Apple has stopped providing standalone updaters in macOS Big Sur

AppleInsider

Apple has stopped providing standalone updater versions of its macOS system software, starting with macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 -- but is still providing them for Catalina and Mojave as recently as December 16.

Credit: Andrew O'Hara, AppleInsider

For decades, Apple has offered a users the ability to download standalone smaller update files without needing to download a full OS install image, or the same update in the macOS Software Update feature multiple times across a rollout of Macs. In macOS Big Sur, that download has not been made available for any of the updates.

As noted by The Eclectic Light Company, Apple has yet to release a standalone installer for macOS 11.1 much less 11.0.1, despite releasing standalone installers for macOS Catalina and Mojave security updates on Dec. 16.

AppleInsider has confirmed that this is the case. Sources within Apple corporate not authorized to speak on behalf of the company point to content caching options available in macOS as an alternative to prevent multiple Internet downloads. However, this does nothing for administrators that want a mobile update file on external media, or similar deployment.

According to Mr. Macintosh, Apple is advising users who need individual downloads to contact them in an "official capacity" to hope to change Apple's point of view on the matter.

Manual downloadable delta and combo updates for Big Sur are no longer available. I will let our resident #MacAdmins expert explain

"If you have a need for individual downloads for Big Sur delta/combo updaters - please make sure that's filed in an official capacity with us"

-- Mr. Macintosh (@ClassicII_MrMac)

December 17, 2020

dysamoria

Why do Apple seem to enjoy making things harder for Mac adoption & management in institutions?

jdb8167

Isn't the App Store download equivalent to a combo updater? Maybe I'm missing something. Once you download the installer you can save a copy and reuse it. Along with the content caching, it doesn't seem like this is that big of a deal unless I'm missing something. You can also use the App Store download to create a bootable recovery disk if you need to distribute to users to update on their own. The real problem is for those users who have very slow or severely expensive internet. I don't see any way to avoid downloading the 12 GB installer.

pulseimages

Have they worked out the bugs for Big Sur yet? I haven’t downloaded it as of yet. 

lkrupp

pulseimages said:

Have they worked out the bugs for Big Sur yet? I haven’t downloaded it as of yet. 

You, or people like you, ask this question every time an update is released. It’s a tired and useless question and the answer is simple. No, bugs have not been worked out and never will be. All software has bugs. There is no such thing as bug free software. However, millions of people are using Big Sur and being productive, carrying on with their lives. On tech blogs ALL you ever hear about are bugs, both real and imagined. 

If you haven’t installed it yet you probably never will because of the question you asked. You want bug free software but it doesn't exist and never has.

And by the way, who do you accept as an authoritative source to tell you it’s okay to install Big Sure?

jdb8167

pulseimages said:

Have they worked out the bugs for Big Sur yet? I haven’t downloaded it as of yet. 

There are bugs with installing on external drives and running Big Sur on an external boot drive. I can't get it to work at all on my M1 MacBook Air. But Big Sur seems pretty solid for day to day use. Better than Catalina in my opinion. 

crowley

lkrupp said:

pulseimages said:

Have they worked out the bugs for Big Sur yet? I haven’t downloaded it as of yet. 

You, or people like you, ask this question every time an update is released. It’s a tired and useless question and the answer is simple. No, bugs have not been worked out and never will be. All software has bugs. There is no such thing as bug free software. However, millions of people are using Big Sur and being productive, carrying on with their lives. On tech blogs ALL you ever hear about are bugs, both real and imagined. 

If you haven’t installed it yet you probably never will because of the question you asked. You want bug free software but it doesn't exist and never has.

And by the way, who do you accept as an authoritative source to tell you it’s okay to install Big Sure?

Stop being so angry dude, obviously he's asking whether the initial, more prominent bugs of any major OS release have been addressed, not that all conceivable bugs are gone.

And yes @pulseimages, it seems to be in a good place to me.  Ymmv depending on your specific setup and needs of course.

crowley

AppleInsider said:

According to Mr. Macintosh, Apple is advising users who need individual downloads to contact them in an "official capacity" to hope to change Apple's point of view on the matter.

This is so strangely put

Mike Wuerthele

jdb8167 said:

Isn't the App Store download equivalent to a combo updater? Maybe I'm missing something. Once you download the installer you can save a copy and reuse it. Along with the content caching, it doesn't seem like this is that big of a deal unless I'm missing something. You can also use the App Store download to create a bootable recovery disk if you need to distribute to users to update on their own. The real problem is for those users who have very slow or severely expensive internet. I don't see any way to avoid downloading the 12 GB installer.

The App Store download is a full, 12GB install. The one you get through software update is 2-3ish GB. The former can take over an hour to install, the latter can take as little as five minutes, depending on a number of factors, obviously.

Multiply this by a dozen machines, and it's a lot of time.

It isn't the end of the world. But, it is a big deal for enterprise and other rollouts, particularly ones that have air-gapped installs and the like. The DoD isn't pleased about it, for instance.

jdb8167

Mike Wuerthele said:

jdb8167 said:

Isn't the App Store download equivalent to a combo updater? Maybe I'm missing something. Once you download the installer you can save a copy and reuse it. Along with the content caching, it doesn't seem like this is that big of a deal unless I'm missing something. You can also use the App Store download to create a bootable recovery disk if you need to distribute to users to update on their own. The real problem is for those users who have very slow or severely expensive internet. I don't see any way to avoid downloading the 12 GB installer.

The App Store download is a full, 12GB install. The one you get through software update is 2-3ish GB. The former can take over an hour to install, the latter can take as little as five minutes, depending on a number of factors, obviously.

Multiply this by a dozen machines, and it's a lot of time.

It isn't the end of the world. But, it is a big deal for enterprise and other rollouts, particularly ones that have air-gapped installs and the like. The DoD isn't pleased about it, for instance.

Thanks, that was the information that I was looking for. 

MacQuadra840av

jdb8167 said:

pulseimages said:

Have they worked out the bugs for Big Sur yet? I haven’t downloaded it as of yet. 

There are bugs with installing on external drives and running Big Sur on an external boot drive. I can't get it to work at all on my M1 MacBook Air. But Big Sur seems pretty solid for day to day use. Better than Catalina in my opinion. 

Wrong. I ran all beta versions and final versions of Big Sur from my external USB 3.0 SSD drive.  Worked perfectly.  The problem you are encountering is Apple's security changes that started with T2 Macs.  You must boot into recovery mode using Command-R, if that is even still possible on an M1 Mac, and disable all the new security imposed by the T2 Macs.  Namely, the new security 'feature' that prohibits installing or booting from ANY external drive.  You should also disable the macOS security features that prohibit installing any version of macOS that is not downloaded at the time of install.  Those are likely the reasons why you cannot install or boot from an external drive.  Has nothing to do with any version of macOS.  

MacQuadra840av

crowley said:

lkrupp said:

pulseimages said:

Have they worked out the bugs for Big Sur yet? I haven’t downloaded it as of yet. 

You, or people like you, ask this question every time an update is released. It’s a tired and useless question and the answer is simple. No, bugs have not been worked out and never will be. All software has bugs. There is no such thing as bug free software. However, millions of people are using Big Sur and being productive, carrying on with their lives. On tech blogs ALL you ever hear about are bugs, both real and imagined. 

If you haven’t installed it yet you probably never will because of the question you asked. You want bug free software but it doesn't exist and never has.

And by the way, who do you accept as an authoritative source to tell you it’s okay to install Big Sure?

Stop being so angry dude, obviously he's asking whether the initial, more prominent bugs of any major OS release have been addressed, not that all conceivable bugs are gone.

And yes @pulseimages, it seems to be in a good place to me.  Ymmv depending on your specific setup and needs of course.

He has a valid point.  Incredibly stupid to ask 'are all the bugs worked out yet'.  Software always has bugs.  If the guy had a clue, he could install on an external drive and test his software to see if he encounters anything critical.  If not, then he can decide to upgrade.  Totally dumb to ask in any group...are all the bugs gone because I refuse to download it and test it on my own.  The guy should not own a computer if that is his mentality.

MacQuadra840av

Apple has continued to make everything more and more difficult to manage their product.  Removing delta and combo updaters that people used to manage their Macs makes no sense.  So now you have download a full 12GB installer and wait an hour to do a re-install if you are troubleshooting something strange?

The worst was the introduction of the T2 chip which by default prohibits you from installing macOS on your own system, without jumping through hoops (when you want to do a clean-install).  The default is to only allow a macOS install from the Command-R recovery mode, requiring a long download.  By default, you cannot boot from any external drive, unless you specifically disable the restriction that prohibits external drives.  Also, you have to allow macOS install from any source.  If you do not change those settings and you wipe the drive to re-install from an external USB boot disk, you can brick your Mac if you do not have internet access to re-install macOS.

Also, the creator of Diskmaker X has 'retired' the product because he does not have the time to re-write the program to figure out how to make a Big Sur boot disk with all of Apple's changes.  He never could get it to work running Catalina.  So the only way to make a Catalina boot disk is to run it from Mojave.  So I am guessing it is nearly impossible to make a USB boot disk of Big Sur.

bulk001

lkrupp said:

pulseimages said:

Have they worked out the bugs for Big Sur yet? I haven’t downloaded it as of yet. 

You, or people like you, ask this question every time an update is released. It’s a tired and useless question and the answer is simple. No, bugs have not been worked out and never will be. All software has bugs. There is no such thing as bug free software. However, millions of people are using Big Sur and being productive, carrying on with their lives. On tech blogs ALL you ever hear about are bugs, both real and imagined. 

If you haven’t installed it yet you probably never will because of the question you asked. You want bug free software but it doesn't exist and never has.

And by the way, who do you accept as an authoritative source to tell you it’s okay to install Big Sure?

Don’t know anything about updating to “Big Sure”, but I just updated one of our macs to 11.1 Big Sur and would suggest holding off till the next update is released. It is a little more sluggish in some areas like spotlight finding files and has had one random crash in the first 12 hours that caused a reboot. Like the new look but there is not really much in the way of major workflow improvements or must have functionality that can’t wait a little longer and we won’t update any other of our company macs till the next update. 

InspiredCode

Mike Wuerthele said:

jdb8167 said:

Isn't the App Store download equivalent to a combo updater? Maybe I'm missing something. Once you download the installer you can save a copy and reuse it. Along with the content caching, it doesn't seem like this is that big of a deal unless I'm missing something. You can also use the App Store download to create a bootable recovery disk if you need to distribute to users to update on their own. The real problem is for those users who have very slow or severely expensive internet. I don't see any way to avoid downloading the 12 GB installer.

The App Store download is a full, 12GB install. The one you get through software update is 2-3ish GB. The former can take over an hour to install, the latter can take as little as five minutes, depending on a number of factors, obviously.

Multiply this by a dozen machines, and it's a lot of time.

It isn't the end of the world. But, it is a big deal for enterprise and other rollouts, particularly ones that have air-gapped installs and the like. The DoD isn't pleased about it, for instance.

There is always startosinstall as a replacement. It is just a larger package to deploy.

chasm

pulseimages said:

Have they worked out the bugs for Big Sur yet? I haven’t downloaded it as of yet. 

Lkrupp, as is his/her wont, went wildly overboard in their reply to your question, but it is in essence correct: no operating system (or program I'm aware of beyond the BASIC version of "Hello World") is bug-free.

But the answer a POLITE person would give is that 11.1, released earlier this week, appears to have resolved most major bugs that typical users might encounter. I think it is okay to install it on your machine at this point unless you are in the middle of a mission-critical project (NEVER do a major system update in the middle of anything mission-critical).

Based on anecdotal reports from tech-savvy friends, it is both stable and a big enhancement (in 1,000 little ways) for the overall Mac experience. Indeed, I'm the only one in my circle who's found some bugs (prior to 11.1). So far I'm pretty happy with it and love the enhancements -- though there was a single issue (since 11.1 was released) with the Sidecar feature that required me to sign my iPad Pro out of iCloud and back in again (that fixed it).

iloveapplegear

pulseimages said:

Have they worked out the bugs for Big Sur yet? I haven’t downloaded it as of yet. 

version 11.1 is much better than 11.01

Been using happily using both since release.

adept1

MacQuadra840av said:

Apple has continued to make everything more and more difficult to manage their product.  Removing delta and combo updaters that people used to manage their Macs makes no sense.  So now you have download a full 12GB installer and wait an hour to do a re-install if you are troubleshooting something strange?

The worst was the introduction of the T2 chip which by default prohibits you from installing macOS on your own system, without jumping through hoops (when you want to do a clean-install).  The default is to only allow a macOS install from the Command-R recovery mode, requiring a long download.  By default, you cannot boot from any external drive, unless you specifically disable the restriction that prohibits external drives.  Also, you have to allow macOS install from any source.  If you do not change those settings and you wipe the drive to re-install from an external USB boot disk, you can brick your Mac if you do not have internet access to re-install macOS.

Also, the creator of Diskmaker X has 'retired' the product because he does not have the time to re-write the program to figure out how to make a Big Sur boot disk with all of Apple's changes.  He never could get it to work running Catalina.  So the only way to make a Catalina boot disk is to run it from Mojave.  So I am guessing it is nearly impossible to make a USB boot disk of Big Sur.

Install Disk Creator (https://macdaddy.io/install-disk-creator/) works fine.

You can also follow Apple's instructions that require Terminal (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372),

crowley

MacQuadra840av said:

crowley said:

lkrupp said:

pulseimages said:

Have they worked out the bugs for Big Sur yet? I haven’t downloaded it as of yet. 

You, or people like you, ask this question every time an update is released. It’s a tired and useless question and the answer is simple. No, bugs have not been worked out and never will be. All software has bugs. There is no such thing as bug free software. However, millions of people are using Big Sur and being productive, carrying on with their lives. On tech blogs ALL you ever hear about are bugs, both real and imagined. 

If you haven’t installed it yet you probably never will because of the question you asked. You want bug free software but it doesn't exist and never has.

And by the way, who do you accept as an authoritative source to tell you it’s okay to install Big Sure?

Stop being so angry dude, obviously he's asking whether the initial, more prominent bugs of any major OS release have been addressed, not that all conceivable bugs are gone.

And yes @pulseimages, it seems to be in a good place to me.  Ymmv depending on your specific setup and needs of course.

He has a valid point.  Incredibly stupid to ask 'are all the bugs worked out yet'.  Software always has bugs.  If the guy had a clue, he could install on an external drive and test his software to see if he encounters anything critical.  If not, then he can decide to upgrade.  Totally dumb to ask in any group...are all the bugs gone because I refuse to download it and test it on my own.  The guy should not own a computer if that is his mentality.

The OP did not say 'are all the bugs worked out yet', nor did they say 'are all the bugs gone because I refuse to download it and test it on my own'.  You've made that up.

spice-boy

lkrupp said:

pulseimages said:

Have they worked out the bugs for Big Sur yet? I haven’t downloaded it as of yet. 

You, or people like you, ask this question every time an update is released. It’s a tired and useless question and the answer is simple. 

I suggest you stop "answering" these questions and perhaps check your ego since nobody is asking you for advice. 

OutdoorAppDeveloper

Ever had an update get stuck? That's when it reports some error but does not say what it is or how to fix it. The only suggestion is to try again later, which never ever works. You will get no further updates since all the later ones require the stuck update to complete first. The only solution is to manually download and install a standalone update, which no longer exists. Thanks Apple!