Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Restart will be required.

I've ranted about this before, but seriously, this is what my Mac's Software Update is saying:


Note the message in the bottom left corner: Restart will be required.

Really? Why? What is so friggin' essential about Safari or iPhoto or AirPort Extreme (I'm using a wired connection here) that requires a full reboot of the operating system?

This is just developer laziness, or excessive caution.

I'm working here. Get it? I'M WORKING HERE!

I have multiple windows open, with just the right PDF documents displayed, and all the windows configured correctly. I have the right files open in my developer tools. Even with shortcuts like "Open recent ..." and Firefox's automatic tab re-opening (which Safari makes you do by hand, for some reason), having to restart, and then re-open and re-arrange everything is is a big interruption.

Now I understand the concept of the therapeutic reboot ... the reboot just to get the system back to a stable state after it's gotten all weird. But this isn't about that. This is just some stupid little software update.

So, Software Update, get over yourself, you annoying little twit.

Same to you, Windows Update.

2 comments:

Margaret Fieland said...

Um, actually I really don't much like automatic update (though I have it enabled on my PC) -- I feel the system is doing things behind my back. Somehow it always seems to be doing it when I'm in the middle of something. You can, usually, tell it you don't want to reboot -- on windows anyway.

I don't do development on either windows or mac so I couldn't tell you which awful systems tables these pieces of software are touching, but there probably are some.

Unknown said...

Yes, the automatic updates are scarey. But even with this feature turned off, you get these annoying warnings on both Mac and Windows.

I can understand that certain updates affect the operating system directly, and would require a reboot. But iPhoto?