<story><title>macOS Ventura is now available</title><url>https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/10/macos-ventura-is-now-available/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>runjake</author><text>Because on newer Macs, it’s rewriting the whole OS partition with a new firmware image, much like iOS and IPSW files.&lt;p&gt;Windows, on the other hand, generally does incremental upgrades.</text></item><item><author>deergomoo</author><text>I got a Windows PC for the first time in over a decade recently and I cannot understand why MacOS updates are so damned slow</text></item><item><author>anigbrowl</author><text>The update is cool but the update process was not.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  -Update available, wanna install?
  Sure
  -OK don&amp;#x27;t mind me I&amp;#x27;m gonna need a while
  OK
  -HA HA I LIED I&amp;quot;M READY TO TERMINATE EVERYTHING BYEEEE
  WTF
  5 reboots with just an Apple icon and a progress bar
  The progress bar also moves backwards sometimes
  I guess it&amp;#x27;s a metaphor for life, which is how long this seems to be taking
  -OK hello I am back but I need 10 minutes of alone time
  -Here is some unfamiliar wallpaper but you can log in I guess
  -Oh it&amp;#x27;s you again, do you want to share analytics with us
  -OK here is your familiar desktop, I am not telling you what has changed
  Um preferences
  -Oh hai I&amp;#x27;m called Settings now and I reorganized everything
  Yikes but OK this is sorta well laid out I guess
  -Hello I am Stage Manager, I put a desktop on your desktop so you can work while you work
  Sorta neat, can I configure some things differently though
  -No
  &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Funnily enough I had just started reading the &lt;i&gt;Ars Technica&lt;/i&gt; review when the upgrade took place so that helped with navigating the changes but it was an oddly jarring transition. I get that Apple doesn&amp;#x27;t like burdening users with too much technical information (as in &amp;#x27;any&amp;#x27;) but given how significantly the Settings app has changed I&amp;#x27;m surprised there was no Release notes or feature tour of any kind.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>derefr</author><text>That doesn&amp;#x27;t imply it should be slow; that should imply it should be &lt;i&gt;fast&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;At least, given that macOS is using a copy-on-write filesystem such that you can share blocks between multiple volumes&amp;#x2F;snapshots — which it is; and that the OS base-image is a sealed &amp;quot;everyone has the same cryptographic checksum&amp;quot; volume — which it is; and that Apple are using a binary-diff-based &amp;quot;create aside&amp;quot; OS-image update process, like ChromiumOS&amp;#x2F;CoreOS — which they are. They &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; only have to write out disk pages for the changes, and then just &lt;i&gt;link&lt;/i&gt; the existing pages in to form the rest of the extents. Like a `btrfs receive`.&lt;p&gt;But for some reason, despite all that fancy tech, it&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;still&lt;/i&gt; slow; &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; the install process still requires rebooting into a separate Recovery OS to do parts of the installation. Which, given the &amp;quot;create aside&amp;quot; part especially, is just ridiculous. You &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; be able to just run the installer in the background as you&amp;#x27;re using your device, and eventually be told &amp;quot;when you reboot, it&amp;#x27;ll be into the new OS.&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>macOS Ventura is now available</title><url>https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/10/macos-ventura-is-now-available/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>runjake</author><text>Because on newer Macs, it’s rewriting the whole OS partition with a new firmware image, much like iOS and IPSW files.&lt;p&gt;Windows, on the other hand, generally does incremental upgrades.</text></item><item><author>deergomoo</author><text>I got a Windows PC for the first time in over a decade recently and I cannot understand why MacOS updates are so damned slow</text></item><item><author>anigbrowl</author><text>The update is cool but the update process was not.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  -Update available, wanna install?
  Sure
  -OK don&amp;#x27;t mind me I&amp;#x27;m gonna need a while
  OK
  -HA HA I LIED I&amp;quot;M READY TO TERMINATE EVERYTHING BYEEEE
  WTF
  5 reboots with just an Apple icon and a progress bar
  The progress bar also moves backwards sometimes
  I guess it&amp;#x27;s a metaphor for life, which is how long this seems to be taking
  -OK hello I am back but I need 10 minutes of alone time
  -Here is some unfamiliar wallpaper but you can log in I guess
  -Oh it&amp;#x27;s you again, do you want to share analytics with us
  -OK here is your familiar desktop, I am not telling you what has changed
  Um preferences
  -Oh hai I&amp;#x27;m called Settings now and I reorganized everything
  Yikes but OK this is sorta well laid out I guess
  -Hello I am Stage Manager, I put a desktop on your desktop so you can work while you work
  Sorta neat, can I configure some things differently though
  -No
  &lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Funnily enough I had just started reading the &lt;i&gt;Ars Technica&lt;/i&gt; review when the upgrade took place so that helped with navigating the changes but it was an oddly jarring transition. I get that Apple doesn&amp;#x27;t like burdening users with too much technical information (as in &amp;#x27;any&amp;#x27;) but given how significantly the Settings app has changed I&amp;#x27;m surprised there was no Release notes or feature tour of any kind.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zamalek</author><text>This isn&amp;#x27;t really a viable excuse. Silverblue is also immutable and updates are applied in under 10 seconds &lt;i&gt;prior&lt;/i&gt; to reboot (which is never affected by updates).&lt;p&gt;Coming from Windows and Linux, macOS had been a very unpleasant experience for me. It&amp;#x27;s full of papercuts.</text></comment>