, doesn’t crash, and doesn’t need a reboot.
While this is on the large part true, that I go several months between lockups, and have at times sported an uptime measuring in the hundreds of days, I find myself undercut by Apple’s own software updates, which more often than not, require a reboot.
Whether it’s point releases, from Mac OS X 10.4.7 to 10.4.8 and 10.4.9, or Security Updates or QuickTime upgrades, there is a common message from my Software Update alerts: “Restart will be required”.
With Apple trying to stay the line against high profile attempts to thwart Mac OS X’s leading security, it seems that updates requiring a restart are coming at an increasing pace. And while I understand that Apple updates are more for the core of the system than say, Microsoft Office applications, or the Firefox Web browser, I wouldn’t tolerate those companies demanding I restart my computer each time I make a point upgrade. But for Apple, we put up with it, quite unwillingly.
So, when I do trust that Apple’s latest security updates or point releases are in my best interest, and I finally stop ignoring my daily Software Update reminders, I am resigned to hitting the restart button and starting over with 0 days uptime – no better than than the PC.
I love the stability of my Mac. I appreciate Apple staying on the forefront of security, and proactively pushing upgrades my way. But I don’t want to restart any more.
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Are you high? LOL… I had to use a Windows-based machine for about 6 months at my last job. Restarts were a frequent part of everyday life, completely hampering efficiency and productivity. Having to restart a Mac because of Software Update is nowhere near the same as what one has to deal with on a Windows-based computer. It’s not even apples and oranges, it’s apples and cannonballs.
I had a Windows PC for years, and now having a mac where I restart every few weeks the the most is a small price to pay- compared with running virus checkers, firewalls, adaware, spybot, cCleaner… you get the picture.
Surely it is axiomatic that incremental and security updates will require a restart. I can’t see how such updates can take effect unless a machine is restarted.
I did read a suggestion somewhere that in order to improve the pre-binding process for Leopard, most software updates will require that no other applications can run while software is being updated. If that is the case, the present system will seem more convenient than what is to follow.
Why is it so bad to restart? It really is only a minor inconvenience. Plus, it actually forces me to take a break, which is nice.
Do you shut your car off at the gas station?
What the hell are you doing with your computer. You never shutdown your mac. I do it every night when I live the office.
I can’t understand people who don’t do it.
Please think about electricity use. Why do you need to keep your Mac powered on, when you are not in front of it.
Rabits, birds, (tiger, leopard) … ask you to shutdown your Mac.
I have noticed with my iBook that system performance starts going downhill around the 7 to 8 day mark (especially if I have been running Photoshop, Lightroom, or Illustrator) so I generally restart once a week so the occasional restart due to system updates is not an issue for me.
I have to say I agree. As a recent Windows switcher I find the OS X restart dialog to be very obnoxious — I can’t tell it to hide and remind me later like I can in Windows. And I’m frankly surprised at just how often I have to reboot on a unix-based system.
That being said, you’ll never get me back to Windows. :)
Apple has almost always required a restart for system updates. That is the only way you can make a system change take affect, as the system always loads important parts of itself to memory upon start. When those parts are changed in an update you MUST restart in order to have the changes reloaded to memory. That isn’t just a Windows thing.
FALSE YOU CAN RELOAD THE KERNEL WITHOUT HAVING TO REBOOT THE SYSTEM ON SOFTWARE THAT AFFECTS THE KERNEL OR REHASH MEMORY IF THE SOFTWARE REQUIRES CACHE REFRESH. USUALLY USER WORLD APPS ONLY NEED TO UPDATE THEIR OWN CONFIGURATION IN MEMORY OR CACHE TO TAKE AFFECT AND DOES NOT REQUIRE A SYSTEM REBOOT.
@ Bertrand
The sleep mode on most modern Macs is very efficient. Quite a few years ago I believe Apple made a big deal over the first Mac (might have been the B&W G3 or the Pismo) that used less power in a 24 hour sleep cycle than it used during startup and other than the high-end G5′s and Mac Pro’s I believe that todays systems are even more efficient.