Windows Update causing you a headache? Alex Kidman would like to introduce you to as a pain-free zone known as Apple.
Question: Which of the following is easier to understand?
Security Update For Windows Vista (KB941569)
Or
Leopard Graphics Update
Unless you’re clinically insane, you’re going to pick the second one. Microsoft cops a lot of flack for product updates – not all of it justified, although patching critical security holes could still be a whole lot more timely – but something that’s almost never addressed is how poorly the company does at explaining what it is that it actually wants you to update.
Like far too many PC owners, Windows Update gives me dizzying headaches; both for the stupendous number of updates, and then the mental puzzles you have to undergo in order to work out which ones are actually needed.
Meanwhile, my Macbook hums along – and I hate to use the marketing term, but here it’s correct – “just working”. Updates come through every once in a while, with explanations in plain English that anyone can understand. The Leopard Graphics update? It updates the graphics drivers for users of OS X 10.5.2. Meanwhile, I have reluctantly fixed the KB941569 problem – whatever it actually is. Maybe I didn’t need to, but even the documentation for it needs its own support documentation to make it clear.
There’s an area beyond using plain speech where Apple’s update strategy leaves Windows Update coughing up blood too. Anyone can download Mac updates, even if they’re not running a Mac. You could download the Leopard Graphics Update alluded to above from your PC and share it with your Mac friends if they’re suddenly without net access, or on a download limited broadband plan. Or just dance around your PC with glee at the 48MB of data you just downloaded because you could. It’s nice, flexible, customer friendly strategy.
Meanwhile, Windows users have to jump through seemingly endless hoops just to prove to Microsoft that they haven’t pirated Vista or XP – a step the pirates seem to skip with gleeful abandon, leaving just the genuine customers annoyed – well before they’ll let you download any updates to that PC only. If the update server is working that day. It must be running on Vista.
From where I’m sitting, I can hit the keyboard on no less than four different operating systems – OS X 10.5, Vista Ultimate, Windows XP Pro and Xandros Linux. I’m stating that to head off any commentary about being a rabid Apple zealot (or Windows Fanboy, or, for that matter, Penguin Fetishist). Apple’s approach in any number of areas can be quite thick – but for product updates, I reckon it’s just about spot on.
Alex Kidman has used (and often broken) just about every technology going, from using an Apple II floppy drive as a doorstop, to giving an Apple rep a near heart attack by throwing a Macbook Air up into the air to see if it would fly. He likes Apple gear because they make machines with personality, operating systems that work (mostly), and because Apple doesn't believe in product activation.